Woodrow Wilson

by John Milton Cooper, Jr.

  If Lodge and Wilson had gotten their way, the League fight would have been over. The senator snapped at a friend who urged compromise, “It is for [Wilson] to move—not for us.” The president did not answer letters from Democrats who urged compromise, although Edith evidently did read or describe two letters to that effect from House. In response, he did try again to draft a statement to the press but left it unfinished and directed Edith to strike out all but a few oblique references to the treaty in the State of the Union message that Tumulty was drafting for the opening of the next session of Congress on December 2. Not being able to speak in person and having someone else write an address for him hurt Wilson deeply. The message admitted that he could not deal directly with some problems and was relying on cabinet members. It presented a list of suggestions for legislation along progressive lines, including a unified federal budget, continuation of income and excess-profits taxes, an unaltered tariff, aid to veterans and farmers, and better procedures for labor relations. It sidestepped the pressing issue of whether to keep the railroads under government control and blamed current domestic problems on the failure to ratify the peace treaty.26

  Nine years at Wilson’s side had taught Tumulty how to capture his boss’s thought and language reasonably well. The message sounded like the last speech the president had been able to give to Congress, the one on the high cost of living four months earlier, which had also been long on rhetoric and short on solutions to burning problems. This message’s references to domestic problems glaringly understated the troubles that plagued the country at the end of 1919. Inflation, or HCL, still ran rampant, unemployment was soaring as veterans returned to the workforce, and strikes were disrupting major industries, including coal and steel. A radical-led general strike earlier in the year in Seattle, explosions of bombs in May at the homes of public officials, including one on the doorstep of the home of Attorney General Palmer himself, and the police strike in Boston in September—these events had made many people shudder at the specter of revolution. Palmer was beginning his crackdown on “Reds” by having 249 noncitizens suspected of radical connections deported to Russia aboard a former troopship that was dubbed the Soviet Ark.27

  If there have been times in the nation’s history that have cried out for strong presidential leadership, this was one of them. Instead, from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue came silence, occasionally punctuated by a vague but always upbeat report about the president’s condition. Rumors rushed in to fill the information vacuum. Besides complaining about “government by petticoat,” some people were saying that Wilson had gone insane and bars on some first-floor windows proved that the White House was harboring a lunatic. The bars had, in fact, been installed during Roosevelt’s presidency, to keep his young sons from breaking windows with their baseballs. Rumblings about Wilson’s condition broke out on Capitol Hill after an infuriated Hitchcock told reporters that Wilson had refused to see him on November 29. Tumulty tried to make light of the incident, explaining to reporters that the president was improving but Mrs. Wilson did not think he should have any long conferences just now.28

  When Congress reconvened on December 2, newspapers reported that Wilson’s refusal to see Hitchcock had stirred disquiet and led many in Congress to believe that the president’s condition was worse than his physicians were letting on. Senators soon found a way to assuage their curiosity. Tensions with Mexico had flared up again in October when Carranza’s Constitutionalists seized and detained an American citizen, William O. Jenkins, thereby sparking new cries for military intervention. The loudest and most relentless advocate of intervention was Senator Fall of New Mexico, who owned land in Mexico and was close to conservatives there. On December 1, Lansing told Fall privately that he had not discussed Mexico with Wilson since August, and three days later he publicly repeated that admission in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The committee then voted, along party lines, to send two of their members, Fall and Hitchcock, to discuss the Mexican situation with the president. Some senators privately admitted that their real motive was to check up on Wilson. Wags immediately dubbed the two senators the “smelling committee.”29

  Grayson thought something like this might happen, and he had laid plans. Doctor and patient now put on a show designed to hide the nature and extent of Wilson’s disability. When Fall and Hitchcock telephoned on December 5, Grayson told them the president would see them at two-thirty that afternoon. When they arrived, he told them to stay as long as they needed, and he escorted the two senators upstairs to the president’s bedroom, where they found him propped up in his bed. It was a gloomy day, with the December sun low in the sky, and Wilson had instructed that all the lights in the room be turned on so that his visitors could get a good look at him. He lay with his paralyzed left side cloaked in the bedcovers; papers lay on a table to the right of the bed, where he could reach them with his good hand. Edith sat to one side with a writing pad. Wilson shook hands with both senators, and Fall said, “I hope you will consider me sincere. I have been praying for you[,] Sir.” Edith later recalled that her husband shot back, “Which way, Senator?” That was Wilson’s wit at its best. Unfortunately, he almost certainly did not say it, since neither Edith’s notes nor Grayson’s memorandum, written the same day, recorded the remark.30

  Even without that comeback, the president performed beautifully. Hitchcock told reporters afterward that Fall had done most of the talking and Wilson listened attentively for forty minutes. He also reached out and took some papers from the senators and took papers off the bedside table. At one point, Grayson left the room, and when he came back he announced, “Secretary Lansing has asked me to tell you immediately that Jenkins has been released.” Grayson afterward admitted “that he felt like an actor making a sensational entrance.” In the ensuing discussion, Wilson counseled against haste in dealing with Mexico. According to Hitchcock, he repeated a joke made by one of Finley Peter Dunne’s characters: “Mexico is so contagious to us that I’m thinkin’ we’ll have to take it.” As for the peace treaty, Hitchcock reported, “The President said that he regarded responsibility … as having been shifted from his shoulders to others, and that he was disposed to let it rest there awhile.”31

  The show achieved the desired effect. Hitchcock told reporters, “The President looks much better than when I last saw him. He was sitting up in bed, wearing a dark brown sweater. His color was good. … He was mentally most alert, and physically seemed to me to have improved greatly.” Fall agreed, telling the reporters that Wilson was perfectly capable of handling the Mexican situation and “seemed to me to be in excellent trim, both mentally and physically, for a man who has been in bed for ten weeks. Of course, I am not an expert, but that’s how it appeared to me.”32 Wilson’s performance before the “smelling committee” ended talk of removing him from office.

  He was recovering a bit. On December 14, he stood up and took his first steps since the stroke, and the physical therapist assigned to him reported to Dr. Dercum that he would soon be able to sit in a chair for one meal a day and use the toilet instead of a bedpan. Wilson’s defiance was also growing stronger. When Hitchcock finally got to see him alone and urged compromise, Wilson shot back, “Let Lodge compromise. Let Lodge hold out the olive branch.” The same day that he took his first steps, he dictated a press release “from the highest authority in the executive department,” declaring that the president had “no compromise or concession of any kind” in mind and intended to let blame for the failure of the peace treaty remain with the Republican senators.33

  Wilson’s attitude was starting to cross the line between defiance and delusion. Also at the middle of December, he had Tumulty draft a statement—which he revised by dictating changes to Edith—in which he again asserted with respect to the peace treaty, “There is but one way to settle such questions, and that is by direct reference to the voters.” Because the Constitution does not provide for a referendum, he challenged fifty-six senators, listed by name, to resign and run for
reelection. “For myself I promise if all of them or a majority of them are re-elected, I will resign the presidency.” The vice president would also resign, and he would “invite one of the acknowledged leaders of the Republican party” to become secretary of state and thereby become president.34

  If this fantastic scheme had come to light, fresh calls might have arisen for Wilson’s removal from office. He was mixing a crazy brew of his youthful notions about adopting parliamentary practices with his more recent ideas about appealing to the people over the heads of legislators and his plan to resign if Hughes had won in 1916. Moreover, his list of senators was bizarre; it included three Democrats who had supported him on the treaty and the two mildest reservationist Republicans, McCumber and Knute Nelson of Minnesota, and it omitted one of the irreconcilables, George Norris of Nebraska. Fortunately for him, Wilson lacked the will and energy to pursue the scheme, but he had the referendum idea in his head, and he would soon air it again in a slightly less drastic way.35

  Wilson’s statement to the press rejecting compromise backfired because it flew in the face of efforts to bring the treaty back before the Senate and work out a way to achieve consent with reservations. Democratic and Republican party leaders wanted to put the controversy behind them before the next election, while the LEP’s lobbyists and the American Federation of Labor were exerting influence in the direction of compromise. Senators themselves made the most important moves toward breaking the stalemate by starting to conduct the kind of bipartisan talks that should have preceded the earlier votes on the treaty. Now the mild reservationists took more initiative, and Democrats started talking about concessions.36

  Meanwhile, in the White House the Wilsons passed a subdued Christmas without a tree, and Tumulty tried to cheer the president on his sixty-third birthday by saying, “Be of good cheer Governor, the clouds are going to pass away.” Tumulty was trying to lift his own spirits as well. He was being barraged with complaints that cabinet and diplomatic appointments were not being filled. Likewise, the British were miffed because Wilson had refused to meet with their temporary ambassador, the former foreign secretary, who was now Viscount Grey. The alleged reason was that Grey’s private secretary, Major Charles Kennedy Craufurd-Stuart, had spread stories about Dr. Grayson, the First Lady’s premarital involvement with the president, and Bernard Baruch’s relations with an attractive woman suspected of spying for the Germans.37

  As the new year began, Wilson made a new attempt to scuttle plans for compromise on the treaty by reviving the referendum idea. Two days before the Democrats’ Jackson Day dinner on January 8, he ordered Tumulty to draft a letter charging that the Senate’s failure to act threatened to undo the victory over Germany and that the only way to avoid a calamity was “by a direct referendum; … it is our duty as a party to give the next election the form of a great and solemn referendum to the voters of the country in this great matter.” Tumulty showed again that he could mimic Wilson’s style, coining the ringing slogan “great and solemn referendum,” which sounded typical of the president. Tumulty evidently felt uneasy about the tone and content of the letter, however, because he asked several people to go over it with him. Those he consulted thought the letter was unwise but also thought it fruitless to try to talk Wilson out of it. One of them, Secretary of Agriculture Houston, revised the letter to eliminate errors of fact and give it a slightly more conciliatory tone. Wilson accepted Houston’s revisions, but he dictated to Edith another sentence declaring, “We have no moral right to refuse now to take part in the execution & administration of these settlements.”38

  When the letter was read at the dinner, it did less damage than some feared and Wilson hoped. Bryan, who was the featured speaker, sought to soften its impact by arguing that too much had been made of Article X and urging compromise. Much as many Democrats liked that message, some questioned the motives of the messenger. Some Democrats in the Senate grumbled about a revolt against Wilson, although one of them scoffed at such “cloakroom courage.” On January 15, a group of them got together with Lodge and a few Republicans and began a series of meetings that came to be called the bipartisan conference. The going was tough in those meetings, but by January 23 the conferees appeared to be on the verge of an agreement to a reservation on Article X. At that point, the Republican irreconcilables hauled Lodge into a stormy meeting at which they threatened to depose him as majority leader unless he broke off the negotiations. Lodge readily complied, thereby casting doubt on his true desire for a compromise, and he told the bipartisan conference that he would accept no modification of his previous reservations.39

  Back at the White House, another move toward compromise was afoot, although not one instigated by Wilson. It was Tumulty who opened a behind-the-scenes campaign to get the president to take part in compromise negotiations. On January 14, he drafted a letter for Wilson to send to Hitchcock, and he circulated it to secretaries Baker, Houston, and Lansing and to Edith. The next day, he told her that in view of talk of compromise in the Senate, this was the “psychological moment” for action and the president should put forward his own interpretation of the treaty. The cabinet secretaries approved the draft letter; so did Edith, who seems to have encouraged Tumulty to send it to her husband, as he did the next day.40

  The draft set out twelve numbered points, which covered most of the Lodge reservations. On all but three of the points, it took no issue with the intent behind a reservation and often said, “I see no objection.” It did disagree with two reservations, those that covered withdrawal from the League and appointments to the Reparations Commission. On “the much-discussed Article X,” it stated that it was necessary that the president’s “moral influence … for the preservation of peace shall not be diminished,” while keeping “inviolate” Congress’s power to accept or reject League recommendations. The letter also expressed a sincere hope that these interpretations would assist “in bringing about an early ratification of the Peace Treaty.” Tumulty was trying to get around the question of whether an obligation remained under Article X. Coincidentally, he was following the same line that the bipartisan conference would come close to adopting. The effect of listing numbered points corresponding to reservations and giving agreeable responses left an impression of reasonableness and accommodation. Tumulty had high hopes and told Edith that the bipartisan conference would “give the President, in my opinion, his great opportunity.”41

  Unfortunately, Tumulty did not reckon on Wilson’s physical and emotional state. He made only a few marks beside the more accommodating points, and he deleted an implied acceptance of reservations as part of the instrument of ratification. Grayson told Ray Stannard Baker, who was then visiting the White House, that Wilson was “perfectly calm about everything that comes up except the treaty. That stirs him: makes him restless.” Baker told Edith “as diplomatically as I could” that people were blaming her husband for the stalemate over the treaty. “I know,” she replied, “but the President still has in mind the reception he got in the west, and he believes the people are with him.” Edith was unwittingly describing the effects of her husband’s isolation in the White House bedroom and a psychological consequence of the stroke—an inability to adjust to reality—which together made it impossible for him to seize the opportunity that Tumulty was trying to offer.42

  At this point, Wilson’s physical health made matters still worse. On January 20 or 21, he came down with what Grayson called “a sharp attack of the ‘flu,’” which gave him a high fever, accompanied by headaches and vomiting. He got over this episode fairly quickly, but it depressed him. “It would probably have been better if I had died last fall,” he said to Grayson. As earlier, a bit of recovery heightened his combativeness. On January 26, he wrote to Hitchcock that the reservation to Article X proposed in the bipartisan conference must not “create the impression that we are trying to escape obligations.” The closest he could come to appearing accommodating was to have Edith attach a note to the letter leaving it up to Hitchcock’s j
udgment whether to publish his letter. Hitchcock would not release the letter for two weeks, and in the meantime Wilson would revive the referendum scheme. He had Edith send Albert Burleson a list of the names and states of fifty-four senators, Democrats and Republicans, and asked him to consult with the Democratic leaders in the Senate about whether those men had opposed the treaty. Burleson, after consulting on Capitol Hill, replied by simply reciting which senators had taken which stands on the treaty during the previous session of Congress. That deadpan reply may have dampened Wilson’s ardor, but it is more likely that another brief bout of influenza at the beginning of February distracted him and sapped his limited energies.43

  Coming so soon after the previous illness, this one worsened the mood swings that were afflicting Wilson after the stroke. Renewed depression evidently made him think, uncharacteristically, of resigning, and Grayson seems to have tried to engineer that resignation. During coming months, Grayson would sometimes whisper to close friends about this effort. At one point, he would dictate a note to himself: “Look up notes re President Wilson’s intention to go before the Senate in a wheeled chair for the purpose of resigning.” In his whispered confidences, Grayson would blame Edith for scotching the resignation scheme, but it seems more likely that Wilson’s quick recovery from this bout of flu again spurred his determination and combativeness.44

  Wilson’s recovery from this second illness at the beginning of February 1920 triggered his most destructive behavior in the League fight and in his whole presidency. It started with a well-intentioned gesture by an outsider. Foreign leaders also felt dismayed at the stalemate over the treaty, although the governments in London and Paris and their ambassadors in Washington studiously avoided comment for fear of offending Wilson. Lord Grey, who had returned to London, believed he could help to break the deadlock. On January 31, The Times published a letter from him—reprinted the next day in American newspapers—stating that the Allies should welcome American participation in the League of Nations on almost any terms. The letter infuriated Wilson. On February 5, he dictated a press release excoriating this attempt at outside influence, saying that if Grey were still ambassador, his recall would be demanded. That rebuke understated Wilson’s anger. Grayson told Ray Stannard Baker that the White House was “all in a state of utter confusion heightened by the President’s illness & his stubborn temperament. He does not want to hear what is going on apparently.”45