Wilson

by A. Scott Berg

  Villard sympathized with Wilson’s position, but he did not empathize. “I believe that as with your most immediate predecessors,” he wrote, “the time will come when you will find it necessary to go ahead and do what is right without considering their feelings.” Villard believed the President was not a bigot, that he supported the advancement of the Negro; and that made it all the more frustrating to see him knuckling under to the Southern Senators. In a subsequent conversation with journalist John Palmer Gavit, Wilson said he had to deal with a Congress dominated by men of such fundamental beliefs; and Gavit understood that the President’s opposition to such views “would certainly precipitate a conflict which would put a complete stop to any legislative program.” In that moment, then, it seemed the only way to further the New Freedom was on the back of the Negro.

  By the end of the year, the Post Office Department and the office of the Auditor for the Post Office were segregated; and soon the District’s City Post Office would establish separate windows for Negro patrons as well as the personnel who manned them. At the office of the Auditor of the Navy, screens separated white workers from black, the latter group no longer finding their lavatory on the same floor but in the basement. The Bureau of Engraving and Printing followed suit. Secretary McAdoo proudly removed every white from the Register’s Division, not realizing, as Villard wrote Wilson, “that this division will immediately be called the ‘nigger division’ and that the precedent thus established will be of the utmost danger to the colored people long after the motive has been forgotten and Mr. McAdoo has disappeared from public life.” Civil Service positions now required photographs, which tempted some employers simply to overlook the “rule of three.” The number of positions available to Negroes, along with the level of those jobs, went in the same direction as their lavatories.

  Despite the opposition from the bloc of bigoted Southern Senators, Wilson did repeatedly nominate Negroes to refill positions that they had traditionally held—including the reappointment of Judge Robert H. Terrell to the Municipal Court. In tangling with a Senator or even Speaker Champ Clark, Wilson flatly explained the promise he had made to the black community and that he was honor-bound. He expected equality in all the facilities within the federal buildings.

  In the early fall of 1913, the NAACP conducted an investigation of the segregation of colored employees within the government departments. Villard sent the results to Wilson, as he had requested. At the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, the investigator—NAACP Secretary May Childs Nerney—reported that colored women who had dined for nine years with white women had been relegated to a separate table. At the Post Office Department there was an attractive dining room for the white employees but none for the black, which some excused with the argument that there were no restaurants in Washington that would serve blacks and so neither should the government be expected to. Treasury boasted 270 colored employees; but May Nerney found many had been consigned to areas of the building that were poorly lighted and ventilated. Those segregated, she added, were regarded as “a people set apart, almost as lepers. Instead of allaying race prejudice . . . it has simply emphasized it.” Because Negroes could now advance only so far, they seemed to have lost their competitive drive. She felt many Negro workers would look for employment elsewhere. Jim Crow, some feared, would next overtake public transportation. Wilson wrote Villard that he intended to right the wrongs within the policy but not to change the policy itself.

  As McAdoo asserted in a letter to Villard, “There is no ‘segregation issue’ in the Treasury Department.” He contended that white women had long complained of having to sit at desks with colored men. His personal feelings articulated the current administration’s policy: “I shall not be a party to the enforced and unwelcome juxtaposition of white and negro employees when it is unnecessary and avoidable without injustice to anybody, and when such enforcement would serve only to engender race animosities detrimental to the welfare of both races and injurious to the public service.” Protesters across the country were already organizing that summer, and an anti-segregation petition with twenty thousand signatures would soon land on the President’s desk. In just a few months, Wilson had become entangled in what journalist Gavit would call “the most difficult and embarrassing and dangerous subject” before him—what was merely the culmination of “the crimes and hypocrisies of three centuries.”

  Wilson managed to find relief in Cornish a few times that summer. The family made time to take long drives together through the New Hampshire countryside; and at night they sat on the terrace, under the stars, as Woodrow regaled them with stories of life in “hectic” Washington. They often entertained neighboring artists; and one night actress Marie Dressler, who summered across the river in Windsor, Vermont, came to perform an evening of songs and stories. But the Wilsons most appreciated their time alone, especially as they announced Jessie’s engagement to Frank Sayre that July. Wilson heartily approved of his future son-in-law, especially as he had converted to the Democratic Party and—reminiscent of her father—was giving up the practice of law for a career in academia, starting as an assistant to President Harry Garfield of Williams College.

  Harlakenden had an artist’s studio, where Ellen painted every day, creating some of her most accomplished canvases to date. Her landscapes had become slightly more Impressionistic, revealing looser brushwork and genuine mastery of composition and color. Robert Vonnoh called Ellen “a real artist” and declared that if she continued, her work would become “really very distinguished.” In fact, five of her paintings from the summer would be part of an exhibition of the Association of Women Painters and Sculptors in New York that fall. In reviewing her work, The New York Times would say, “Mrs. Wilson is a serious art student and she observed in nature aspects that appeal to the lover of outdoor life.” Three of the pictures sold in the $100 range.

  As in the earliest days of their courtship—and through thirty years of periodic separations—Woodrow and Ellen still corresponded copiously when they were apart. The duties of office restricted him from writing more than twice a week. Although his letters were largely about his work, his passion still permeated them. He wrote his wife of twenty-eight years that his “dearest indulgence” that summer was in occasionally daydreaming of her beauty and charm. “I adore you! No President but myself ever had exactly the right sort of wife! I am certainly the most fortunate man alive!” he declared.

  Ellen’s feelings ran just as deep, and she sublimated them by immersing herself in family and her artwork. She said she felt like “a soldier’s wife,” as she suffered through Woodrow’s absences. “I idolize you,” she wrote him, “—I love you till it hurts.” Ellen passed much of the time without Woodrow by reading his letters from the White House to their three daughters. “And although she still skipped the ‘sacred parts,’” remembered Nell, then twenty-three, “we knew by the tender pride in her face that after all the years together they remained the poetic messages of a lover.”

  Midsummer, Ellen could endure the separation no longer. Accompanied by Nell, she braved the steamy twenty-hour journey to Washington to pay a surprise visit. Woodrow’s obvious elation alone made the entire journey worthwhile. He looked tired, strained as he was marshaling votes for his two sweeping economic bills; but he was rejuvenated having Ellen by his side again. They were both amused when Secretary McAdoo called on the President that night and, upon seeing Nell, invited her to play tennis with him the next day. Within a few days of Ellen’s arrival, Dr. Grayson encouraged her return to Cornish because of the overwhelming heat and Woodrow’s concern about her.

  In September, New Jersey Democrats held a primary election, and Wilson took the train to Princeton so that he could vote. Away only six months, he already felt strangely detached from his home of so many years. With a few minutes to kill, he walked through Nassau Hall, only to learn that a crowd was gathering out front. Wishing to avoid a spectacle, Wilson asked a young man whether a ce
rtain back door was unlocked, which would allow for an unobserved exit. Strangely, the man misinterpreted Wilson’s inquiry as interest in seeing the president of the college, who was then at home. The fellow raced to inform him, and in a moment, Jack Hibben was on horseback, galloping to Nassau Hall. Flushed with anticipation, he found his former intimate, who had spurned him for years now. “I was told, Mr. President, that you were looking for me,” he said. Offering a cold smile but not his hand, Wilson replied, “No, no, you are mistaken.” And with that, he turned toward the station, adding, “Good afternoon, Sir.” Before boarding the train, Wilson apologized to a member of his small party, explaining, “The man who stopped and spoke to me was my friend. I did more to make him than I did for any other person in the world. I unbosomed my very soul to him. And in the crucial moment of my life, he turned against me. I can never forgive him.”

  Washington had become Wilson’s home now, legislative battles and all. “I of course find a real zest in it all,” he wrote Edith Reid. “Hard as it is to nurse Congress along and stand ready to play a part of guidance in anything that turns up, great or small, it is all part of something infinitely great and worth while, and I am content to labour at it to the finish.” In the late afternoon of September 9, 1913, the Senate passed his tariff bill, almost entirely along partisan lines. Louisiana’s Senators—protecting sugar and cotton—were the only two Democrats to vote against it; and the two most Progressive Republicans (including Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette of Wisconsin) voted for it. Looking back on the five months in which this bill had been kicked around the floor of the Capitol, opposition Senator Albert B. Cummins of Iowa said that the Congress had surrendered its primacy to “a single will.” He told the press that he intended to read the writings of “the man who has more influence in the Congress of the United States than any man ever before had. I refer to Woodrow Wilson.”

  At nine o’clock on the night of October 3, 1913, fifty guests in evening clothes—including the Congressional leaders and most of the Cabinet—gathered around the President’s desk in the Oval Office. A buoyant Wilson entered to applause and took his seat, the tariff measure printed on parchment awaiting his signature. He gilded the ceremony by introducing what would become a Presidential tradition for future historic signings: he autographed the bill with two different gold pens—one for his first name, one for his last—which he presented to Congressman Underwood and Senator Simmons.

  “I have had the accomplishment of something like this at heart ever since I was a boy,” he told those assembled, “and I know men standing around me who can say the same thing—who have been waiting to see the things done which it was necessary to do in order that there might be justice in the United States.” Referencing Shakespeare’s Henry V, the President said, “If it be a sin to covet honour, then am I the most offending soul alive.” He did not choreograph this occasion to pat the men on their backs so much as to push them forward. Their job was only half done. “We are now about to take the second step,” he said, “. . . in setting the business of this country free.” The House had already passed the currency bill, and now he urged its passage through the Senate.

  “How profoundly I thank God for giving you the chance to win such victories,” Ellen wrote from Cornish, “—to help the world so greatly;—for letting you work for Him on a large stage;—one worthy of the splendid combination of qualities with which He endowed you. . . . It has been the most remarkable life history I ever even read about,—and to think I have lived it with you. I wonder if I am dreaming, and will wake up and find myself married to—a bank clerk,—say!”

  Into the fall of 1913, the subject of banks consumed most of Wilson’s waking hours. And on September 18, his audacious currency bill—the Federal Reserve legislation, with its restructuring of the nation’s banking system—passed the House by a vote of 287 to 85. Forty-eight Republicans supported the President while only three Democrats opposed him. Outside the Capitol, wealthy conservatives quickly weighed in. The president of the National City Bank suggested that Federal Reserve notes would hardly be worth the paper they were printed on; railroad tycoon James J. Hill pronounced the proposal “socialistic”; a Yale economist said American gold would seek investment in Europe and massive inflation would descend; Republican leader James Mann had already denounced the entire plan but now suggested it was a moot point, as none of the 7,500 national banks would even enter the Federal Reserve System.

  Seven Democrats and five Republicans sat on the Senate Banking and Currency Committee, and it came as a great surprise when one of the majority, Gilbert M. Hitchcock of Nebraska, announced he had so many objections to the bill that he joined the opposition. A Democratic colleague, James A. Reed of Missouri, followed. That gave the Republicans the edge in keeping the bill from ever leaving their committee. Then Democratic Senator James A. O’Gorman of New York, mindful of his constituents on Wall Street, joined forces. Former Senator Nelson Aldrich trotted out his old plan of a central bank. Thus began, said Vice President Thomas R. Marshall, “the most illuminating and exhaustive discussion of a public question ever held in the Senate of the United States.”

  Not forgetting the great debates of Clay, Calhoun, and Webster, Marshall said the next five months saw “a practical history of all the banking systems of the world; of all the debts, assets and incomes of all the races of the world; of their armies, their navies, their taxes.” Through it all, Wilson maintained his equanimity, though he fumed in private. “Why should public men, senators of the United States, have to be led and stimulated to what all the country knows to be their duty!” he rhetorically asked Mary Hulbert. Wilson repeatedly convened with his party’s dissenters, separately and together, as well as with Republican members of the committee, winning over one mind at a time. With the able support of Colonel House, McAdoo, and Bryan, he steadily plied his powers of persuasion, arguing that structural change was needed immediately. The off-year elections in early November signaled that Progressivism was still in the air; and one by one, Democrats wandered back into the party fold. Bankers—especially those outside New York—began to embrace the banking bill. Even the final Republican arguments in early December felt stale.

  On December 19, 1913, the Senate passed the bill 54 to 34. Every Democrat present, along with six Republicans and one Progressive, voted aye. With a Christmas holiday beckoning, it took only three days of conferences to reconcile the bill with the House version. And on December 23, the President held another signing ceremony in his office, surrounded by his family as well as the officials who had contributed to the bill. For this occasion, he had purchased three gold pens, which he handed to Congressman Glass, Senator Owen, and Secretary McAdoo. He spoke for a few minutes, expressing his belief that, on the heels of the tariff bill, this act “furnishes the machinery for free and elastic and uncontrolled credits, put at the disposal of the merchants and manufacturers of this country for the first time in fifty years.” Wilson could not find the words to express his “deep emotions of gratitude” at being part of something so beneficial to the business of America.

  It was a profoundly emotional time for Wilson in other ways as well. Only weeks earlier, on Tuesday, November 25, 1913, Jessie Woodrow Wilson had married Francis Bowes Sayre in the East Room of the White House. The bride had hoped for a small and informal wedding; but with the President’s soaring popularity in Washington, that became impossible. Four hundred guests—Cabinet members, Senators and Representatives, Supreme Court Justices, and diplomats, along with friends and family of the wedding couple, gathered in the great salon. Just before 4:30, Sayre and his groomsmen (one of whom was Charles Evans Hughes, Jr., son of an Associate Justice) descended the stairway and entered the East Room, where Dr. Sylvester Beach, the Wilsons’ pastor in Princeton, and Sayre’s brother, a minister, would perform a combined Episcopalian and Presbyterian ceremony.

  The procession of attendants entered to the musical accompaniment of the Marine Band, resple
ndent in scarlet. When all were in place, a bugle heralded the entrance of the President, who was dressed in a dark gray cutaway. Her arm linked through his, the bride wore a white satin dress of her own design, with a long veil and a train three yards in length. To the traditional strains of Lohengrin, they walked to the raised platform that had been erected before the great east window. This makeshift chancel was flanked by two large blue vases, filled with gigantic clusters of white lilies. When Dr. Beach asked “who giveth this woman,” the President stepped forward and placed his daughter’s hand in that of the groom.

  The wedding party received guests in the Blue Room, and refreshments were served in the dining room. As there was a $1,000 reward to any journalist who could report on the newlyweds’ honeymoon plans, they had prearranged a getaway in Joseph Tumulty’s car from the south entrance of the White House. Before they left, Jessie stood halfway up the main staircase and threw her bouquet, right into the hands of her sister Nell. When the festivities had wound down, Woodrow placed his arm across Ellen’s shoulders and drew her close as they walked wistfully to the elevator. “I know; it was a wedding, not a funeral,” Ellen said to some of the relatives who remained, “but you must forgive us—this is the first break in the family.”

  And then a second shoe dropped. Over the last few months, Secretary McAdoo, known to his friends as Mac, had become a familiar presence in the White House. The President increasingly relied upon him; and, in time, the young widower frequently appeared during off-hours, calling on Miss Eleanor, as he referred to Nell, to join him for tennis or horseback riding. They enjoyed dancing together at social events; and he soon became a regular visitor in the evenings, hoping they might have a chance to sit alone in the Green Room. Often he would walk with Miss Eleanor to the Washington Monument, where they would sit and watch the sunset. Although she was the most frivolous of the Wilson daughters, McAdoo found her unusually well-informed and opinionated—as she would be, having sat at her father’s dinner table for twenty-three years. “It was not long before I discovered that my interest in her was more than platonic,” McAdoo later recalled. For a while, he kept his feelings to himself. He was twice her age, and he worked for her father. But the next time they waltzed, he decided to marry her.