12
As the calendar flipped from 1919 to 1920 in the America of Woodrow Wilson and Henry Cabot Lodge, the residue of their Washington war over the Treaty of Versailles and more specifically the League of Nations would linger for a while in the national psyche. The President himself became a post–World War I casualty; the peace earned on the battlefields of Europe would require a separate U.S. treaty with Germany in 1921, even as the Allied nations carried on with their League; and the country as a whole went looking for “normalcy” and a renewed sense of isolationism behind its two great ocean barriers, as it had always done before. Alongside the belief that participation in a one-time overseas war had been necessary and justified to ensure freedom of the seas, democracy, and the victory of our closest European partners, there was still a prevailing sense of one-and-done and back to normal as most Americans hoped to avoid foreign involvement from then on, concentrating instead on the home front and making America alone again.1
A League of Nations would still exist for 26 years without U.S. membership and enjoy several diplomatic successes, especially in its first decade, including the Locarno Pact of 1925, which guaranteed Germany’s western border with France and Belgium, and the creation of the European Federal Union in 1929 to coordinate economic and political policies. Germany, the main Allied enemy during the war, the recipient of blame, and the nation responsible for reparation payments to its neighboring victors, even joined the League in 1926. Located in traditionally neutral Switzerland (Geneva), smack dab in the middle of Europe, the League would last until 1946 and, as already noted, be succeeded by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s United Nations at the end of World War II, another, even greater conflict that it had been unable to curb and probably intensified by ensuring German enmity left over from the Treaty of Versailles with the rise of divisive, racist elements such as Nazism and Adolf Hitler.2
In the words of a current online encyclopedia:
With the United States refusal to join, the League of Nations fell short of its goal of universality and was subsequently doomed to failure. It remained a largely Eurocentric organization. Frequent fluctuation in membership exacerbated its effectiveness, but the League failed primarily in the end because its member states continued to pursue [their own] national interests and act independently without regard for the organization. [At the same time], the League was a key agent in the transition from a world of formal empires to a world of formerly sovereign states. [But] despite its effectiveness for [some] international cooperation, the League failed to safeguard peace.
Like the League, the presidency of Wilson would mark a transitional time in U.S. history, as his progressive domestic agenda would become a regular feature of Democratic Party politics throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, while his Republican counterparts, by forsaking the legacy of Theodore Roosevelt in favor of William Howard Taft and the Old Guard in 1912, would become the more conservative of the two parties ever since. At the same time, by taking the U.S. into foreign conflict, the first American chief executive to do so, and by advocating international cooperation on a global scale (small nations as well as large), Wilson also broke the mold of America-first presidents—just about all the men to hold that office since George Washington, who famously warned against foreign entanglements even as the world was becoming more and more interconnected. Only in the matter of race relations, the clear result of a Southern upbringing and the Solid South voting reality of all Democratic politics before the 1960s, did Wilson come up just short of the few presidents generally given A+ ratings.3
As transitional as the first six-plus years of his administration were, however, Wilson’s presidency would end under the shadow of misfortune and not merely because of the defeat of his League. Instead, it was the end of his tour to save the League that would define his last months in office, as the symptoms described in the last chapter would manifest themselves in a massive stroke just days after his tour finale in Pueblo from which he never fully recovered. And “because neither the Constitution nor precedent provided guidance in coping with the disability of a sitting president, the nation faced a real crisis of leadership.” Continuing to quote presidential historian William DeGregorio, “During his convalescence Wilson chose not to relinquish, even temporarily, the office and duties of the president”—not even to the vice president, little utilized or remembered Thomas Marshall of Indiana. Actually Vice President Marshall “spurned” the idea that he should assume presidential duties while Wilson was incapacitated—duties that were apparently handled by America’s First Lady at that time, Edith Galt Wilson, the second Mrs. Wilson, having married the President before his second term began after the death of his first wife from Bright’s disease five years earlier.4
She, in fact, would screen all matters of state and decide which ones were important enough to bring to the attention of her bedridden husband as he recovered behind mostly closed doors at the White House. This unique circumstance in American history was captured in detail by Wilson biographers Berg and Cooper. According to Berg, as the President’s train sped back towards Washington in late September 1919 after cancellation of the rest of his tour, including planned stops in Wichita (Kansas), Oklahoma City (Oklahoma), Little Rock (Arkansas), Memphis (Tennessee), and Louisville (Kentucky), Wilson “remained indisposed in his stateroom and in pain.” A few opposition newspapers suggested the cancellation of the remainder of his tour was merely “a ruse” to induce sympathy in the Senate, where at least two previously expected “nay” voters on the League were known to be wavering. Cooper concurred by offering that while his doctor never used the word “stroke” aboard the train, he did suspect something was amiss with Wilson’s fragile circulatory system and thus the need to get him home as soon as possible.5
The victim of a major stroke while still president in October 1919, Woodrow Wilson would lean on his second wife, Edith Galt Wilson, for things no other First Lady was ever asked to do, as she served as America’s unofficial chief executive for much of the remainder of his second term (ending in March 1921). With the left side of his body paralyzed, Wilson depended on her while his condition was kept secret (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division—Reproduction Number LC-USZ62–62850).
While attempting what Cooper also termed “the most extensive effort any president had ever made to try to educate the public about foreign policy,” he had obviously gone too far physically, and his body had not held up under the strain. “Back at the White House, Wilson went into seclusion.” Rest would be his only treatment, but “the awful pain in his head” was relentless. After seemingly minor improvement by October 1, his third day home, there was renewed hope that the worst was past, but then October 2 brought those hopes crashing down, when, as Berg described, the First Lady telephoned his doctor around 8:30 a.m. to let him know the President was very sick and even before she had finished her call, he had collapsed, unconscious on the bathroom floor.6
“The stroke and illness Woodrow Wilson suffered in October 1919 brought on the worst crisis of presidential disability in American history.” So wrote Cooper as he began to unravel the period following Wilson’s second and more severe stroke. From the outset, those around him contemplated the question of whether or not he should resign. The stroke paralyzed his left side, including his arm and leg, as well as the lower left side of his face, which drooped noticeably. At the same time, the right side of his body was apparently unaffected, leaving him with the ability to write and conduct his normal, right-handed tasks, and his mind was not affected, as he retained the ability to speak and answer questions slowly but clearly. He alone among White House insiders never considered resignation.7
His wife did at least bring up allowing Vice President Marshall to take over, but his doctors felt that might remove his greatest incentive for recovery. As a result, she took on the role of gate-keeper, filtering and analyzing everything before it reached the President, deciding what needed presidential scrutiny and what did not behind closed doors, tasks that many pundits have since asserted made her, in essence, the nation’s first female president for a period of weeks while Wilson continued his recovery. In the biggest of his biggest political fight and with the chances of his League dwindling, there was no way he was going to allow his congressional adversaries to call him “a quitter,” Cooper emphasized, so even the mention of resignation in his presence was not condoned. At the same time, his visitors were few and far between, and those that did get in to see him were thoroughly screened, with the President only available in ways that concealed the invalid nature of his condition. The First Lady would later come under severe criticism for her concealment and “stewardship,” as she called it, which included the reading of all classified, state papers.8
Whether or not a surrogate president was needed became open to debate within the confines of the White House, as the country as a whole heard only rumors and hearsay evidence. Secretary of State Lansing was one of those who raised the question of “presidential disability” and even brought it up at a Cabinet meeting on October 6 by posing the question of vice-presidential intervention based on the constitutional provision—“in case of the inability of the President.” The Secretary’s exact motives in raising that question have also been the subject of debate. Bullitt’s controversial testimony in the Senate had left a festering sore spot between Wilson and Lansing, who was advocating that all Cabinet members should “go about their business ‘without attempting to consult the President,’” again according to Cooper. In that same vein, Berg acknowledged that Lansing believed Wilson’s physical state was “dangerous” for the country and within days of that Cabinet meeting, newspapers were appearing with rumors of a “cerebral lesion or hemorrhage,” forcing the President’s medical team to issue “non denial denials,” as they became total accomplices to the ongoing administration subterfuge.9
Eventually, the First Lady did agree to a briefing “through a third party” with the vice president, entrusting what Berg termed “the nation’s darkest secret to a middleman”—a Washington correspondent of the Baltimore Sun named Fred Essary. In the shock of having the presidential rumors confirmed in such a way, Vice President Marshall was reputedly left “speechless” and had no response other than silence for his undercover messenger, who left the VP’s office without another word being spoken. For years afterward, Theodore Roosevelt’s oldest daughter, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, the wife of Republican Congressman and future Speaker of the House Nicholas Longworth, who, like her father, was an established critic of the Wilson administration, enjoyed embellishing this tale of supposed Democratic cowardice by telling willing listeners that the fear-stricken Marshall had actually fainted at the news—thus his silence.10
Close associates of former President Theodore Roosevelt as his best friend and son-in-law (respectively), Massachusetts’ Henry Cabot Lodge (left) and Ohio’s Nicholas Longworth were Republican leaders during the early 1900s, with Lodge the ranking GOP member in the Senate and Longworth, who married Roosevelt’s oldest daughter, an eventual Speaker of the House. Both opposed the League of Nations (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division—Reproduction Number LC-USZ62-64298).
Always something of an outsider in the administration, Marshall seemed to remain “invisible” in the days after Wilson’s return and his obvious seclusion at the White House. Cooper indicated the Vice President actually avoided 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and refused to speak with reporters. Finally, reports of the President’s incapacity began to circulate on Capitol Hill and the vague physician denials of the gravity of Wilson’s health influenced senators of both parties to begin making their own attempts to persuade the reluctant VP to intervene and take over. By late November, in fact, rumors about the President were so constant that as Congress reconvened following the Thanksgiving holiday, a group of senators were determined to learn the truth. As an excuse to do so, they utilized renewed tensions with Mexico over a seized and detained American citizen in that neighboring country. When Lansing confirmed he had not spoken with Wilson about the potential controversy, the Senate panel had the issue it needed to justify its own conference with the President. Prepared for just such an approach and potential inquisition, however, the White House doctors, “put on a show designed to [again] hide the nature and extent of Wilson’s disability,” and on December 5, when Senators Albert Fall of New Mexico and Gilbert Hitchcock of Nebraska came calling, Cooper also recounted how they found him “propped up in his bed” with “all the lights in the room on” and his paralyzed left side well concealed under the bedcovers with papers on a table to the right of his bed, “where he could easily reach them with his good arm and hand.” When Fall stated, “I hope you will consider me sincere that I have been praying for you, Sir,” Wilson famously quipped, “Which way, senator?” … exhibiting the dry wit that had always been a staple of his personality with the kind of clear-headed comeback that got their visit off to an amiable and less suspicious start. Cooper concluded: “The President performed beautifully” and in their ensuing discussion “counseled against haste in dealing with Mexico,” putting to rest their fears of the administration not being able to deal with the problem.11
Afterwards, Hitchcock even shared with reporters: “The President looks much better than when I last saw him. His color was good, he was mentally alert, and physically seemed to me to have improved greatly.” Fall agreed, telling the gathered press corps that Wilson should be perfectly capable of handling the Mexican situation. In other words, the ruse had worked, and the President had passed the necessary test to move Congress and the nation past growing concerns over his ability to remain in office. Just over a week later, in fact, he was able to stand up and take his first unaided steps since the stroke two months earlier. He was certainly not out of the woods health-wise, but he had overcome the greatest threat to the completion of his second term. Unfortunately for him, as already revealed, he would never be able to overcome Republican opposition to his League of Nations. As John Garraty concurred in his bio of Lodge and wrap-up of the League fight: “The decision of the Republican Party [in regard to the League] was unfortunate, but it was not unpopular in [the distracted] America [of 1920]”—an America still recovering from 600,000 deaths during the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918 and about to embark on the controversial “Era of Prohibition,” with ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment on January 16, 1920.12
Lodge, meanwhile, issued a statement about how just “because the American people were [ultimately] opposed to the League of Nations formulated and brought home by Mr. Wilson [did] not in the least mean that they proposed to isolate themselves and have nothing to do with the affairs of the rest of the world.” On the surface that sounded good in a rational, justifying, fence-mending sort of way, but in reality the country had moved past the international focus that had been so apparent when its ships were being attacked by German U-boats and later when its young men were being sent across the Atlantic to fight in a foreign war for democracy’s sake. The presidential campaign of 1920 would result in the infamous, “smoke-filled-room” selection of a nondescript, compromise candidate on the Republican side, Ohio Senator Warren G. Harding, a self-made, former small town newspaper publisher, who would defeat another former newspaper publisher from the same state, Ohio’s Democratic governor, James M. Cox. The all–Ohio race would result in a Harding landslide and obvious referendum against Democratic support for Wilson’s League. Ironically, Harding would attempt to straddle the League issue during the campaign, while Cox openly “challenged war-weary Americans to remain active in world affairs.” But as presidential historian Kenneth Davis noted: “Worn by war and Woodrow Wilson’s aggressive reform agenda, America wanted to catch its breath” and with Harding running on the slogan “A Return to Normalcy,” the outcome was never really in doubt.13
Harding truly was The Available Man of Andrew Sinclair’s 1965 book and of the mainstream conservative doctrine Republicans would come to embrace.14 Despite a major international naval conference in December 1920 shortly after Harding’s election victory that belied Republican leanings away from foreign involvement, the “Era of Normalcy” for the American electorate was at hand. In addition, the relatively new Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution changed the way U.S. senators had always been selected by state legislatures to being elected through statewide elections, just as governors always had been, and Harding was the first of that new type of senator to also be elevated to the White House. Up until 1913 Sinclair mentioned how senators were not viewed as “good presidential timber” because they had rarely proved their vote-getting potential among the general public. Harding’s selection, however, marked a change in that belief, which actually had only been true since the Civil War, with Andrew Johnson (1865–1868) and Benjamin Harrison (1888–1892) the only presidents to have previously been senators during that span. Nonetheless, several multi-termed, business-backed senators from that period undoubtedly had more influence than the sitting presidents. Before the Civil War, senators becoming president had been much more common, as seven chief executives were elevated after being legislatively conferred senators. Also true is the fact senators have again become presidents with increasing frequency in modern times, as the elections of Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden all attest.15
At the same time, Harding’s ascension as a compromise candidate was not only a renewed political trend, but what Samuel Hopkins Adams, another of his biographers, viewed as his membership in the Republican Old Guard that conspired to produce him. Being “reliably compliant,” as in making decisions and establishing policy the Old Guard would prefer, had to be a primary consideration when the 1920 Republican National Convention devolved into a backroom selection process following nine inconclusive ballots and put him over the top ahead of a general (Leonard Wood), a governor (Illinois’ Frank Lowden), and a much less controllable, progressive senator (the previously mentioned Hiram Johnson of California), all of whom had been ahead of him in balloting before the decisive, smoke-filled induced, 10th delegate count.16
Harding’s victory was also an apparent mandate for a return to the less government, conservative style of politics so evident at the turn of the century during the administration of the twice-elected William McKinley of Ohio, Harding’s personal hero, who had been felled by the assassin’s bullet that ushered in the more progressive era of TR and Wilson. And Harding, who unexpectedly died of a heart attack himself only two and a half years into office, was the precursor to the Republican decade of the 1920s (ironically the “Roaring 20s” of live and let live trends and lifestyle changes), the forerunner of Calvin Coolidge, America’s foremost tax cutter, and Herbert Hoover, the business and engineering whiz who would have the misfortune of being the president amid the greatest financial collapse in U.S. history. Although Harding’s shortened administration would be marred by scandal brought on primarily by his Cabinet and other appointees, it nonetheless signaled the inward looking mood of the country that would turn to trickle-down economics, wild speculation, and ultimately too little, too late oversight (or foresight) by both Coolidge and Hoover.17
“The Great Depression,” as we have come to know it, began with the stock market crash of October 1929 and resulted in another, nearly as lopsided presidential landslide in 1932, the turning away from conservative economics to the renewed TR/Wilsonian progressivism of FDR, who unleashed a decidedly more liberal “New Deal” in his administration’s first 100 days, providing hope to a nation in desperate need of some (so much so, in fact, that he would be re-elected three times). In addition to the Great Depression, the second Roosevelt would lead the United States through a Second World War in just over two decades. Indeed, the Western democracies would have to unite once again with what was by then a strange ally, Communist Russia, to defeat a totalitarian Nazi Germany, an empire-crazed Japan, and a misguidedly fascist Italy, as the world had evolved in unimaginably dictatorial ways since America’s failure to join the League of Nations. In her book on the peace conference that officially ended the First World War and produced the Treaty of Versailles and ill-fated League, Margaret MacMillan indicated near the end that “the picture of Germany crushed by a vindictive peace [could] not be sustained” so long as the frustrated German people, who had never been defeated, were made to accept all the blame and a majority of the cost. Instead, all it took was the rise of der Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, who aroused German frustrations in such a way that he was able to create a new Germany bent on revenge for what had happened at Versailles. Quoted by MacMillan, German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop said in 1939, as World War II was beginning with Germany’s invasion of its eastern neighbor Poland: “The Fuhrer had done nothing but remedy the most serious consequences which this most unreasonable of all dictates in history imposed upon a nation and, in fact, upon the whole of Europe—in other words, repair [for] the worst mistakes committed by none other than the statesmen of the Western democracies.”18
One of those statesmen was Woodrow Wilson and a good thing for him he did not live long enough to hear that verdict of Versailles issued on the world stage at the outset of another world war, with his dreams of avoiding that obviously recurring nightmare not only shattered but mocked. That would have surely killed him, just as assuredly as his stressful wounds 15 years earlier had done in the League fight. After still being president when the Nineteenth Amendment was finally ratified, giving U.S women the right to vote for the first time on August 26, 1920, he would oversee a mostly uneventful final few months of his second term except for being named the 1920 Nobel Peace Prize recipient for his leadership at Versailles (small consolation) before exiting the White House for the last time on March 4, 1921. The 28th president would not stick around for the inaugural of the 29th and although he would surprisingly outlive his successor by five months, Wilson would never fully recover from his last stroke before dying on February 3, 1924, at age 68.19
Meanwhile, Wilson’s great nemesis continued in the Senate during the Era of Normalcy, which Garraty titled the final chapter of his biography. Lodge actually won re-election in March of 1919 in the closest vote of his six-term Senate career before also dying from a severe stroke accompanied by the complications of prostate cancer in late 1924. At 74, he outlived Wilson by just nine months.20
1. David Pietrusza, 1920, 3, 5; A. Scott Berg, Wilson, 693; Kenneth C. Davis, Don’t Know Much About the American Presidents, 390; William DeGregorio, The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents, 437–438, 440; John Milton Cooper, Jr., Woodrow Wilson, 572; Andrew Sinclair, The Available Man: The Life Behind the Masks of Warren G. Harding, 163, 198–199, 200, 205.
2. C.N. Truman, “League of Nations,” historylearningsite.co.uk, March 17, 2015; Richard Overy, The Dictators: Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, 13–22.
3. Kenneth C. Davis, Don’t Know Much About the American Presidents, 385, 388–389, 391; David Pietrusza, 1920, 326; John Milton Cooper, Jr., Woodrow Wilson, 599; James Chace, 1912, 7, 8; David McCullough, Truman, 586, Robert Dallek, An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917–1963; Joseph J. Ellis, His Excellency: George Washington, 222–223; F. Martin Harmon, Presidents by Fate, 147, 152.
4. William DeGregorio, The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents, 413, 419, 425.
5. Ibid., 413; A. Scott Berg, Wilson, 637; John Milton Cooper, Jr., Woodrow Wilson, 530.
6. John Milton Cooper, Jr., Woodrow Wilson, 531–532; Berg, Wilson, 639–640.
7. John Milton Cooper, Jr., Woodrow Wilson, 533, 535.
8. Ibid., 535–536.
9. Ibid., 538, A. Scott Berg, Wilson, 645.
10. A Scott Berg, Wilson., 646; Stacy A. Cordery, Alice: Alice Roosevelt Longworth, from White House Princess to Washington Power Broker, 251, 273, 285–286.
11. John Milton Cooper, Jr., Woodrow Wilson, 539, 547–548.
12. Ibid., 548; Kenneth C. Davis, Don’t Know Much About the American Presidents, 394; John A. Garraty, Henry Cabot Lodge, 401
13. Ibid., 402; William DeGregorio, The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents, 437–438; Kenneth C. Davis, Don’t Know Much About the American Presidents, 397, 399.
14. Andrew Sinclair, The Available Man, VIII, 299.
15. Ibid., 57–58; John A. Garraty, Henry Cabot Lodge, 402; Kenneth C. Davis, Don’t Know Much About the American Presidents, 398; Andrew Sinclair, The Available Man, 57–58; William DeGregorio, The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents, 76, 110–111, 126–127, 142, 154, 200–201, 215, 251, 335, 512, 551, 568–569, 586, 800–801.
16. Samuel Hopkins Adams, Incredible Era; The Life and Times of Warren Gamaliel Harding, 134; David Pietrusza, 1920, 201–237; Amity Shlaes, Coolidge, 12; William DeGregorio, The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents, 437.
17. Andrew Sinclair, The Available Man, 59–60, 160; Kenneth C. Davis, Don’t Know Much About the American Presidents, 400–402, 408, 418–419.
18. Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919, 481, 482–483.
19. William DeGregorio, The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents, 425–426; Kenneth C. Davis, Don’t Know Much About the U.S. Presidents, 387, 395.
20. John A. Garraty, Henry Cabot Lodge, 408–414, 422–424.