Dreamers and Deceivers Read online

  March 25, 1915

  Edith tore open the package that had arrived at her townhome directly from the White House.

  In the weeks since they’d met, President Wilson had invited her over to dinner and welcomed her to frequent private discussions in his Oval Office study, where they’d held forth on issues great and small. They bonded over their mutual status as widowed spouses and their southern heritage. They reminisced about the poverty of plantation owners and farmers after the Civil War and about their bewilderment over the loyalty that Negroes still seemed to show their old masters. They discussed the state of Europe and Wilson’s fears of American involvement in the Great War.

  Now the president had taken the next step in a hurried courtship. Opening the package, she pulled out a note, signed “From your sincere and grateful friend.” Then she glanced over the accompanying book, one that had been the subject of a recent conversation. British author Philip Gilbert Hamerton was one of Wilson’s favorites, as was this particular book: Round My House: Notes of Rural Life in France in Peace and War. The book advanced a theme that he’d spoken about often in their private discussions: that the nations of the world weren’t so different. They just needed to understand each other better.

  That he would share so many insights with a woman who was basically a stranger demonstrated to Edith just how much Wilson longed for a replacement for his recently departed Ellen. Edith found him to be such a desperately lonely man that it made her sad.

  But she liked him, too. He was kind and attentive, and she could also see he was brilliant. Edith was sure he had great things ahead for his presidency, as long as someone was there to help keep his spirits up.

  The White House

  Washington, D.C.

  May 4, 1915

  After the dinner guests dispersed, Wilson escorted Edith onto the South Portico. In the two months since they’d met, he’d been sending her letters like a lovestruck teenager. “I need you as a boy needs his sweetheart and a strong man his helpmate and heart’s comrade,” he had written. But even she was shocked by his latest declaration.

  Under the moonlight of a clear night sky, the president of the United States had fallen to one knee and proposed marriage.

  Edith tried to conceal a gasp. Marriage was so impractical: She was sixteen years his junior; he was still mourning his wife; and the White House staff eyed her like a soldier would an enemy walking into his camp. “It’s too soon to be asking such a question,” she replied. “What would people say?”

  “I don’t care,” Wilson said. “I need you.”

  “If I must give you an answer tonight,” she replied, “then my answer must be no.”

  Wilson offered a wide grin. “You don’t have to answer me tonight.”

  Washington, D.C.

  September 24, 1915

  Edith and Colonel House sat across from each other, a teapot stationed in the middle of the table. “May I pour you another cup, sir?” she asked him softly.

  House nodded. “Thank you, madam.”

  She knew why they were meeting. Colonel Edward House was Woodrow Wilson’s confidant, longtime advisor, and close friend. And she was the usurper that he intended to tame. This meeting, Edith knew, was to be House’s chance to put her in her place—at least, that’s what he believed. Ellen had a different plan in mind for their discussion.

  For some time after Wilson’s unexpected proposal, Edith had gone back and forth about what to do. She knew that Ellen was considered something akin to a saint since her passing. The White House servants sneered when Edith entered the mansion or deigned to sit in a chair where St. Ellen had once rested. She had feared, too, the reaction of the press—not to mention the snobbish society ladies whose whispers filled the city. Then there was the reaction of the president’s children: What must they think of their father replacing their beloved mother so soon?

  Edith prided herself on being a woman of considerable means, and cherished independence. She didn’t need a husband.

  Still, she mused, Wilson was a loving, gentle man. A visionary. And how many women would turn down a chance to be the First Lady of the United States?

  After days of indecisiveness, Edith’s mind was finally made up by something her lawyer said. Confiding her dilemma in him, the lawyer told her that it was her destiny to hold in the palm of her hand the weal or woe of a country.

  That was all she needed to hear.

  The rest of Wilson’s team was not as certain of Edith’s potential as her lawyer had been. Edith suspected they were conniving to delay the wedding, or even to break up the couple altogether. She also knew that Colonel House would be the linchpin of any of these plans. Which is exactly why she had decided to meet with him.

  “You know, the president speaks of you with great affection,” Edith told House, as wisps of warm mist rose from their teacups. “He admires your ability to place problems in perspective.”

  She watched as House beamed with delight. “That’s wonderful to hear, Mrs. Galt.”

  House told her that he believed Wilson had the potential to be a great peacemaker in the war. He said that the president’s proposal to end the conflict could be “the greatest event in human history excepting the birth of Christ.”

  Edith nodded sagely as the old, puffed-up fool prattled on. She’d taken an almost instant dislike to him, and she resented Wilson’s naïve declarations of House’s wisdom and prudence. She suspected that House did not approve of her, or of their upcoming wedding, but she was also confident that he would leave their meeting believing that he had Edith’s support and approval. House was a necessary evil, at least for now.

  After tea, she drove him around the city in her electric car and then deposited him at the White House, where she was certain he would provide a favorable report to the president and not object to their plans for a December wedding.

  United States Capitol

  Washington, D.C.

  March 5, 1917

  “I, Woodrow Wilson, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

  Chief Justice Edward Douglas White paused. “So help you God?”

  Wilson paused to regain the steam in his voice, then responded, “So help me God.”

  Edith was at her husband’s side when he, in a long frock coat and silk top hat, removed his hand from the Bible, the same he’d used as New Jersey governor, and bent down to kiss it.

  She was the first First Lady in American history to stand beside a president at the public swearing-in ceremony, and also the first to ride with a new president in the inaugural parade—a sign to most Wilsonians of Edith’s utter devotion to her husband.

  The day had started overcast and misty, Edith noted, but then the sun had broken through—an encouraging sign, she hoped, that the country would also see sunshine rather than the dark cloud of war. Indeed, Woodrow Wilson had won reelection under the slogan “He kept us out of war.”

  Wilson’s narrow defeat of Republican Charles Evans Hughes had been a little too close for comfort. But now it was all over, and Edith’s tireless support during the campaign had won her praise from nearly all corners.

  Now standing at the apex of power, she could scarcely believe she had ever let something as trivial as finding out about her future husband’s long affair with Mary Peck stand in the way of her destiny to become First Lady. She was confident she’d cured him of his serial infidelities, just as she’d cured the press of their irrational distaste for her. She particularly enjoyed the favorable coverage she was now receiving from many Washington journalists, whom she’d worked assiduously to charm since becoming First Lady while accompanying her husband on nearly all of his official trips. Noting her influence, the Louisville Courier-Journal wrote that “[o]mnipotence might be her middle name.”

  She could live with that.

  United States Congress

  Washington
, D.C.

  April 6, 1917

  The discovery of a German plot to encourage Mexico to go to war with the United States left the president with no other choice. Addressing both sessions of Congress, Wilson announced that a state of war now existed between America and Germany.

  When he signed the war declaration, Edith handed him the same gold pen he had given her as a gift.

  “Use this,” she said.

  Washington, D.C.

  July 14, 1917

  Edith looked on with disgust. From the window, she could see the crowds of women swarming Lafayette Park across from the White House and making their way to the front gates. The National Woman’s Party was commemorating Bastille Day by demanding the right to vote. They carried outrageous banners with the French Revolution slogan, “Liberty. Equality. Fraternity.” But to make such a vulgar display with the country at war? It made her sick.

  Privately, she and the president had long bemoaned the suffragist movement, finding it to be a deplorable embarrassment. “Universal suffrage,” Wilson had once declared, “is at the foundation of every evil in this country.” During his reelection campaign, Wilson had differed sharply with Republican Charles Evans Hughes, who supported a constitutional amendment granting women the right to vote.

  The group continued their display on her front lawn, until finally they were arrested for unlawful assembly. The president had counseled leniency toward the women—but Edith, thinking him too benevolent and forgiving, was adamant that they all be arrested.

  United States Congress

  Washington, D.C.

  January 8, 1918

  Wilson had a mission. With an overriding belief in his own abilities, he thought it might not even be too much to say that it was a mission from God. The Great War was proving to be one of the bloodiest conflicts in history. So much senseless violence. So much that might have been prevented had nations simply reasoned together.

  Encouraged by a plea for peace from Pope Benedict XV the previous September, President Wilson had assembled a brain trust to help craft a plan. The participants were pulled from top Ivy League universities and met in New York, under the direction of Colonel House, to devise a plan that would end all future wars.

  Now, addressing both chambers of Congress, Wilson declared his Fourteen Points for peace. The last, and most important, of these called for the formation of an association of nations guaranteeing “the principle of justice to all peoples and nationalities, and the right to live on equal terms of liberty and safety with one another, whether they be strong or weak.”

  Wilson’s League of Nations proposal, as he first envisioned it, would ban “unethical” behavior, such as espionage or dishonesty, by member states. These rules would be enforced by a global governing body that could punish offenders by cutting off trade and imposing blockades. An international tribune would administer justice, just like a court might do in the United States.

  Wilson put forth this plan before the war ended, hoping to terminate hostilities without a surrender on either side. It was an effort to create “peace without victory.” Other Allies did not seem so keen to surrender their sovereignty to an international body, but Wilson knew that he could persuade them.

  The speech received triumphal reviews from the only voices that really mattered to him: Edith and the New York Times. “No public utterance you’ve ever made was greeted with such acclaim,” his wife said later that night. The Times soon agreed, declaring that the Fourteen Points rivaled the Emancipation Proclamation in their importance.

  Republicans, however, begged to differ. They did not like the idea of an international body usurping America’s sovereign rights. The president worried about building enough support, but Edith assured him that opposition would soon be wiped away by popular acclaim.

  Wilson realized his wife was right yet again.

  Aboard the USS George Washington

  North Atlantic Ocean

  March 4, 1919

  The president was gray. He had a temperature and the chills. His head throbbed. The voyage to Europe for peace negotiations had only just begun, and Grayson already feared for the president’s ability to handle what might be weeks of tedious debate and negotiation. He urged the president to rest, but Wilson dismissed his advice.

  Since the armistice in the Great War had been declared the previous November, the president had worked nonstop in pursuit of his League of Nations dream.

  His most vociferous opponent, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, had been expressing grave misgivings about any plan that might subjugate U.S. sovereignty or range of action to an international body. He did not want America bound to what he called “the intrigues of Europe.” He also wanted the United States to be able to deploy forces wherever it wished, whenever it wished, without the consent of an international body.

  “I have my own diagnosis for my ailment,” Wilson told Grayson with only half of a smile, “I suffer from a retention of gases generated by the Republican Senators—and that’s enough to poison any man.”

  Paris, France

  April 14, 1919

  Grayson had attended to his patient day and night for weeks now. Ten days earlier, the president had been seized with coughing fits, severe diarrhea, and shortness of breath. Grayson had at first suspected food poisoning, but he changed his diagnosis to severe influenza after Wilson’s temperature reached an alarming 103 degrees. In the days that followed the president looked like a walking dead man.

  Despite his patient’s dire condition, Grayson put on his game face for reporters and other delegates, issuing a constant stream of hopeful and optimistic updates. Only in private did his confident smile fade. In a letter to a friend Grayson confided: “From your side of the water you cannot realize on what thin ice European civilization has been skating. I just wish you could spend a day with me behind the scenes here. Some day perhaps I may be able to tell the world what a close call we had.”

  Paris, France

  April 28, 1919

  “It’s House,” Wilson muttered. “He’s got the servants acting as spies. They’re monitoring everything we say.”

  Grayson assured his patient that this wasn’t true. In recent days, the president had seemed to rally from the worst of his illness, only to plunge into even deeper distress. His face twitched and his hands shook so much at times that he could not even shave himself.

  Now he was spewing seemingly paranoid or incoherent ideas, like this accusation of spying against Colonel House, his friend and most loyal advisor.

  Grayson knew that this was only the latest incidence of Wilson’s bizarre behavior. Recently, after a luncheon on the peace process, the president had noted the arrangement of chairs in the room. “This isn’t in order,” he’d said. He then urged Grayson to help him put red chairs in one section for the Americans, green in another for the British, and the remainder of chairs in place for the French.

  To Grayson’s growing astonishment, the president had also reversed himself abruptly on a multitude of important decisions. In earlier discussions, Wilson had proven reluctant to support the severe punishment that the British and French were advocating against Germany, such as cutting up some German territories, disarming the nation completely, and imposing huge reparations. Then he completely reversed himself. Before he became ill, Wilson had adamantly opposed a proposal to put German’s former kaiser on trial. After he returned to negotiations, he put forth a resolution to do just that.

  Leaving the sick room, Grayson found himself confronted by curious reporters. He again told them the same thing he’d been saying for weeks. “It’s influenza. I’m afraid the president has suffered a relapse.” He blamed Wilson’s toiling away in poorly ventilated rooms and unfavorable weather for the most recent bout.

  Returning to his room, Grayson fretted. What if the press learned that he’d sent for two medical experts from America to rush to the president’s side? What if someone with authority suggested what Grayson already knew to be a very real possibility: that the pre
sident wasn’t suffering from the effects of influenza, but from a stroke?

  Washington, D.C.

  September 3, 1919

  As he boarded the train at Union Station, Cary Grayson tried to conceal his distress—but it was largely a futile effort. Only he and Edith knew the true state the president was in: He was peaked; his face was pale; and he twitched involuntarily. Over and over Grayson had tried to persuade Wilson to see the disastrous consequences that could result from this impending trip, but, as always, he refused to listen.

  Grayson agreed with the president’s vision for the League of Nations and believed it would be an historic effort to end all wars. He was less sure, however, about Wilson’s refusal to consider any compromises to the proposal. Grayson believed that such rigidity bordered on insanity. Moreover, it was politically impractical. Anyone who read the papers knew that the League, at least the way Wilson insisted on it being constructed, was a nonstarter with both Congress and the American people.

  Never lacking confidence in his own ability to persuade, Wilson was convinced that this three-week train trip would turn the tide of public opinion in favor of the League—thus forcing buckling senators to vote in its favor. He had scheduled dozens of speeches in places from Ohio to Indiana to Montana to Colorado to California and back in an effort to round up support.

  But Grayson thought the trip was far too onerous for the oft-ailing president. He’d noticed that flashes of rage came more quickly to Wilson now. The president was frustrated that everyone was treating him like he was a different person. Even if they didn’t say it to Wilson directly, Grayson knew that his friends and advisors all thought the president was missing a step.

  Now, as the train began to make its way out of the capital, Grayson wondered if Wilson might ever make it back home to Washington.

  Indiana State Fair

  Indianapolis, Indiana

  September 4, 1919

  Wilson stood on a platform at the state fairgrounds and held forth before thousands of curious people. He saw in their eyes the profound effect he was having on them as he thundered against opponents of the League. Citing Article XI, one of his favorites in the Covenant of the League of Nations, Wilson declared “that every matter which is likely to affect the peace of the world is everybody’s business, and that it shall be the friendly right of any nation to call attention in the League to anything that is likely to affect the peace of the world or the good understanding between nations.