Warren G. Harding (No. 29) – Washington, DC - March 31, 2018

Warren G. Harding (No. 29) – Washington, DC

March 31, 2018

Bust of Harding at Heritage Hall, Marion, OH

Embracing the election motto of “America First,” voters overwhelmingly elected Warren Gamaliel Harding as the next president of the United States in 1920.  With 404 electoral votes and 60 percent of the popular vote, it was the largest margin of victory at the time.

How had a little known senator from Ohio won the election?

Warren Harding, a U.S. senator and owner of a newspaper (Marion Star), was hand-picked by oilmen and the Ohio political machine to be the next president.  Harding had no desire to be president—he actually liked being a senator.  But he looked presidential—wide brow, square chin, and sharp nose. (Cathy thinks he looks like an eagle.)  Best of all, he was seen as malleable. 

Two swaggering oil men, Harry Sinclair and Jake Hamon, made a pact that if they could get 40:1 shot Harding elected, they would grant themselves some favors.  Hamon would become the secretary of interior and would lease the naval oil reserves located in Wyoming to Sinclair.  In turn, Sinclair would give Hamon a third of the earnings.  

The Republican Convention of 1920 was held in Chicago.  For the first time in a presidential election, women had the right to vote and 27 of the 984 delegates were women.  Although Prohibition was the law of the land, liquor flowed at 10,000 speakeasies in Chicago more or less with the consent of the authorities. 

In a “smoke-filled room” at the Blackstone Hotel, Sinclair and Hamon conferred with Republican Party elders to convince them to back Harding.  Initially, General Leonard Wood of WWI fame was the front-runner.  But after nine ballots he still couldn’t get over the top.  Finally, on the 10th ballot, momentum shifted to Harding and he won the nomination.  His running mate would be Massachusetts Gov. Calvin Coolidge.

The Democrats, meanwhile, nominated another Ohio newspaper man, James M. Cox, who owned the Dayton Daily News.  His running mate was Franklin Delano Roosevelt.   

Because of weariness with Wilson’s international focus, Harding ran on a platform of America First.  This

Campaign poster

included higher tariffs and restrictions on immigration.  His campaign manager, Harry Daugherty, decided to limit Harding’s travel and continue the recent campaign tradition of front porch speeches.  Harding gave more than 100 speeches from the front porch of his large home on Mount Vernon Avenue in Marion, Ohio, to more than 600,000 people who came to hear him from all over the country.

Cox never had much of a chance.  Harding and Coolidge won 37 of 48 states and 404 electoral votes.  Cox received only 127 electoral votes. 

It was the largest margin of victory in a presidential race at the time.

Once elected, Warren was beholden to the Ohio Gang.  As Laton McCartney writes in The Teapot Dome Scandal (2008), “once Warren Harding assumed office, this collection of swindlers, sharpies, con men, and extortionists descend

ed on Washington like a pestilence, securing just about every job in the new administration that provided an opportunity for corruption.” 

But Hamon never got his coveted Cabinet position — because nineteen days after the election, he was fatally shot by his jilted mistress.   

But Sinclair would find another champion.

Enter Albert Fall, a senator from New Mexico. With Hamon dead, Harding appointed Fall as secretary of the interior.  Fall was an odd choice for this position, because he was anti-conservation and wanted to undo  the progress that had been made on protecting land from development. But more than anything, he wanted money.  He arranged for the naval oil reserves at Teapot Dome (the sandstone feature looked like a teapot) to be transferred from the Navy to the Department of the Interior.  Then he leased out the right to tap the reserves to Sinclair in a non-competitive bid.  In return, Sinclair laundered Liberty bonds to Fall and sent him animals for his failing farm including “six heifers, a yearling bull, two young boars, four sows, and an English Thoroughbred racehorse” (McCartney, 2008).

Long after Harding’s term ended, Sinclair was found guilty of trying to bribe jurors.  But he didn’t serve much time, less than a year.  Further, an appeals court ruled the Dome leases invalid.  Fall was shown to have illegally received $300k in Liberty bonds.  Fall was also jailed, but like Sinclair, he served less than a year.  But he lost his failing ranch and almost went bankrupt. 

And those were not the only criminals in Harding’s administration. 

As leader of the Ohio Gang, Harry Daugherty was appointed attorney general.  He was in a perfect position to steal.  One of his schemes was selling permits for alcohol to be used for medicinal purposes;  he made tens of thousands of dollars using this strategy.  He also sold pardons and paroles for convicts. 

Harding’s director of the Veterans Bureau, Charles Forbes, sold government supplies for personal gain.  He also made $1 million in kickbacks. When Harding learned this, he fired Forbes. 

Harding's wife, Florence, was
five years his senior.

Harding himself was no saint.  He was faithless in his marriage to Florence Kling, who was five years his senior.  He had multiple, sometimes overlapping affairs.  One of his lovers, Carrie Fulton Phillips, was paid hush money by both Harding and the Republican National Committee.  (Fulton was probably the love of Harding’s life — he wrote her 900 pages of letters over the course of their many year affair.  She was also married at the time.)  He brought another lover, Nan Britton, directly into the White House for “trysts.”  She later claimed that her daughter was fathered by Harding and wrote a book about it in 1927 called The President’s Daughter.  (In 2015, DNA testing of relatives of Harding and Britton’s daughter proved that her claim was true.)  When the 1922 book Illustrated Life of President Warren G. Harding revealed his affair with Carrie Phillips, Attorney General Daugherty ordered dozens of agents to find and burn copies.  They also destroyed the printing plates. (President Calvin Coolidge eventually fired Daugherty).

Harding wasn’t directly implicated in any of his administration’s scandals.  But he seemed to have a sense that things were not right.  He said, “I have no trouble with my enemies…but my darn friends, my God-damn friends…they’re the ones that keep me walking the floor nights.” (Riccards, 1995). 

We know that Harding asked Fall about the non-competitive lease sales to Sinclair but was assured by Fall that the bids were competitive.  We also know that an associate of Sinclair offered $500,000  (in Liberty bonds paying 4-3/4 percent interest)  for Harding’s paper,  the Marion Star.  This was much more than its value.  Harding accepted the payment.  He  used the money to buy $500,000 stocks on margin, which he bought under the name of one of his Secret Service agents.

And when he died of a heart attack two years into his term—in the Palace Hotel in San Francisco—his wife (assisted by Attorney General Harry Daugherty) spent several days burning most of his papers.

While president, Harding pushed laws to restrict immigration because immigrants (mostly from southern and eastern Europe) were seen as taking jobs from U.S. workers.

On the plus side, Harding invited several countries to a meeting to discuss post-war disarmament—in particular reducing the size of their fleets and abolishing the use of poison gas.  In addition to the United States, the 1921 Washington Disarmament Conference included Britain, France, and Japan. Unlike Wilson, who excluded the Senate from the League of Nations discussion, Harding included members of the Senate on the American delegation.  Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes suggested that the participants scrap their ships in a ratio of 5  (U.S.), 5 (Britain), 5 (Japan), and 1.7 (France).  The countries also would be held to a 10-year ship building moratorium.  Japan reluctantly agreed to the arrangement under the stipulation that the U.S. not fortify the Philippines, Guam, Wake Island and the Aleutian Islands.  (This would become a problem in two decades.)

Harding was the first president who had to submit an annual budget to Congress.  In 1921, Congress passed the Budget and Accounting Act, which gave it control over Federal spending and required the President to submit a budget to Congress its approval.  He established the Bureau of the Budget to help him prepare the annual submission.

Harding was an advocate for improving the lives of blacks and called for anti-lynching laws.  In a speech arguing for protections for the rights of blacks, he said:  “Unless our democracy is a lie, you must stand for that democracy” (Baker, 2015).  Harding’s sympathy for blacks may have originated from rumors that Harding himself had black blood.  This rumor was meant to hurt his chances of getting elected.  In addition, the rumors imperiled his impending marriage to Florence in 1891.  Her father was upset by the rumors and was against the marriage.  (DNA testing conducted in 2015 showed that Harding did not have black ancestors, at least not within four generations.) (Baker, 2015)

Still, Harding was known as an intellectual lightweight.  His treasury secretary said his “speeches left the impression of an army of pompous phrases moving over a landscape in search of an idea.  Sometimes these meandering words would actually capture a straggling thought and bear it off triumphantly, a prisoner in their midst, until it died of servitude and overwork”

* * *

Trying to visit Harding wasn’t as easy as it might seem.

The obvious place is his house in Marion. But it’s closed until at least 2019 as it is restored to its 1920 appearance. A presidential center also is being added to the site, scheduled to open in 2020, 100 years after Harding’s election.

So Tom looked up locations important in the Teapot Dome scandal (but not Wyoming itself). But those sites and others tied to other scandals during Harding’s presidency have been torn down — now they’re part of the Department of Veterans Affairs and random office buildings in downtown Washington.

After about a month of research, we decided to go to his hometown of Marion, anyway. After all, he and Florence are buried there. And the city has a historical society. That has to include Harding information, right?

Right. We were pleasantly surprised with what we found.

We flew to Marion through Columbus on an overcast and breezy 47-degree day at the end of March. As we approached town on our hour-long drive, we found rolling farmland, strip malls and dilapidated houses as the “Welcome to Marion” sign greeted us.

Harding Memorial

Our first stop was the Harding Memorial. As we were driving along, Tom started pointing, saying “huge.” I looked over, and there it was. It is massive.

Harding had said he wanted a “simple burial under a tree in the open sky,” according to the Ohio Historical Association’s information placards on a marble kiosk outside the tomb.

That’s what he got — a huge, open-air dome that looks a bit like a Greek temple, with both Ionic and Doric columns. Inside the memorial is a tree, with the two black granite tombs beneath it. Gardens hang down from the top of the memorial. A simple inscription with Warren and Florence’s names and birth and death dates is carved into the white Georgia marble in the back. Unfortunately, the memorial is gated, so you can only look, not wander around.

The tombs within Harding Memorial

The memorial is in a small park across the street from the cemetery. Trees were planted and landscaped so the entire area forms a Latin cross.

After Harding died, the quickly formed Harding Memorial Association—comprised of President Coolidge, members of Harding’s cabinet the Marion business community and others—started a nationwide fund-raising campaign for the memorial. More than one million people from the U.S., Europe and the Philippines donated almost $1 million. That includes 200,000 kids who gathered pennies for the effort, according to the Ohio History Connection.  (As expected, the Harding Memorial Association touted the positive accomplishments of Harding and turned a blind eye to the scandals.  One of the placards in the part states:  “Historians attempting to use Harding’s presidential papers for research were turned away by the Harding Memorial Association.  The HMA, which owned the papers, was wary of additional sensational and inaccurate books being published.”  Another placard says Harding had “no knowledge of Teapot Dome” and his “reputation was sullied because of wild gossip and innuendo.”)  The tomb and Harding’s house are now owned by the state of Ohio and managed by the Ohio Historical Society. 

Lunch at Courthouse Grub & Pub

After a tasty lunch in the cozy Courthouse Grub and Pub next to the county courthouse, we headed for the old U.S. Post Office building. The building houses Heritage Hall, operated by the Marion County Historical Society and is dedicated to all types of Marion history, including popcorn (more on that later).

Next to First Harding High School is the old post office and Heritage Hall inside.

The resident docent was a Marion retiree.  He told us he was “a farmer, soldier, city worker, and truck driver.”  He once jackknifed a tractor-trailer and walked away.  But he knew that it was time to quit.  “God’s way of telling me to stop,” he said. 

He told us that Marion had seen better days., calling it a “a typical rust belt town.”  It was once a factory town but many businesses have closed.  Now the major employers are a Whirlpool factory, the hospital and three prisons.  Harding’s old paper, the Marion Star, was bought by Gannett.  The docent said “it’s not much of a paper now.” 

Indeed, earlier when we walked along Church Street, one of the main downtown thoroughfares, we passed a small gathering outside the YMCA featuring speakers discussing the horrors of the opioid epidemic and remembering a friend who had died from addiction in 2016.  A sign read, “Don’t cry, fight.” 

And then there’s the two Confederate flags we spotted flapping in the wind.  What?  Ohio was a staunch member of the Union 150 years ago.

We found two rooms on the ground floor chock full of Harding memorabilia.

Glass display cases line the walls, with more in the center of the rooms, holding photos, campaign posters, campaign pins, newspapers, invitations, gadgets, coins, stuff. The docent told us that he expected it would all move to the Harding presidential center once it’s built. But for now, it suited our purposes perfectly.

The Hardings' dog, Laddie Boy, was famous.

One display case was devoted to Laddie Boy, the Hardings’ famous dog.  The Airedale terrier who arrived at the White House as a puppy, even had his own chair at Cabinet meetings.  The case even displays an old song sheet for the dog:  Laddie Boy He’s Gone, which memorialized Harding’s death.  (As a side note, Laddie Boy even has his own Wikipedia page.)

There’s also the Harding chapel, which seems to have nothing to do with the Hardings, other than a donation was made.

In the areas that highlight Florence, we learned something interesting. While Eleanor Roosevelt is credited as being the first first lady to advocate for her own issues, Florence Harding had several causes that she promoted: women’s issues, particularly single working women, women’s professional sports leagues, and wounded vets from WWI.

The rest of Heritage Hall is a potpourri of historical Marion County stuff. Besides the Harding rooms, the downstairs holds a resource library and genealogical records, a replica of a country store, and an exhibit of Marion’s manufacturing past. A red, old-time Coke machine-cooler sits in a hallway.

Upstairs is a military room, with a Civil War exhibit and war library. There’s a Victorian Room, complete with fashions of the day. There also is an enormous stuffed Percheron draft horse, which was born in Napoleon III’s stables.

The Wyandot Popcorn Museum is not to be missed.

And beyond the horse — the Wyandot Popcorn Museum. This is something Cathy had been looking forward to seeing, and was delighted when we found that it was in the same building as the Harding memorabilia — Tom could find no way to avoid it.

The museum is set up under a big circus tent in the back of the building. It boasts that it has the largest collection of popcorn wagons and peanut roasters in the U.S. All of these antiques have been restored to their former brass and candy apple red luster, looking brand new. There is also a display of all the toys inside Cracker Jacks over the years.

One of the popcorn wagons is a Model T that is brought

Creepy clown (on the right)

out each year for the town’s annual Popcorn Festival and Parade in September.

In the middle of the area are displays showing the history of Wyandot Popcorn. The company was established by W. Hoover Brown and his wife Ava in 1936 as a way to supplement their grain and livestock farming operation in Wyandot County, Ohio. Popcorn took off as a treat during the Depression because it was inexpensive, allowing the company to grow steadily.

The display also exhibits the different types of popcorn. Wyandot introduced three hybrids in the 1950s, including Super C for caramel corn, featuring a ball-shaped kernel that doesn’t crumble under the pressure of the caramel.

Yes, the museum gives you a box of popcorn on the way out. Yum!

My only quibble is that many of the wagons include small, creepy clown figurines that look like they’re turning the hand crank. I know clowns were big in the day, especially when the circus came to town. But … Pennywise.

Harding's home is closed until the 100-year
anniversary of his election in 1919.

View from the front porch.

Our Harding tour concluded with a stop at his house, although it was closed for renovations. We were able, however, to walk around his spacious front porch, where he ran the fourth — and last — front porch campaign in U.S. history.  Standing in the wide, circular corner of the porch, between the columns, with plenty of lawn in front, you can easily picture Senator Harding orating to the masses.  Here is what he boomed on one occasion:  “It is fine to idealize, but it is very practical to make sure our own house is in perfect order before we attempt the miracle of old world stabilization.  To safeguard America first, to prosper America first, to stabilize America first, to think of America first, to exalt America first, to live for and revere America first.”

Woodrow Wilson (No. 28) - Washington, DC - Dec. 3, 2017

Woodrow Wilson (No. 28) – Washington, DC

December 3, 2017

Woodrow Wilson

Woodrow Wilson’s life was a kaleidoscope of achievements:  PhD, President of Princeton University, Governor of New Jersey, President of the United States, and Nobel laureate. 

Thomas Woodrow Wilson’s life started in 1856 in Staunton, Virginia only about 2 1/2 hours away from our home in the Potomac Valley of Maryland. That is where the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Research Center is housed. But his family moved away when he was only three. His dad, a minister, moved the family to Augusta, Ga., and then later to South Carolina during Reconstruction.  There, young Wilson saw the destruction of cities and towns, and learned of the thousands of soldiers who were killed.  His mother tended to the wounded Confederate soldiers.

He began his college life at Davidson College in North Carolina but dropped out and went to the College of New Jersey—later renamed Princeton.  He went to law school at the University of Virginia and then practiced law for a short time in Atlanta, but law bored him. 

He enrolled at Johns Hopkins University to study history and political science and was awarded a PhD in 1886. In his published and acclaimed PhD thesis, Congressional Government: A Study in American Politics, he argued for a stronger executive branch and touted Britain’s parliamentary system of government as better than the American model.  (He would become the only president with a PhD.)  He later found teaching positions at Bryn Mawr and Wesleyan before finding a more permanent home at Princeton.  In 1902, he became president of the university.

All the while, he was catching the notice of Democratic politicians  who recruited  him to run for governor of New Jersey.  He won and demonstrated his honesty by rejecting control from Democratic Party bosses.

Wilson’s last house

We decided to begin our Wilsonian journey by visiting his last home.  So in December 2017 we drove to the house where Woodrow and Edith Wilson lived after they left the White House in 1921.  The house is on S Street Northwest in the ritzy neighborhood of Kalorama, just above Dupont Circle. How ritzy? Kalorama is where former President Obama and Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner are living. The Wilson house’s next-door neighbor is Amazon and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos (who was doing some renovations when we visited).

The spacious Georgia Revival home was built in 1916. Edith discovered it while attending a dinner party there and talked the owner into selling it. The Wilsons paid three times the value of the house--$150k vs. the $50k actual value.

Sheep wool in a frame

Our tour began on the ground level, with a short film discussing the highlights of Wilson’s life and presidency. The room also houses some wool, encased high on a wall, to the left of the door. The wool is from sheep that Wilson brought in to munch on the White House lawn during the Great War. The nation was facing labor shortages since so many men were fighting, so he eliminated the White House maintenance staff and used sheep. The wool was given to the Red Cross for auctioning.

Consensus candidate

When the presidential election season of 1912 began, Wilson’s name was mentioned.  But he was not the consensus candidate of the Democrats.  As they had the last two elections, the Democrats were focused on perennial presidential loser William Jennings Bryan.  But he wasn’t getting the votes this time.  The momentum shifted to Wilson and finally on the 46^th ballot, he was nominated.  Wilson was seen as a consensus candidate who could appeal to all the regions.  According to Brands (2003), “in the South he was a Virginian; in the North and West he was a Jerseyman.” 

Taft accompanying Wilson to inauguration. 
Note the people in the trees.

As we learned previously, Wilson ran against Taft, the Republican nominee, and Teddy Roosevelt, who was running in the newly formed progressive Bull Moose party.  Teddy split the vote, and 56-year old Wilson was the winner.  And with his win, the Democrats controlled all of Congress and the presidency.

Wilson worked to reduce protectionist tariffs.  The Democratic Congress supported him and the tariffs were lowered.  Wilson also worked with Congress to put in place a progressive income tax.  Before WWI, three-quarters of the nation’s revenue came from tariffs and excise taxes.  After the war, three-quarters of the revenue came from income and estate taxes.

Wilson was the first president since John Adams to give the State of the Union in person —shocking Congress.  It had been read by a clerk for the past 100+ years. 

Wilson’s domestic achievements

Wilson set up the Federal Reserve system. Andrew Jackson shut down the Second Bank of the United States 1836 and there was no central bank to help moderate the economy.    The U.S. had bank runs and financial panics on a frequent basis.  During the Panics of 1893 and 1907, J.P. Morgan, personally intervened to stabilize the financial system.  Louis Brandeis, future associate justice on the Supreme Court,  suggested to Wilson that the U.S. needed some kind of a central bank.   In 1913, Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act, which included a bank oversight board with members appointed by the president.

Wilson was the president who presided over the abolition of alcohol in the United States.  In the 1830s and 1840s, the Protestant anti-slavery movement included an initiative to abolish the use of alcohol.  In the late 1800s, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) argued that alcohol contributed to societal ills.  And during the Great War, the Anti Salon League tied beer to evil Germany. In 1917, with America’s entry into the war, Wilson put in place a temporary prohibition to save grain for the war effort.  Prohibition was easily passed by Congress in December 1917.   It was ratified in 1919 and was supported by a Congressional law called the Volstead Act.  It went into effect in January 1920. Prohibition would lead to a huge black market and the rise of gangsters such as Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, and Bugsy Siegel.

Wilson supported the right of women to vote.  African Americans had won the right to vote following the Civil War, but that was only for black men.  Women were still denied the right to vote.  Women had been fighting for that right for decades led by pioneers Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902), Lucretia Mott (1793-1880), and Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906).

By 1918, Wilson supported the women’s cause, especially after noting the contribution of women to America’s efforts in the war. He told the Senate:  “I regard the extension of suffrage to women as vitally essential to the successful prosecution of the great war of humanity in which we are engaged.”  Congress passed the 19th Amendment which forbid denying the right to vote on the basis of sex. 

But seven southern states opposed ratification:  Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland.  What IS it about the South (including our home state of Maryland) anyway?  But luckily Tennessee came through by one vote 49-48, and the amendment became part of the Constitution.  (Mississippi was the last state to ratify the amendment in March 22, 1984, while Tom was living in Vicksburg).

House reflects accomplishments

While Wilson’s house is not as crazy-interesting as Teddy Roosevelt’s, it is still chock full of history and interesting decor, including plenty of state gifts that show how much Europeans loved him for his work. And the house is gorgeous.

The spacious drawing room on the second floor, up the wide, grand staircase, features a grand Steinway piano on one side, with a gigantic tapestry covering the wall. The tapestry was given to Wilson by France following the war.  The piano had been in the White House, played by Wilson's oldest daughter, Margaret, was was a professional musician (until she moved to India to become a nun).

Piano and giant tapestry 

Photos of major historical figures  such as Queen Victoria are scattered around the room. And a framed mosaic of St. Peter done by the Vatican workshop and given to Wilson by Pope Benedict is highlighted.

His library is on the same floor, and is the typical, dark wood, bookcase-lined library that you see in so many presidential houses. His collection contained 8,000 books. Wilson himself wrote 17. 

Wilson's library

The curio cabinet in the library houses the pen that he used to sign the declaration of war against Germany. On the floor is a huge rug of the Statue of Liberty, which got electricity when Wilson was in office.

He also was the first president to address the nation by radio.

The library also has a graphiscope, a movie projector. Monday nights were movie nights in the Wilson household, as he was a big movie buff as well as technology enthusiast. Wilson screened the 1915 firm Birth of a Nation at the White House.  The movie, originally titled, The Clansman, is a portrayal of the South during and after the Civil War.  Blacks are portrayed unkindly, to put it mildly.  History.com  calls it “one of the most offensive films ever made.”   Wilson later said that he was unaware of what it was about.   The NAACP protested the movie.  But the movie was seen by millions and is tied to the resurgence of the KKK.  Our excellent tour guide Kelsey explained that one reason he might have admired the movie was because it was one of the first movies done in color.  “Despite the subject matters, it was a cinematic marvel,” she told us. 

Wilson’s race relations

When he entered office, Wilson resegregated the Post Office and the Treasury Department.  This included separate washrooms and lunch areas.  This did not sit well with blacks who had faithfully served the country in the Great War. 

In his 1902 book, A History of the American People, Wilson revealed his prejudices when he wrote “Adventurers swarmed out of the North, as much the enemies of one race as of the other, to cozen, beguile and use the negroes. The white men were aroused by a mere instinct of self-preservation — until at last there sprung into existence a great Kuklux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the Southern country.”

The Klan contributed to the continued lynchings of black Americans, including of black veterans still wearing their uniforms.

There were 20 race riots throughout the country during the summer of 1919, with dozens dying in St. Louis in particular.  Rioting also occurred in Chicago when a young black man was stoned by white youths when he visited a segregated beach.  He drowned.  By August 38 people had been killed. 

In Washington, DC, a rumor circulated of sexual assault of a white woman by a black man.  On July 19, 1919, a gang of 400 whites attacked Washington, D.C. blacks and severely injured two.  Police got involved but arrested more blacks than whites.  On July 21, blacks fought back and 10 whites and five blacks were killed.  Troops were brought in to stop the rioting. 

Wilson and the Great War

Wilson is best remembered for World War I, but he tried hard to avoid it, with his upbringing in the post-Civil War South framing his attitude toward war.  What was expected to be a short war slogged on and on. 

The U.S. was officially neutral and actually allowed both the Allied (Britain, France, Italy, Russia) and the Axis (Germany, Austro-Hungary)  powers to apply for loans.  Allied ships stopped American ships and confiscated their cargo—but provided reparations for them.  The Axis simply attacked U.S. ships—military and civilian alike. 

The Germans were using a new technology — undersea boats — to attack Allied shipping.  The Germans called these “unterseeboots” U-boats.  In April 2015, the Imperial German government published a warning in American newspapers that stated:  “…that vessels flying the flag of Great Britain, or of any of her allies, are liable to destruction…”  The warning was specifically aimed at the Lusitania.

The Lusitania

The Lusitania was an American luxury Cunard ocean liner about to sail to Liverpool carrying 1,959 passengers and crew and some badly needed munitions for the British army.  Most of the trip was uneventful.  As Erik Larsen describes in his excellent book, Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania (2015), the passengers enjoyed eating, conversing, lounging and strolling the spacious deck.  The ship was so huge that one would see new people every day.  On a sparkling clear May 7, the ship reached the south coast of Ireland.

Unknown to the passengers, their nearly 800-ft. long boat was under surveillance by a smaller boat—the 200-ft. long German U-boat, the U-20.  At first it appeared that the Lusitania was out of the submarine’s range but then the ocean liner turned toward it.  The crew of the U-20 calculated the speed and direction of the Lusitania and waited.  At just the right moment, the U-20 fired a single torpedo.  The torpedo powered by compressed air and a double propeller system that rotated in opposite directions to ensure stability headed on an intersecting route with the large ship. 

It was 2 p.m. and most of the passengers had just finished lunch.  They were enjoying a bright blue sky and a preternaturally calm sea.  Many strolled the deck.

Some of the passengers spied the “dead wake” of the torpedo heading for the ship. There was nothing they could do.  The torpedo struck the starboard bow.  There was an initial explosion followed by another (either a boiler or possibly the ammunition).  A gaping hole opened below the waterline.  The ship quickly listed sharply to starboard.  Open portholes on the starboard side allowed tons of water to flood the ship.

It was nearly impossible to launch the 48 lifeboats.  They were wither hanging too far out to sea or were hanging over the deck.  Many people simply jumped into the sea—some without lifejackets.  Most wore heavy woolen clothing. 

After an initial dive, the U-20 returned to periscope depth.  The captain watched the distressed ship and knew another torpedo would not be needed.  He noted in his log:  “I couldn't have fired another torpedo into this mass of humans desperately trying to save themselves." (Larsen, 2015)

In 18 minutes, the ship was gone and the sea was full of hundreds of people, debris and only six lifeboats.  The water temperature was 55 degrees. 

A British cruiser in port nearby was ordered not to render aid because of the possibility that the U-20 was still lurking (it wasn’t). 

The 1,195 dead included 128 Americans.

Wilson sent a strong note of condemnation to Kaiser Wilhelm II but still resisted getting involved in the war.  The Kaiser assured America that it would be more careful going forward.  For a while Germany stopped targeting passenger ships but this did not last long. 

One of the reasons Wilson didn’t want to enter war was because it would distract Congress from his domestic reform efforts.  Teddy Roosevelt called Wilson a traitor for not getting involved. 

Edith Wilson's portrait hangs in the house.
She didn't like it.

In the early part of the war in Europe, Wilson was distracted by the sudden death of his wife, Ellen, to kidney disease in 1914 and was deeply depressed since he felt he had nobody in whom to confide.  In March 1915, his cousin introduced him to divorcee Edith Galt.  She was beautiful and exotic—she wore the latest fashions and drove her own motorcar.  He was smitten. Wilson was so infatuated with Edith that he continually wrote her notes.  He was preoccupied with her when he should have been paying more attention to the sinking of the Lusitania (Brands, 2003).  They married in December 1915.

Wilson’s 1916 campaign slogan became:  “He kept us out of war.”  And he won, becoming the first Democrat incumbent to win re-election since Andrew Jackson in 1832.

But in 1917, Germany started torpedoing U.S. ships again.  And now Germany had increased the submarine fleet from around 30 around the time the Lusitania was destroyed to more than 100.

On April 2, 1917, Wilson asked Congress to declare war so the world could be “made safe for democracy.”  They complied and also instituted a draft.  They also passed the controversial Sedition Act of 1918 which made it a crime to criticize the government much as the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 had done during John Adams’ presidency.  Five-time presidential candidate, socialist, Eugene V. Debbs was convicted under the act and sentenced to 10 years in jail.  (Warren G. Harding later commuted his sentence.)

General John J. Pershing commanded the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) in Europe.  Pershing was supported by Generals Billy Mitchell, Hunter Liggett, and John Lejeune.  His army also included many soldiers who would go on to greater fame in World War II and after:  George Patton, George C. Marshall, Omar Bradley, Douglas MacArthur and a 34 year old infantry captain named Harry S Truman.  France and Britain wanted the AEF to be part of their troops but Pershing insisted on total command of American forces. 

Pershing demanded strict accountability and achievement of objectives.  Some said he pushed his men as hard as Grant had a half-century earlier.

It was a war mostly on the ground with men living in and fighting for trenches.  It was a war that introduced the world to chemical weapons:  chlorine gas, mustard gas, phosgene/diphosgene gas.  Both sides used such weapons. And it was the first war that featured aircraft—biplanes—shooting at troops, at observation balloons and at each other.   America was introduced to heroes such as Sergeant York who won a Medal of Honor for an attack on a German machine gun nest and Eddie Rickenbacker, a flying ace with 26 kills.

African American troops fought in the Great War but were not used well.  They were mostly used for supply and repair duties. 

As the end neared in 1918, a Spanish flu pandemic hit, adding to the misery both in Europe and at the U.S. training camps.   (By 1919, 21 million people had died of flue worldwide)

It was in the Great War that a young Ernest Hemingway worked as volunteer Red Cross ambulance driver.   He was badly wounded by shrapnel.  His experiences including his love affair with a nurse served as the basis for his first novel, A Farwell to Arms.

When the war ended about 20 million people were dead, including more than 100,000 Americans.

In January 1918, Wilson gave a speech outlining 14 points for bringing peace to Europe.  As one of his 14 Points, he said “a general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.”  This would be known as the “League of Nations.”

Wilson decided to travel to Europe to tout his vision—the first the president to go to Europe as an acting president.  He traveled to London, Paris, and Rome.  He was greeted with great enthusiasm and was seen as a savior.

But in the United States, the now Republican Congress did not share Wilson’s vision. They didn’t like the provision that the U.S. would be responsible for coming to the aid of any nation in the League of Nations.  Wilson was not interested in modifying the language.  He decided to take his case to the people.  He and Edith traveled by rail across the country to build support.  They traveled 8,000 miles in just 21 days.  And it went well for a while.  But Wilson collapsed partway through and the trip had to be cancelled.  When he got back to Washington, he had a full on stroke.  Wilson’s stroke was debilitating and Edith covered up how sick he was. 

When Wilson was ill, Edith cut off access to him.  Some historians claim that during Wilson’s illness, she was in fact a de facto president. 

Without Wilson, Congress rejected the League of Nations and it would go forward as a European institution without American participation. Wilson was devastated and embittered by the Congressional rejection.  But he would be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts. 

Wilson left the White House in March 1921 and retired to the big house in Kalorama.  He would live there for only three years, suffering the effects of his stroke, before dying in his big Lincoln replica bed on February 3, 1924.

Living in comfort

That brings us back to the house.

Wilson's bedroom.  The bed
was a replica of Lincoln's bed.

Woodrow’s and Edith’s bedrooms are on the top floor, separated by a small nurse’s room. All of them have doors that open to a small half-oval balcony overlooking the back yard.

Since Wilson’s stroke left his left side paralyzed, they had an elevator installed so he could move up and down the house. He also had at least 60-70 canes, many of which are displayed in his closet, as is a coat made of kangaroo and wombat given to him by Australia.

The nurse’s room, which is attached to his room, has a small bed as well as an electroshock therapy machine to treat Wilson.

Edith’s room is on the other side of the nurse’s room. Of note are her pictures of Pocahontas, from whom she was descended.

Electroshock therapy machine

The second floor houses the solarium, a beautiful little room for plants with the curved outside wall lined with windows, looking out the back yard and gardens. The windows open, so you can get a nice cross breeze when opening both the solarium windows and those at the front of the house. It also has a useful intercom.  On our visit, it displayed a giant decorated Christmas tree.

Downstairs, the kitchen is enormous. It still features the original stove, which is fueled with coal and natural gas. It houses a dumb waiter. 

The dining room displays china that was a gift from the Belgian king. The stoneware features drawings by Belgian artists of how world cities looked before they were bombed during the war.

The White House china can be found in the butler’s pantry. Wilson was the first president to use the presidential seal as the art on the china, with a simple look. It is still used by presidents today.

Presidential china now has a modern look

The butler’s pantry is above the kitchen and was used to transfer the food onto fancy plates. The Wilsons had only two servants, the husband and wife team of Isaac and Mary Scott.

Edith remained in the house until her death at age 89 in December 1961.  Her life had spanned an era from Ulysses Grant to Lyndon Johnson.

Directions

The President Woodrow Wilson House is located at 2340 S St., NW in Washington, DC.  The cost is $10 for adults and $5 for students. The first Wednesday of every night is Vintage Game Night—an evening of playing period games.  Our guide told us that some people show up in costume!

References

Brands, H.W., 2003.  Woodrow Wilson.  The American Presidents,  Times Books,  Henry Holt and Company.  New York, NY.

Cooper, John Milton, Jr.  2009.  Woodrow Wilson, A Biography.  Alfred A. Knopf. New York, New York. 

Yockelson, Mitchell.  2016.  Forty-Seven Days:  How Pershing’s Warriors Came of Age to Defeat the German Army in World War I.  New American Library.  New York, New York.

Larson, Erik.  2015.  Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania.  Crown Publishing Group.  New York, NY.

Levin, Phyllis Lee.  2001.  Edith and Woodrow.  Scribner.  New York, NY.

Videos

History Channel.  2005.  The Presidents:  The Lives and Legacies of the 43 Leaders of the United States.

Websites

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Nations

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_V._Debs

https://millercenter.org/president/wilson/life-before-the-presidency

http://webpage.pace.edu/pp31462n/prohibition/index.html

https://www.federalreserveeducation.org/about-the-fed/history

http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/chicago-race-riot-of-1919

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/wilson-embarks-on-tour-to-promote-league-of-nations

http://www.history.com/topics/womens-history/19th-amendment

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/birth-of-a-nation-opens

http://www.history.com/topics/prohibition

http://www.lostgeneration.com/ww1.htm

http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition/roots-of-prohibition/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/2000/raceriot0301.htm