edith wilson married woodrow wilson after his first wife died of a stroke. and when he suffered a massive stroke in 1919, it was edith who guarded access to the recovering president. the president woodrow wilson house in washington, d.c. hosted this hour-long event. >> welcome everyone to the woodrow wilson house. i am thrilled to see you here. i am the interim director. before we get started, i would like to point out the portrait on the wall. that is the lady we will be talking about tonight. it is fitting we are here because her birthday was a few days ago. we are indebted to edith wilson for her forethought. without her generosity, the wilson house would not exist. she is a woman who saved everything, collected and donated it to the national trust in the 1960's.

as with much of women's history, her story is generally relegated to second tier when talking about her husband, so it is a pleasure tonight to have william hazlegrove here to share his expert -- perspective and thoughts on her contributions to history. his new book is a look at her role after wilson suffered his debilitating stroke. this latest book is just one of 13 of his books. after his talk books will be , available to purchase and i'm sure he would be happy to sign them. please be sure to connect with us through our website and social media so we can keep you up-to-date on our upcoming events and exhibitions. we will be opening our latest exhibition on october 28. it is called evolving elections. it looks at the 1916 and 2016 elections. which we will all be glad his

history some. one of our most popular events, vintage game nights, is coming up. please ask any of the staff who is here on how to get involved. without further ado, william hazlegrove. [applause] mr. hazelgrove: thank you for coming and for the national trust for letting me speak here. i want to start with an overview and then we will go through the story, i will probably talk like i write, i just go off. let's start there. burns had an interesting quote in his book that's really threw me, which was that edith wilson was almost the president.

is a fairly conservative historian. i thought it was a strange thing to say. he went on. i will read a little bit from the book. "insisting she never made a single decision on public affairs, ms. wilson failed to acknowledge the commanding nature of her role. in determining the daily agenda and formulating arguments she , executed the physical and most of the mental duties of the office. he went on to say that edith wilson did not become the first female president as some asserted, but she came close. she considered herself more a lady in waiting to her husband than an executive." she was in a position to act where he can only react. i thought it was a very strange thing for him to go off to say. that set me off to the papers of woodrow wilson. first thing i started to notice,

i thought would approach it like this how ill was woodrow wilson? , you would have to have a power vacuum to take over the presidency. i've read lots of secondary sources. i read everything i could find on it. the range went from one end to the other. some people said he was very sick, but some people said he recovered after six weeks which simply was not true. dr. weinstein talked about him, this is the last time i will go back to this book. and a biographical history, he writes the symptoms indicate that wilson suffered an occlusion of the right artery which resulted in paralysis of the left side of his body. and loss of sensation on that , i know iematoma botched that. there was a loss of vision in the left field of both eyes, clear vision only in the half field of his right eye.

wickedness of muscles on his left side and tongue and learned accounted he had difficulty swallowing and impairment of speech. he was severely setback by this stroke. we had a situation where the sitting president in 1919 has a severe stroke. edith wilson has only been married to him for five years, has two years of schooling, and is at the center. the doctor basically tells her, "you're the one who can step in." he was a leading neurologist at the time. there was only answer for someone who had a stroke or a heart condition, and that was the rest cure. it basically told people, going to your house, live your life as an invalid and hopefully nature will heal you. so, the doctor turned to edith and said, "listen, he is only

going to heal if you take over, and no stress reaches them. if he gets stress at all, he will die." wilson is confronted there with a choice. he knew she had worked with wilson, we will get into that more. take over the presidency, or your husband will die. adding to this, vice president asked aboutnd even this -- what about vice president marshal? the wilsons saw him as sort of lowbrow. his famous quote was what we really need is a really good cigar, which we still need. [laughter]

mr. hazelgrove: they did not tell him about wilson's stroke. it said, nobody is going to mention this again. the doctor was also at the center of this. he put out press releases on wilson's health. we had a lot of things about the health of the president recently, but the thrombosis that woodrow wilson suffered from -- we now have beta blockers and other things that can help, for wilson it was called nervous exhaustion. in the united states, everybody's job depends on who remains in power. the men around edith told her that she was the person to do this. so, it began after that. the question comes to us, who was edith wilson? was she a singular person, a remarkable person who could rise to the occasion or someone caught in an extraordinary situation?

edith is a southern girl and came from the south after going to school for two years. her schooling stopped after that. she had a grandmother who filled in the blanks and a very literate father. her brothers went to school. she was stuck in woodville and wanted to get out. so, she married a guy named norman galt. he was older. i don't think it was a very intimate relationship. they think that it was her way to get out. he had a jewelry store in baltimore. norman died at one point, and edith stepped in. again, this is very interesting, because, early in her life, she was confronted with death on a very large scale. in one year, her son died, her baby, her husband, and her

father-in-law died. edith had a choice at this point. most people told her, "take the jewelry company and let it go." she decided to keep it, hired two people to run it, and took no salary. it was failing and severely in debt, and she brought it back. at this point, edith is becoming a woman of means. she is in her 40's, she buys an an automobile. she was the first woman to get a drivers license in the district of columbia. she was a progressive woman of her time. she started traveling. one day, she was out, and -- we will cut over to woodrow wilson at this woodrow wilson's point. first wife had died, and he and dr. grayson were motoring along,

and they went by edith and woodrow wilson asked who she was. grayson tells him, and they arrange a meeting. at this point, the last thing edith wants to do is become involved with a president. they go to the white house and have a dinner, and we still have an image of woodrow wilson as a very austere man. he was a president of princeton. he seemed cold and aloof. but, in fact, he was more of a victorian lover. that is the best way i can put it. more like a poet. there is a great quote that says , "a sentimentalist is someone who hopes things will never end and a romantic is someone who that they will."

woodrow wilson was like that, he had severe depression. so, he met this vivacious woman. he really loved vivacious inactive women. and active women. edith was cultured but did not have a lot of weight. wilson loved women with wit. they were intellectual equals. ellen would have women over to the house to banter. he asks edith to marry her with in the first year. she says, "your wife just died. absolutely not." he continues and start sending her love letters. this was the texting, if you will, of the time.

-- a number a very of very salacious love letters. he keeps having her picked up and they go for drives. he literally, at one point, goes to bed, because she says no to him. scholars differ on this, wilson went to bermuda three times and it was curious that he never took his wife. when i was reading about him, i wondered why he didn't take his wife. his wife told him he needed to go to bermuda and relax. mark twain was there, other bohemian types. and mary pack was there. she did not care about her husband, she was a flapper, and very witty, and wilson was smitten with her. this happened three times. three times, he went to bermuda

her about running for president and she told him he should do it. historians are divided as to what happened, but ellen wilson said that mary pack was the only unhappiness he ever caused her. when it wilson was entertaining edith -- wilson had eight right-hand man, in unofficial advisor, someone who had no real title. wilson liked that, to have people who did not have official titles. this man let it be known that the letters were out there, and they could be sold to the press. wilson freaks out and sends grayson to tell edith. wilson goes to bed. he thinks his girlfriend is done with him.

edith writes him a letter and says, "i'm going to stay with you. don't worry about it." wilson is so, i guess, uptight about the situation that she has to go to the white house and and tell himf bed that, "yes, she will marry him." we see this sort of victorian lover who goes up and down and has wild mood swings. six-months later that he never opened her letter. he didn't want the bad news. however, they got married. i say this lightly, but they are

sort of the clintons of their time. wilson did a strange thing with edith from the beginning. he included her in everything. he would send her top-secret papers as they were dating. she would write him back and say, "i appreciate the love letters, but i really like those state papers. they are interesting." she is deciphering top-secret code for him. the fact of the matter is, edith wilson was the first person to know that world war i had ended because she deciphered the code. what does this do? this sets up what i would call the edith wilson presidency in a remarkable way. up until then, no first lady had this sort of role. it did not exist. wilson saw his wife as not only his lover but also his confidant, his advisor. he took all these roles and put them in one. edith wilson was a person who had a very natural curiosity. she was a quick learner who learn by doing. she took all this information

, and she was very opinionated. when wilson fired a man because he thought he was a pacifist, she told him that he was a traitor and he should get rid of them. wilson was taken aback and said, "you can hate better than anybody i know." she could hold a grudge. she was a very strong-willed woman. they would go golfing. they loved to take drives. they are doing all of this code deciphering. let's go to the league of nations. the war ends, and they have the treaty of versailles. wilson decides he's going over there to negotiate the end of the war. and he decides he's bringing his wife. again, edith had already butted heads with house and some other advisors. she was slowly putting herself

in as the main person. if you read other histories, people describe a nefarious variousibe all these motives to edith. they say she grabbed power. i don't buy any of that. but she was a person who was very strong-willed. she had the president's ear. his other unofficial advisers took a backseat, and they knew it and did not like it. they go over there to negotiate the piece. -- the peace. wilson has a series of strokes while they were over there and it is kept quiet. the stress is incredible. this is a man that deals with hypertension by just laying down in dark bedrooms with wash rags on his face. they had no beta blockers or anything. if you had hypertension, you are expected to not do anything. you are expected to lay around.

so, he comes back with the league of nations as his raison d'etre for the war. this is going to be the way you can look at america's mothers "this is why your son died." x basically said that if one country attacks another country, all the other countries will go against that country. henry lodge was heading up the republicans, and he hated wilson. he could not stand him. he had beaten teddy roosevelt in the last election who was his best friend, and he thought wilson was arrogant. he was paradigm. two arrogant men who hate each other for being arrogant. he had determined the league would be a failure, and he started to immediately water it

down. wilson's premise was, "i negotiated this. i cannot go back on what i did." he realized that lodge was not going to budge, and he made a fateful decision to go on a was. -- go on a tour. convince the american people that this was the right choice. he made that fateful decision to go on a whistle stop tour to convince the american people about the league of nations. it is 1919, and he is on train without air-conditioning. he has hypertension and heart and artery problems. he is on this grueling tour. he is outside public, colorado and it is hot. he has a preamble to his massive stroke. edith sees him with his head against the chair, he cannot feel anything in his left arm, he cannot hold his razor because his hand trembles.

the doctor says, "it is over. you have to go back." so, they go back to washington. when they get back, he seems to improve a little bit but the next night edith hears the sound and she goes up and the president of the united states is laying on the tile floor, blood coming out of his ears, he is out. it was a massive stroke. this is where edith begins. i want to go to her governing style at this point. now, we are back where the doctor tells her you have to take over. you can do this thing. her governing style is one of access. if presidential powers were a river -- they went up to the president's bedroom and she diverted it. nothing was getting to him that was stressful. this is where you have multiple people giving different views of what really happened to the president.

hoover was very blunt. he said that the president just looked dead. he went in many times and thought that he was dead. he was essentially out. edith began to meet people from the cabinet outside the door. if it was a problem she could -- readily solved -- d solve, she would write a note and said that the president would deal with this when the president is better. you would see these in the paper quite a bit. her handwriting was a sort of childlike scrawl, and she was very sensitive about it. this is one thing the wilson relatives did not like in the book. said her handwriting was childish. but you could see that the handwriting of wilson changed.

people have said that she would take his hand or not and sign things. as a bill came to the president and it was not signed and he did not do anything for seven days, it became a bill anyway. you have a family who is overwhelmed. you have a lot of kids, the dog is barking, you do the best you can. the white house was locked down. the curtains were pulled. traffic was diverted away. wilson is upstairs. no one has really seen him should -- seen him. edith is taking correspondence. remember, we are in the age where there was no internet or fax, people wrote letters between departments. all the correspondence was coming in with no one to deal with it. edith would literally look at it and decide what was essential and nonessential. the pile of nonessential grew until the 1950's when it was

discovered in the national archives. tons and tons of letters were not open. she said, i will deal with this , and i will not deal with this. it was access. she would go in to the president and asked him, "what do you think of this?" if he could respond, he would respond and give her an opinion and she would take it back. but you had a little table set up outside his bedroom where she would meet with cabinet members. in the book, it is sort of a hodgepodge of things she was trying to do as best she could. during all this, a strange thing was happening as well. the suffragettes. but they were out there every day outside the gates. they were chained to the gates. they would flash these eight

s under theirsign skirts. they were jailed, wilson did not want that to happen but they were. some went on hunger strikes, and there was terrible press. alice hall was a woman who was very radical in her approach. she drove wilson crazy. while edith is up late decoding, she said she would step every -- stay up late every night to try and get the business of the white house done, the suffragettes are out by the gate trying to get the vote. it is interesting that african-americans have the vote almost 50 years before, and in 1919 a woman still not have a vote. history sometimes screams out at you. there were a lot of people suspecting edith was running the

white house, and one senator especially did. he stood up one day and said that edith was running the white house and demanded to see the president. they knew the jig was up a little bit. there was talk of impeachment. so, they said, "ok, you can see him." they dimmed the lights, they covered him up, and put covers over his left side. they put a report on the situation in mexico by his bed so he could access it. edith was in the room to take notes. and the senator came in. the press was also speculating, and this was the moment of truth. the senator goes in, they talk, ask questions, wilson pulls it together and makes the right answers. at the end, the senator says, i

am praying for you. "which way, act, senator?" but it worked. it calmed people down in congress. at this point, wilson has improved some. they get a coney island chair , because he cannot sit up in a wheelchair. they get a coney island chair and modify. they set it up for him to be able to sit in the south portico and put blankets around him so when the cabinet members would meet, they could see him out there. then they started to do a strange thing with the president. wilson liked to watch movies.

they had a guy coming from the theater who brought his projector. wilson did not like any sound, so there was no accompaniment. wilson would sit in the red room, they would take out the rugs, and put a big sheet from the lincoln bed on the wall and show him movies. he liked westerns. sometimes he would get upset if there was too much action. sometimes he passed out. one time, the guy showing the movie swore he was dead. he told edith that the president had expired, and then edith nudged him and he sort of came back to life. this was part of his routine. there is a norman desmond quality to it, because he started to show movies from his own administration. when he went over to paris to negotiate peace, they took movies of him using newsreels. so, he would have those put on.

you have to imagine, here is this broken man watching himself at the pinnacle of his power with all the world cheering. think of this, the white house is essentially empty now. no one really comes into it, and the press is pretty much kept away. there are very few visitors, and traffic has been diverted away. it started to feel more like a hospice. edith is a prisoner, as well. she is devoted to him, but she cannot leave either. then, they started to do things with the garage. they had a big limousine that wilson loved that weighed four times. they would prop him up in the car with his right side out, the

side that was not paralyzed, and they would put his hat on and drive him around washington. people were not quite sure what they saw. there was this addams family car driving around with this white face. with wilson, a little bit of dementia started to creep in for -- creatine, in the world -- and the world was moving on. wilson would get very upset if people passed them in their car. he demanded the secret service chased down speeders. who would have been chased them down so he could try them on the side of the road. fortunately, the secret service would always say, "they got away again, mr. president." they knew that they could not have the president talking to the speeders on the side of the road. at this point, the presidency is winding down.

the world has changed. the 1920's brought in flappers, the jazz age is coming, harding is the new president, and he will have a very different .residency from wilson as f. scott fitzgerald's writes, "he was emblematic of a modern age coming." wilson still like being pulled around by horses. so, there was a gap. they lived the life here, they would go to the theater, wilson calls himself a broken machine as the years go by. in 1924, he does die. very famously, the people on the kneel outside here, and

there was a very touching photograph. edith goes on, she went into seclusion for a few years and then came out and went to several inaugurations. she went to the kennedy inauguration. jackie kennedy came here. at the end, she outlives just about everybody. with that, i would like to go into a mode of talking about what really encompasses the first woman president, and what is the definition of that. there actually is a definition. there are five parts. a military leader, passing bills, appointments, estate a state of the union address and pardons. if you read to the papers of woodrow wilson and the secondary sources, you get a sense of what she accomplished. remember, world war i has to be

wrapped up. since the united states did not approve the league of nations, the treaty of versailles is never ratified. the war essentially had not ended, and they had to pass a special resolution to end the war. edith was on the front line of the league of nations. the league of nations was a very contentious battle. they tried twice to get it ratified. wilson would not compromise at all. just would not. there are some interesting studies that have come out since on victims of stroke, and one of the things they say is that they become very one-dimensional. they lose the ability to compromise. i think we can relate to our government now. wilson would literally send out letters saying, "absolutely not. if article x is not in their, we we are not in the

league of nations." he did not believe the united states would not be in the league of nations. edith went in once and asked if he could compromise. he said, "not you, too, little girl." she backed off. the point was, she was the person who all the information was flowing through to him. you could make a case that the league of nations not going through, putting the united states into this isolationist mode. when you did wilson -- edith wilson wrote her memoirs, she said that she took over stewardship of the presidency for a little while and then give it back. she was not going to say in 1939 that she ran the government. you have to get historical

context. war has broken out in europe, and we are two years away from pearl harbor being bombed and edith wilson is writing and saying that senator lodge set us back 100 years, because she would not let the league of nations go through. she pinned it squarely on him. if the league of nations existed, then adolf hitler would never have risen to power. he would never succeeded in his charge. is it a fair charge? i think there were a lot of people involved, but she was very prescient in saying this. she was very instrumental in legislation coming in and going out. some things just were not acted upon, and they became law. other things have the strange signature. you could write a whole book on the signature issue. what i came down to it was, there were some people who said

that she signed things, and there were other people who said she held his hand. many times people in the senate would see a proclamation and say, "who signed this?" my estimation is that -- yes, at times in which he had to do it, she did. i think she wanted to solve the problem and move on. appointments. yes, she had to make appointments. people literally did not have anybody to resign to. there were all of these letters that held up. there were appointments during the war and they came back. people as simple as someone who was heading up the department of agriculture could not resign, because the president was not there to resign too. when you look at the papers of woodrow wilson from 1919 -- up to 1919, they all go to dear mr.

president. after 1919, dear ms. wilson starts to increase. i put those letters in the back of the book, because, to me, that was more of a smoking gun than anything. if she was not the president, why were people writing letters to her? why were the secretary and chief of staff asking her to do these things? it was a myriad of issues. sometimes it was a list of things that they wanted her to do. there was a clear vacuum or nothing was getting done, and she was the person they could go to. another part was the state of the union address. this is a function of the president. what happened was that other people wrote it, they give it to edith.

she went through it, she made critiques, she read it to the president, although most people think she did not. they would piece together old speeches and put it together as the state of the union. again, the funky signature would appear. pardons. she did not participate in pardons. that was the one thing she did not participate in. there was a man who should've been pardoned, but wilson cannot -- could not act on that. as the presidency wound down, fewer pardons. i think, in conclusion, when you look at this -- i will give you a little bit of my philosophy of writing history, i believe when you present it to people they should be able to experience history. i write in a way that allows people to get into these things and go through it and feel what it was like. it is the journey and not the destination. some people think she was the first woman president, but it

will not work unless you reach it on your own. it is her meeting, it is them governing, and at the end you come up with your own thesis. when i went through all of these sources, and, at the end, it was clear to me that edith wilson had stepped in and did run the government for two years. why is it whenever i give a talk, people say, "i heard about that," or "i heard about that in school but it never quite --" well, most historians are men. so i am cutting across and saying, he did not finish out his term, edith wilson finished his term. they do not want to take away from the legacy of woodrow wilson.

for me, i am not sure. it seemed clear to me that this woman stepped in. i don't think this is a typical for americans. on the family farm, the husband could get hurt or become ill, and the woman would step up. it is a very american and to do. -- thing to do. it just happened to be that edith's farm was america that she stepped in to run. i don't think it is that different. clearly, they were this couple. he got sick, and i think she believed he would recover and she could hand it back. the problem was that he would never recover, and they did not abouttand enough neurological science and what the stroke did. i go back to that great term,

versimilitude which is the approximation of what is most true. you can look at sources and say, "he did this and this." he clearly was in control. but that is not really the story. the story is the entire picture. again, it is the journey and not the destination that allows us to see what really happened. i think in 2016, as we approach this unique election, i think it very relevant as to whether woman in thether white house who had a healthy range of power. i think there was. with that, we open it to questions. [applause] >> what were the primary sources

that you used, where you got them from, and how they were useful to you? i looked at your bibliography and a lot of the sources are secondary sources. there is nothing wrong with that, but you quoted what you said were primary sources. mr. hazelgrove: a very good question. you're right, i went through secondary sources first. what is interesting is you start to see where each person got their information. they borrow from each other. the canon of history on woodrow wilson did not deviate a lot. there was a book that came out in the early 2000's that was very critical. it's sort of veered off. it was incredibly critical of she was a it said

power grabber, that she lied, was the person who was plotting to take over the presidency. i saw none of that. but, it shows you -- >> that is why primary sources are so incredibly important. >> exactly. >> because the secondary sources, they very often reflect the biases of the time, the biases of the author or whatever. but if you yourself go to the primary sources, i am wondering, what is there in the national archives? where are the sources and what did you have access to? mr. hazelgrove: i went to the papers of woodrow wilson in the elmhurst library. i'm not sure how many there are, 50-70 and monster books. i brought home about 10-20 of them. and remember, i am dedicating

myself to just this one period. i'm looking at documents, memorabilia, things edith wrote. the first thing i started to notice was that, in 1919, there was absolutely up to that time, no mention of edith in these papers. nothing. then suddenly, there are all these documents going to her. dear mrs. wilson, dear mrs. wilson, could you act on this? could you act on that? i found that very compelling. and then, of course, the letters back and forth between her and the president. the people around him trying to deal with their problems. what was interesting was, "dear mrs. wilson, if you get time, could you show the president this?" a lot of those were timid.

i think she was very fierce and protective, and it was hard to get anything to the president. some of the letters start asking his daughters to help, because they felt like no information was getting through edith. so, there was definitely a power vacuum and a lack of information flowing up. in her defense, she had a dual role. a bunch ofy said -- people came to see the president, and she said she did not care about the president of the united states, i care about my husband. a lot of historians say she through the country under the bus, and it was a heller -- a power grab.

but edith was trying to keep her husband alive at the same time . she was trying to step in and run the government. talk about stress. but primary sources, my main source was the papers of woodrow wilson. that gave me what i needed to say. here is my thesis, here are my sources. there are 600 footnotes in my book. the wanted those footnotes because i knew a lot of people would come back and say, he does not know what he is talking about. yes? >> [indiscernible] mr. hazelgrove: absolutely. in fact, when his prostate became blocked, they came to edith, three physicians, and said, "he needs to be operated on or he will die." and edith stared at them, and grayson was like, "i am not sure he can survive the surgery." but the other doctors said he has to be operated on now or he will die. and edith said, "no, you will

not touch him." they do not leave it there. they chased her into the next room and drew pictures of what was going on and said, "you must let us operate, or he will be dead in two hours." and she said, "no, we will let nature take its course." and nature did. but that shows you what a unique person she was. that she would go her own way. i think this has to do with the fact she was self-taught for most of her life. grit is of the word that came to mind when i read about edith. >> [indiscernible] mr. hazelgrove: garfield was shot in the back and lingered for three months. the doctor came in and said, i'm in charge. he did not believe the new theory on germs. he thought he knew what he was

doing. they could not find the bullet. doctor took a dirty porcelain probe and went after the bullet right away. if that doctor had not touch the president, he would have lived. but he continued to push the infection down into his body. the president was a very strong man and lingered for three months. it brings up the phrase, ignorance is bliss. it can come back to him. secretary brown stepped in while garfield -- the doctor was even worse in terms of isolation. he put screens around garfield, put him upstairs, and would not even let the family see him.

he essentially said, "i'm in charge, and you have to go through me." secretary brown, probably in his 20's, started running the government, started funneling papers through. the united states again went into suspended animation for three months were nothing happened. the difference is that garfield did die eventually and his vice president did take over. but you are right, that was the pecedent. because there is a clause that says, if you cannot for the -- cannot fulfill the duties of the presidency, the vice president must take over. but it was vague. they passed an amendment after wilson that spelled it out. the question i always get is, could this happen today? well, i would say nancy reagan, -- i am not sure everything is

known there. how much she took over things. could the president disappear for five months the way woodrow wilson did? no. power is a very secret thing. who is running the government is a very interesting thing. so if somebody becomes ill, you have to prove they are ill and then someone has to be willing someone has tond be willing to take over. vice president marshal did not want the power of the presidency. when he finally came to the white house to see wilson, he was met at the door by edith. she told him they would let him know if they needed him. that was it. the power stayed with her. if marshall had been a guy who wanted to see the president and demanded to see him -- probably the jig would have been up. they did not care for the vice president anyway and not include him in anything.

a woman that is a strong individual and had taken over. yes, garfield was the president. >> by the time mrs. wilson published her memoir, the doctor was conveniently dead. do you have an idea of how reliable her account is of their conversation? mr. hazelgrove: that is one of the things that the book that came out in 2000 really attacked. it said, why would the doctor say this? edith just wanted the power, she craved the power and pushed the president aside and took over. my thing is why would she put this in her memoir if it was not true? she was not that kind of person.

she was not a dishonest person. she acted with a moral certainty for most of her life. now, could you hold a grudge? absolutely. if you got on the wrong side of edith wilson, you are pretty much done. that would include not saying the president. there were people kept from the funeral. she did not want to see them. there is a story about when they got married. the bishop who was going to preside wrote to edith and said, i want to bring my wife. i know it is an oversight that you did not invite her, but it would be embarrassing if she did not come. edith wrote him back and said, no, your wife is not coming and neither are you.

she was infuriated. she went to the president and said, i am going to get rid of this bishop. he said, you should think about that, and she said no, i'm getting rid of him. she was a fierce person that once she determined you are not loyal, you are effectively done for her. >> the press of the time -- years later, the press would famously protect franklin roosevelt's disability from the public. how far along did this press -- until the press started to become suspicious and start pressing the issue? mr. hazelgrove: there were a lot of articles in the new york times as time passed where doctors would come out and say, and there were several theories -- one was that wilson was totally insane and they put bars on the white house windows to prevent him from jumping to his death. that was debunked and said that teddy roosevelt put them on to keep his kids from falling out

the windows. but that did not make it go away. he was a crazy man dribbling in his wheelchair. people -- people would get a medical expert. -- them whatk it they think was going on, and some would hit it right on the head and say that they thought massive stroke. but they had no proof. they could not get any traction. it's in the papers, it is there. and grayson would always counter it. he would say that the president was improving. they were cognizant of keeping the information flow going out. but there were people who suspected and, occasionally, about every three months, some doctor would call for the president to resign. he obviously cannot govern.

but it would fade away. yes, it was amazing. what is more amazing today is that we talk to a lot of americans about this part of history and most people don't even know woodrow wilson had a stroke or was ever incapacitated. they certainly didn't know that his wife took over unless they read eric larson's book. yes? >> [indiscernible] mr. hazelgrove: she walked both sides of the aisle on that. she never voted. she couldn't. -- thought the suffragettes she called them insufferable women and found them offensive.

these were her southern virginia roots. they were not acting like ladies. yet, when the son-in-law came to the white house asked wilson to speak on behalf of the vote, wilson said it was on sabbath. i'm not going to do that. it is also against vertical, and i'm not going to do that. three or four hours later, edith wilson called up and said he is going to do it. he is going to speak to the senate. so what happened? in my opinion, they were very hip in termst the of policy. i think edith wilson saw the vote coming, and i think she told the president that god will understand if you do this. and he did and actually woodrow wilson received essentially a medal for doing that. it was soon passed afterward. i think she had a dual relationship with them.

i would say, and i am not the first person to say this, when wilson died, many newspapers came out and proclaimed it is -- edith as president. but a lot of them also came out and proclaimed she was a proponent for the vote because she led by example by running the white house and showed a woman can do that. it would be great to say she was who sidedive woman with the suffragettes, but that simply is not completely true. >> i can't remember where i read the article about the courtship of the president and edith. it was quite a long time from the first time they met, and she refused him many times. they met and then they agreed to separate. i think it was two years. mr. hazelgrove: it wasn't that long, but you are right.

they met, and then they had a sort of cooling off period. she could not sustain that very long, because the president's cousin was very upset with edith for spurning the president because he thought edith was his only life. he was suffering from depression. he suffered from depression all his life. yes, he definitely -- when the lusitania was sunk, he was in the throes of his letter writing. >> that whole lusitania thing was happening, and he was not capable of getting himself together to deal with that. as a result, the ship sunk. that is in --

mr. hazelgrove: larson's book, yes. if i have heard it once, i have heard it a hundred times. in his defense, they did not know initially when it was sunk. they did not know what the loss of life was. after heor a drive heard to see edith. >> there were a lot of things that happened before. mr. hazelgrove: agreed. >> but when you think about her, she was someone -- she married him, because she felt he needed her and she had a duty to buoy him through. a lot of that relationship, she was joyful and happy because that helped him. she was a helpmate. she did this to him because allowed him to retain his title and because it would keep him alive. a lot of this was her doing it

, because he needed -- or she believed he needed it. there is no criticism intended. that is far as her motive, i think -- mr. hazelgrove: you are absolutely right. there is also a theory that woodrow wilson needed women to blow him up. otherwise, he was a shrinking academic who did not like to speak in public. these women would get behind him and tell him he could do this. even in the letters, she would encourage him. >> and when you speak, do this. mr. hazelgrove: exactly. even at the end when he was very ill, he would say that, "i should just got -- die." boy,would tell him, "little you can keep going. you can do this." , whichhe was an enabler

he did give him a lot of energy. scholars believe that he was as strong as his women were. it holds a lot of water when you see what happened to him. yes? daughters -- is have never heard them discussed in this context. what did you find out about them? hazelgrove: one daughter became sort of very mystical after he died. as far as the relationship with edith, i think they liked her. remember, edith was 15 years younger than the resident. she was the young woman. a lot of press in washington

made a lot of that. some said she was a climber. that she was not really of the ilk to be marrying the president. -- lodge wasot devastating for her at the time. he would say that when they went to dinner, that her fingernails were dirty. think his relationship with his daughters -- i think he was a good father, but i think he was a guy who was off on his own thing a lot. dith,nk, when he met e their relationship and love affair -- i really enjoyed writing about that a lot. it was so intense. there was no room for anyone else at all.

they would sequester themselves up in the white house, start a fire, and it would read poetry back and forth. it is very modern in the way they would sort of go out. they would take the president's yacht out. it would go to this little island. it was right before war would break out between the united states and germany. they would go to this little island with all the doors of this house closed. they are about to go back to the yacht, but wilson wants to go back and take another look. there's one guy outside who looks at him and asks "are you the president?" he responded, "i have the pleasure." the guy responded, "i thought you were the germans invading us." that is just kind of the world they were in.

i think when the relationship started, it was really only a world for two. thank you. [applause] >> if you are interested in getting the book signed, please come up front. thank you for coming. [inaudible] >> you are watching american history tv all weekend, ever weekend on c-span3. to join in on the conversation, like us on facebook at c-span history. on q&a.ear's night >> them. was having -- van buren was having these fancy parties at

the white house. here was this rich man in washington steering of poor people. harrison had thousands of acres in his estate. it was a very wealthy man, but he was portrayed as the champion of the poor. women came to his parade and would wait handkerchiefs. some wrote speeches, and they were very shocking. they were criticized by the democrat who said, "these women should be home making putting -- pudding." night 8:00sunday eastern on c-span q&a. next, on american history tv, from oregon state university's rethinking grand strategy conference. they take a look at foreign policy leaders ranging from woodrow wilson to george h w

bush. each historian examines key figures of the 20th century from the more one to default -- from world war i to the fall of the berlin wall. the program from oregon is about three hours. this is our first session for today. it is session for on ideas and inflection points. we have five speakers. so, we have a very full slate. i will just give very brief introductions and turn it over. because we are being televised, i will chair the q and a -- q&a, and we will let the mics go around and took up the questions. our first speaker is christopher nichols, and he will be talking about the crucible of world war i. s?