>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.
[ Silence ]
>> Good afternoon everyone and welcome to the Library of Congress.
I'm John Cole I'm the director of the library's Center for the Book
which is the reading promotion arm of the library.
We operate, we promote books and reading using the name
and the prestige of the Library of Congress and we do it nationally
through a couple of national networks there are affiliated state
centers in every state plus DC and the Virgin Islands
and there are reading promotion partners which are nonprofits
that are interested in reading and literacy and we bring each
of these groups together once a year at the Library of Congress
to exchange good ideas about promoting books and reading.
We also play a major role in the National Book Festival and I'm happy
to give you the dates this year,
dates plural because it's the first time we've moved to 2 days,
September 24th is Saturday, I have that right
and September 25th is Sunday.
Sunday we'll just be half a day but this is an experiment for us
to move ahead with I hope a larger and a more comprehensive
and if you will, almost year round activity promoting the National Book
Festival and of course books and reading with--
through the Center for the Book.
Here at the library one of our major activities I thank you
for joining us at one of our major activities it's the Books & Beyond
noontime series which features books and authors
who have a special relationship to the Library
of Congress and its collections.
They can either be authors who have used the library's collections,
they can be working with a department or a division
on a research project and when the book comes out we'd like to have
that division as a cosponsor to present some of the results
of what goes on at the library.
And there are other ways that authors are invited,
and other reasons authors are invited for this particular series.
All of our Books & Beyond programs are videotaped for later viewing
and listening on the Library of Congress's website and on the Center
for the Books website as well.
As are, by the way, the National Book Festival presentations we have
in our archive now online actually in the website,
really around 650 30-minute author presentations and when you add those
to roughly the 250 Books & Beyond presentations you can see
that we're fortunate enough to be building quite a slice
of American authorship, contemporary American authorship and one
of the new looks I think in the book festival will be probably
to expand our scope internationally as well if all of this works.
So we're very pleased to have this unique institution as the basis
for the reading promotion activities not just for the Center for the Book
but for other divisions as well.
Because we're taping this I would like to remind you to take--
turn off all things electronic.
We will be having not only our presentation
but then a brief question and answer period prior to the book signing
which will also take place in this room.
And if you do ask a question you are giving us your permission
to perhaps be part of our webcast for which I thank you in advance.
I'm now going to present Jeff Flannery who is
from our manuscript division.
Jeff is the head of what I call Reader and Research Services
which is really the reading room in the Manuscript Division.
And Jeff is going to present our speaker.
Jeff, let's give Jeff a hand.   [ Applause ]
>> No, I forgot to hold up the book.
[Laughter] I always like to hold up the book usually at the beginning
to show the proof, you know, that books not only are alive
but are important and can be handsomely made and are the center
of what this reading promotion is all about.
Jeff has already gotten his applause so he could step right up.
[ Laughter ]   >> Thank you John.
It's my pleasure to introduce today's speaker, Kristie Miller,
author of "Ellen and Edith: Woodrow Wilson's First Ladies".
The Manuscript Division is pleased to be cosponsoring this book talk
as part of the library's commemoration
of Women's History Month.
Biographical interest in the wives of the presidents appears
to be growing as a recent search
of the library's online catalog identified nearly 200 first lady
biographies produced in the past decade alone.
The Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress is one
of the most important repositories to support this ongoing research.
Foremost among the nearly 65 million original documents in the custody
of the division are the personal papers
of 23 American presidents ranging from George Washington
to Calvin Coolidge and included among these presidential treasures
are the papers of many first ladies, in addition 3 first ladies,
Dolley Madison, Lucretia Rudolph Garfield
and Edith Bolling Galt Wilson are represented in collections separate
and distinct from their husband's papers.
Among the many benefits of working
in the manuscript reading room is the opportunity
to become better acquainted with authors who make
such good use of our collections.
Kristie Miller is a research associate at the Southwest Center
of the University of Arizona and the author of Isabella Greenway:
An Enterprising Woman and Ruth Hanna McCormick: A Life in Politics.
She also edited A Volume of Friendship:
The Letters of Eleanor Roosevelt and Isabella Greenway, and We Have Come
to Stay: American Women and Political Parties 1880 to 1960.
I can personally attest to the many long hours Kristie has put
in researching her most recent book but proof
of her dedicated scholarship may be found
in the bibliography of Ellen and Edith.
Her bibliographic essay features many Wilson related manuscript
collections that may be found here at LC and other libraries
and the 48 pages of footnotes document the generous amount
of original correspondence quoted in the book.
After reading Ellen and Edith I can easily say that this is a work
of faultless scholarship and a story smartly told.
Drawing about the many letters and memoirs produced by Ellen
and Edith Wilson, Kristie paints a vivid picture of 2 remarkable women
who played a major role
in the nation's history during a pivotal period.
It is an account of 2 women different in temperament
and background but each possessed of an articulate and distinctive voice
that commanded the attention of the president.
Please welcome Kristie Miller.   [ Applause ]
>> Thank you very much, Jeff.
When I first started this project all I knew about Edith Wilson was
that many people thought she was effectively the first
woman president.
Because she took over after Woodrow Wilson had a stroke.
I didn't know anything at all about Ellen Wilson.
I could see I had a lot to learn about them both,
fortunately I leave right here in Washington DC near the Library
of Congress which holds, as Jeff just said,
a wealth of Wilson papers.
I and my research associate Robert H. McGinnis were able to come 2
or 3 times a week to consult the papers of Woodrow Wilson and both
of his wives in the manuscript reading room.
There we also were able to access microfilm copies
of the White House Diary and other manuscripts and had easy access
in the manuscript reading room to many books
about the Wilson presidency.
Over in the Adam's building were scores of photographs
that later made their way into the book
but the best part frankly is the staff.
After a period of several years, a picture of these 2 women
and their complicated husband began to emerge.
What we discovered was that Edith far from being an ambitious woman
who aspired to be the first female president was a fairly traditional
wife whose primary preoccupation was with the welfare
of her husband while Edith Wilson
who is almost completely unknown was a path breaker whose influences come
Ellen Axson and Woodrow Wilson met in 1883 in their early 20's
when Woodrow visited her hometown in Rome, Georgia.
As a good presbyterian he attended church on Sunday
where her father was the preacher.
He was immediately attracted by her beauty but quickly learned
that she was a reader and a thinker as well.
She loved poetry and it was said
that she could supply an Act quotation for any occasion.
She also had a great deal of artistic talent.
She had sent work to an exposition in Paris where it won a third prize.
You can imagine that in Rome,
Georgia there were really no suitable men for such a woman
and she planned to open a woman's boarding house and support it
with earnings from her artwork, she became known
as "Ellie the man hater".   [ Laughter ]
>> Then she met Woodrow Wilson.   He was a lawyer.
He was smart.
He was ambitious and best of all from Ellen's point
of view he was idealistic.
She wrote one of her friends that she could love him
but she didn't intend to.
However, when Woodrow proposed she surprised herself by accepting.
They could not get married at once because Woodrow Wilson had planned
to go to Johns Hopkins University to get a PhD in Political Science.
So they had roughly 2 years of correspondence, hundreds of letters
that created the intimacy on which their marriage would be based.
Woodrow became a mainstay for Ellen
when her father developed mental illness.
Her father had suffered from depression ever since serving
as a chaplain in the Civil War.
In 1884 he was committed to an asylum
and he died shortly thereafter.
Ellen had been caring for him and at last was free
to pursue her own interests.
She had always wanted to study art and Woodrow had another year to go
at Johns Hopkins so she went to New York City
to study at the Art Institute.
She had a marvelous time there with all the impressionist painters,
but she realized that she was really not in the top tier of talent.
At that time, a woman had to be in the top tier of talent
if she is going to make a profession of her art.
So she gave up her painting and decided
to devote her considerable talent and energy to her husband's career.
They were married and Woodrow Wilson became a professor.
He had wanted to be a public servant, a politician
but without an independent income he didn't think he could afford
to do that.
His career in academia took off, assisted by Ellen.
Woodrow Wilson was very smart but he was terrible at learning languages.
Ellen was able to translate a number of books for him from the German.
She made digests of political monographs and generally helped him
with all of his research.
He taught first at Bryn Mawr and then at Wesleyan in Connecticut.
During this time their family expanded.
They had 3 daughters.
During Ellen's third pregnancy she developed kidney trouble.
Her doctor told her that if she didn't have any more children she
should be alright.   And so they had no more children.
In part due to Ellen, Woodrow was invited to teach
at his alma mater, Princeton University.
Their family expanded again when Ellen's brothers, Stockton
and Eddie, came to live with them.
She also opened their home to the students from Princeton and talking
with them informally in the living room, encouraged them
to promulgate the famous Honor Code at Princeton.
She also worked very closely with her husband on his speeches.
In 1896, he was invited to give the speech commemorating the 150th
anniversary, the founding of Princeton.
This was going to be a very important speech
and the intelligents here from all
over the country were invited to attend.
If you look at the manuscript to that speech you will see annotations
in both their handwritings.
Ellen also supplied a number of the metaphors and encouraged him
to rewrite the ending, which he did.   The speech was a great success.
Woodrow was cheered to the rafters and it was clear
that he was destined for greater things.
Ellen loved being a professor's wife.
She thought that was the pinnacle of ambition, but as she talked
to her brother, Stockton, after they had watched the performance
of McBeth, perhaps ambitious men should not be encouraged.
But she said "How can wives who love them do anything except help them?"
And she did love him enough to help him do what he wanted.
Sure enough soon Woodrow was elected president of Princeton University.
Ellen now had to entertain the faculty at a number of dinners.
She entertained the former president, Theodore Roosevelt.
She even entertained the African-American educator Booker T.
Washington, much to the scandal of her Georgia aunts.
She had family responsibilities as well.
She home schooled their children.
Her brother, Stockton, had inherited some
of their father's mental instability and was in and out of institutions
but he always felt that only Ellen could really take good care of him.
The other brother, Eddie, was 16 years younger than Ellen.
He was like a son that she never had.
He was the bright spot in the family household.
He was clever.   He was funny.
He had, Woodrow once said,
"Every virtue including the virtue of not being too good."
He married and had a baby and everything seemed very happy.
But in 1905, a tragedy occurred.
They were riding in a carriage, the horse bolted, ran into a river
and overturned the carriage and the 3 of them drowned.
Ellen was devastated.
She really could hardly speak for 2 months.
She was just beginning to recover when Woodrow Wilson woke
up one morning blind in one eye.
He had suffered for some time from high blood pressure.
In those days there was no medical treatment for hypertension.
All the doctors could suggest was
that he take a vacation every 6 months.
They did this and in January of 1907 they were planning to go to Bermuda.
At the last minute, Ellen had to stay home with one
of their daughters who had an operation and Woodrow went alone.
Two days before he was due to return back to Princeton,
he met a fascinating woman, Mary Allen Hulbert Peck.
She was the foremost social hostess of the island.
She entertained the governor general.
She entertained Mark Twain and he was very interested in her
when he returned to Princeton, he began to correspond with her.
Ellen had always encouraged Woodrow to have female friends.
She knew that she herself was not of particularly cheerful disposition
and she knew that her husband,
who contrary to his portraits loved silliness and fun,
needed cheerful female companionship.
So this was not anything particularly unusual.
The following winter they were planning to return once again
to Bermuda in January of 1908,
at the last minute again Ellen had to cancel.
Stockton had decided to make a lecture tour
and he wanted her to go with him.
Before Woodrow returned to Bermuda, Ellen issued an injunction
It was no use.   There on that island paradise
with all those warm breezes caressing his skin Woodrow became
completely infatuated with Mary Peck.
There is a scrap of paper with his handwriting in shorthand
that says "My beloved Mary".
When he returned to Princeton, Ellen realized
that this relationship was different.
She accused him of emotional infidelity.
The summer of 1908 Woodrow went to England and Ellen went
to Connecticut and took up her painting again.
That summer they corresponded but all of Ellen's letters are missing.
Woodrow's letters show him pleading for forgiveness.
At the end of the summer he writes to her thanking her
and saying it is better to be forgiven when you don't deserve it.
You might have thought at this point
that he would have severed ties to Mary.
Instead Ellen and Woodrow visited Mary at her home in Massachusetts.
Why? We don't know.   It's possible that Ellen thought
that if she could see her rival she would understand what her hold
on Woodrow was.
It's possible that she thought if Mary saw her she'd realize
that Ellen had the better claim.
Whatever happened, their relationship didn't end.
Ellen made the decision to accept the situation and to treat Mary
as a family friend in order to protect Woodrow from gossip.
They returned to Princeton,
Woodrow in Princeton was in a world of trouble.
He had wanted to make reforms,
to make the institution more democratic.
This ran into a lot of resistance from the faculty and he decided
to make a tour of the United States, a speaking tour to take his argument
to the alumni all over the country and try to get their support.
In those days there was no television, even radio was not
yet a medium of entertainment so people turned
out in their thousands to hear him speak.
He did not get enough support for his reforms
but he did get the support of the politicians in New Jersey
who invited him to run for governor.   He did and he was elected in 1910.
Now, Ellen had new responsibilities.
She undertook reform activities like many middle class women of the day.
>> They were not quite ready to enter politics as such
but they wanted to do community work.
Ellen worked in the state welfare agencies trying to draw attention
to them and supervise their programs.
This came to be known as municipal housekeeping.
The women like to argue that if they could keep their houses clean,
they could keep their communities clean.
This was seen as a nice lady like way to enter politics.
The Wilson Administration was successful.
Woodrow Wilson pushed through an ambitious reform agenda
through the legislature and he began to be mentioned as a candidate
for the president of the United States.
Ellen saw one difficulty.
Three years before Woodrow Wilson had insulted Bryan,
William Jennings Bryan who was three times the nominee
for democrat candidate for president and she knew
that Woodrow would need Bryan's help to be a viable candidate.
So she arranged for a small dinner party, a very,
very small dinner party where Woodrow
and Bryan could get to know each other.
This was very successful and they began
to speak from the same platform.
Woodrow began speaking all around the country
and Ellen followed the news reports very closely.
On one occasion she wrote to him and said stop saying your not running
for the president it just makes you look foolish.
He stopped.   She also campaigned with him.
As far as I know she was the first future first lady to campaign
with her husband before the convention.
They toured the south and she was equally well received.
Sure enough at the democratic convention,
Woodrow Wilson received the nomination in part due
to the support that he got from Bryan.
At the Republican Convention, the republicans split.
The nomination went to the incumbent, William Howard Taft,
but he had been challenged by former president, Theodore Roosevelt.
And when Roosevelt didn't get the nomination, he made a third party,
The Progressive or Bull Moose Party and began to run himself.
During that campaign and it was really between Wilson and Roosevelt.
Rooosevelt's advisers told him he should make an issue
of the rumors about Mary Peck.
They said they had letters from Woodrow Wilson to Mary Peck
that were very incriminating.   And Woodrow Wilson said "No,
that would be wrong also, no one would believe me.
Who was gonna think the man is a romeo he looks
like an apothecary's clerk."   [ Laughter ]
>> But the fact is that his relationship with Mary was fading.
He simply did not have time for her and she was distracted
by the troubles of her son who was alcoholic and not doing very well.
Woodrow Wilson won the election in November of 1912
and was now president of the United States.
He had vast power over legions of people
and his wife had considerable power by virtue of her marriage to him.
Ellen Wilson felt it was incumbent on her to use her power that flowed
from that position to accomplish something worthwhile.
She chose her own agenda, something separate
from her husband's interests.
Some first ladies in the 19th century had had agendas.
Lucy Hayes refused to serve alcohol in the White House.
Carolyn Harrison had help found the Daughters of the American Revolution
but none exercised the power of her position to the extent
of lobbying Congress for legislation and this is what Ellen Wilson did.
She took an interest in what we would now call the urban renewal.
The slums surrounding the capital became the focus of her interest.
There were narrow alleyways in which there were very substandard houses.
They were dark and dirty.   They bred crime and disease.
The National Civic Federation had worked for years to try
to get legislation from Congress to tear down those buildings
and build new model homes for the residents.
Ellen took a White House car and invited members of Congress to drive
with her through these squalid alleys and see what was going
on just behind the marble halls of the capitol.
But Ellen's kidney disease returned.
Her efforts for an alley bill exhausted her
and her activity had to be curtailed.
Woodrow and her doctor were in denial.
They thought that she was suffering from nerves, but one of the things
that I found in the Library of Congress were poignant notes
from Ellen to her daughter, Margaret.
One of them said, "I do not feel any better
but they all tell me that I'm better."
Finally by August 6, 1914,
it was clear to everyone that she was dying.
She made 2 final requests.
First, she sent word to Congress that she would die more easily
if they would just pass the legislation.
[Laughter] The House took action in time for her
to receive word before she lost consciousness.
The Senate passed the law later but it was never implemented
because 2 days before Ellen died,
World War I had broken out in Europe.
Ellen's second request was to the White House physician.
She said, "Doctor, please take care of my husband."
And then she died.   Woodrow was overwhelmed by grief.
He wandered the halls of the White House.
He had trouble concentrating.
The doctor was worried after all his patient was the president
and the world was at war.
Woodrow could have turned to Mary who by then was divorced
but their relationship had cooled and in any event
if they had gotten together it would have confirmed the rumors
that they were involved before Ellen's death.
By the spring of 1915 the doctor decided to take action.
He introduced Woodrow to his friend, Edith Bolling Galt.
She was a widow who had inherited and ran Galt Jewelers.
Some of us old timers still remember that.
She drove an electric car.   How modern.
She was flirtatious.   She was cheerful.
She was 15 years younger than Woodrow and bursting with vitality.
The first night she visited Woodrow
at the White House she wore a long black velvet gown.
Woodrow Wilson's secret service men said
to Woodrow's valet, "Oh she's a looker".
And the valet said, "Yeah, he's a goner."
[Laughter] And he was.
She began visiting the White House frequently,
ostensibly to see his daughters
but after 2 months Woodrow proposed marriage.
Edith refused.
She said she hadn't known him long enough
and in any case it had only been a few months
since his first wife died.
Two months later they went to New Hampshire
on a family vacation and he proposed again.
This time she accepted but they decided
to keep the engagement a secret because there was an election coming
up in 1916 and it had still been less
than a year since Ellen's death.
There was another wrinkle in the romantic saga and that was Mary.
He confessed the relationship to Edith.
He said it was a foully, long ago repented-- loathed and repented of.
She forgave him but unlike Ellen she made sure it was over.
They announced their engagement in October of 1915.
Even before their marriage Woodrow shared everything with Edith.
He showed her secret state department documents.
He wanted her to be involved in every aspect of his presidency.
She wrote him, "I love the way you put one dear hand on mine while
with the other you turn the pages of history."
They were married at the end of December.
They went on a honeymoon to Hot Springs Virginia
but they were called back early due
to the worsening situation in Europe.
The first thing that Ellen did when she entered the White House was
to banish the twin beds in the presidential suite
and install a large double bed.
She then turned to public entertaining.
This was complicated by the war.
She couldn't invite the diplomats of warring parties to the same event
so she had to have 2 sets of diplomatic dinners.
As a hostess she was a big hit.
She had a hearty handshake and unlike Ellen,
she was very fashionable.
In the 1916 campaign she was also popular.
She was quite shy, she didn't even want her picture taken
at first much less make a speech,
but Woodrow's handlers wanted her to be involved.
They thought she was a big asset that she warmed up his image.
Woodrow was narrowly reelected on the slogan "He kept us out of war."
But soon after his inauguration in March of 1917,
the Germans announced unrestricted summary warfare
and the United States was drawn into the war.
Now Edith had a new set of responsibilities as first lady.
She worked at a Red Cross canteen about once a week.
She was a leader in food and fuel conservation,
but what she really liked to do was anything to do with Woodrow.
They named battleships together.
He had designed commissions for hundreds of new officers in the Army
and she made a little game of it.
>> Whisking away one paper as soon as he signed it
and putting down a new one.
Her real job was trying to keep the president healthy.
Every day she dragged him out to play golf.
They had a wonderful time playing golf although both
of them were terrible at it.   The war ended on November 11th,
1918 and Woodrow took the unprecedented step of going
to Europe to negotiate the peace treaty himself.
He was the first sitting president to go to Europe.
Edith of course went with him and she was the first first lady to go
to Europe while she was in the white house.
At first, it seemed a triumph.   They stayed at Buckingham Palace.
They drove down to Shanzelize and were pelted with flowers.
She wrote home that it was a Cinderella existence.
But the negotiations followed were difficult
and Woodrow's health began to deteriorate.
Finally in June of 1919, they signed the Treaty of Versailles
which provided for a league of nations, an international body
that would mediate to avoid future wars.
Back home however, Woodrow had another fight with the senate
who did not want to ratify the Treaty of Versailles with the League
of Nations because they felt it would impinge
on their constitutional right to declare war.
Once again, Woodrow decided to take his argument to the country.
They embarked on a train trip in September.
It was still very hot, the metal cars were not air-conditioned,
they set themselves a grueling pace and as the train wound
up through the mountains, the altitude began
to tell on his blood pressure.
In Pueblo Colorado, he collapsed and they rushed back to Washington.
But a few days later, he suffered a devastating stroke.
He was paralyzed.
He could hardly speak and no one knew what his mental faculties were.
As a president, he was incapacitated.
At this point, only a very few people knew Woodrow's
true condition.
Edith stepped in, assumed more power than any first lady had ever done.
She instructed his doctors and the White House staff
to keep Woodrow's condition a secret.
If his condition had been known, his opponents would have forced him
from office and Woodrow did not think his vice president would fight
as he had for the League of Nations.
The next 18 months, the remainder of his term,
Edith later characterized as her stewardship.
She determined who would be allowed to see Woodrow
and what issues would be submitted to him for consideration.
Some say that if he had been allowed to see other people,
he would have changed his mind about compromising with the senate
on the League of Nations.   That's possible.
But in fact, Edith herself tried to get Woodrow
to compromise with the senate.   She felt that his failure
to compromise would mar his place in history.
She admitted in her memoir 20 years later to have tried
to reason with him on the issue.
She said she only tried it once but in fact, we found evidence
that she tried on at least three different occasions
to get him to change his mind.
Ultimately, he didn't agree and she didn't insist.
She differed to him.
As I said earlier, many people have assumed she was power hungry.
We found no evidence of this.
She merely wanted to do what was best for her husband.
She believed that his best chance for recovery was to stay in office
and furthermore, she knew that was exactly what he would have wanted.
She stood up to criticism of her decision.
She told one insistent delegation, "I am not thinking
of the country now, I am thinking of my husband."
One senator pounded on the table and said,
"We have petticoat government."
But the problem was not that Edith was running the government.
The problem was that no one was running the government.
Decision after decision was postponed
until the president felt better.
She had, as far as I can tell, no policy agenda of her own.
She didn't even want the vote.
This was not the woman I thought I was going to find.
I also changed my mind about Ellen Wilson.
Originally, I thought she was a nonentity.
Why else that I never heard of her?
I discovered that she actually had tremendous influence
as first lady but it was indirect.
Her work for the alleys was noted by a young wife whose husband was
in the Wilson administration, Eleanor Roosevelt.
She had ample opportunity to observe Ellen Wilson.
As on contemporary said, "No one could move in polite society
who couldn't talk alleys."
And we also learned from the White House Diary
in the Manuscript Reading Room that Eleanor Roosevelt came
to a cabinet wives luncheon although her husband was not actually
in the cabinet.
The first week that Eleanor Roosevelt was in the White House
in 1933, she called up the woman of the National Civic Federation
and went right back up to the alleys and began
to lobby for that legislation.
She had learned from Ellen Wilson's example
that a first lady could lobby for legislation
and she did it all 12 years she was in the White House.
Most modern first ladies when they select a cause are following the
example not only of Eleanor Roosevelt but also of Ellen Wilson.
During the time I worked on this book, I learned a lot about Ellen
and Edith and I learned that many of my original ideas were mistaken.
So, my advice to researchers coming here to the Library
of Congress is bring your number 2 pencils, bring your laptop,
bring your digital cameral, but also bring an open mind
because what you find here maybe very different
from what you were expecting.   Thank you.
[ Applause ]   >> Does anyone have-- yes ma'am?
>> Back when I was in college, I did some--
a few years ago, did some research on Edith Wilson and that period
of time and my assumptions have been very similar to yours
and I'm interested if you speculate why Ellen Wilson got that short trip
or why she was viewed in this role
and she clearly is much more impressive
than history realized or gave her credit.
Was it in part because of the second wife splitting the story
or the focus on, you know, Edith and this more controversial role,
you know, tended to diminish her own role and to have any, you know,
plots to speculate about why we had all [inaudible] and otherwise?
>> Well, I think you make a very good point no doubt that Edith
who had such a very prominent role overshadowed her.
Also, she was--
>> Excuse me, excuse me could you just repeat [inaudible], sorry.
>> Oh, she said why is it that Edith Roose-- that Ellen Roose--
Ellen Wilson was so overshadowed or so forgotten and was it
because she was overshadowed to some extent by Edith's role.
And yes, I would certainly say that she was that Edith--
Edith lived until 1961 and she lived right here in Washington DC,
it was the only presidential couple to settle here
after they left the White House.
So, she was really a towering figure.
She was very prominent during the democratic administrations.
She wrote a memoir that was very widely read.
It was serialized in Saturday Evening Post.
So, she really worked hard for 40 years
to control Woodrow Wilson's image and his legacy and of course,
she wanted her part in that to be prominent.
I think also, Ellen was first lady only 17 months.
She was ill a great deal of that time.
She was not a brilliant first lady.
We like our first ladies to be fashion plates.
Ellen was a little blue stocking.
She liked to have a dress that she made herself for 60 cents
and somebody once said, "Oh, there she is in her sweet brown dress
and she looks sweeter every time she wears it."
[ Laughter ]
>> I mean she just was not a fashion plate at all
and she was very serious.
She didn't wanna have an inaugural ball.
She didn't want people doing extreme dances like the turkey trot.
And so she was not a popular first lady.
Even Eleanor Roosevelt when she wrote
to her friend Isabella Greenway said that she had met Ellen Roosevelt
and "She was not overburdened with charm."
[ Laughter ]   >> Pretty catty thing to say.
So she just-- she didn't capture people's imagination.
Then, it wasn't as if somebody took the torch out of her hand, you know?
We had 20 years between when Ellen died
and when the next first lady activist came on the scene
because nobody was lobbying for legislation
in between Ellen and Eleanor.
So, it was almost as if Eleanor sprang full blown out of the head
of Zeus whereas in fact I think she was standing on Ellen's shoulders.
Yes?
>> A little bit more about at the alley bill because that's was
like such a prominent role in your talk.
Historians of course have different interpretations of things
and I was wondering whether Ellen was interested
in resettling the people who are living in the alleys
in more suitable housing, in better housing or was she more concerned,
perhaps only concerned about, you know,
the unsightliness around the US capitol.
I have to say I saw an exhibit once where the captions indicated
that she wasn't so concerned about resettling the people but of course,
she died too soon to see it done.
>> Right. The question was, was Ellen interested
in resettling the residents or was she just interested
in making the place more attractive.   And I-- there certainly is evidence
that she was interested in model houses.
She even had some other ideas.
She worked very closely with the National Civic Federation.
She wanted to build sort of communal bath houses so that they could have,
you know, places where they could bathe even
if the houses themselves didn't all have running water.
So, they had model hygienic houses.
Now, my source for this is an article that was written
or that was published right after she died, maybe written beforehand
by one of the National Civic Federation was
in good housekeeping I think.
And so, the source might be not as unprejudiced as one could wish
but she definitely says that this was a great interest
that there were plans for, you know, model,
hygienic was the word that they used, homes.
There has been a lot of question
about what her motives were, of course.
Not the least of which is that--
that she was dealing with a population that was probably
about half African-American and half immigrants
and the Wilson Administration was pretty notorious
for re-segregating the Washington workforce
and the federal workforce and, you know, some people think
that Ellen might have induced her husband to become more racist
and to that, I say his cabinet was full of southerners.
He wouldn't have needed to talk to Ellen.
He was hearing lots of people telling him
to re-segregate the federal workforce and after she died,
the African-American Bee Newspaper praised her and said
that they wished that other elite women would follow her example
and they were applauding her daughter Margaret
who they felt was following in her mother's footsteps in terms
of being active in social work of kind and another,
both of her elder daughters were interested
in settlement movement and social work.
So, it's always hard.
And at one point, Ellen made what it thought was a very perceptive remark
about herself.
She was a very, very, very smart woman and had a lot
of self knowledge and she said that in a--
I'm not gonna get it right which pains me but she said something
to the effect that her prejudices, her southern Georgia prejudices
as they existed, existed as emotions and not as intellectual decisions.
So, she knew that she made an intellectual commitment
to a greater equality even if her sentiments didn't always follow it.
And she basically said I'm a working progress here.
And I think that was laudable for a woman of her background
and her marriage and her time and again, Eleanor Roosevelt herself did
and said things which were criticized and evolved herself
and so it's always hard to know exactly what people are thinking.
Kevin?
>> If you could comment more on Wilson's kind
of attitude towards women in general.
On the one hand he seemed progressive and as far as he reached
out to his wives for advice about how to run the government,
how to deal with war and all that sort of stuff
which is not something previous generations might have done,
maybe just leave the women to their own sphere.
On the other hand, he wasn't too hot on getting women to vote
and he seemed to have some kind of retrograde attitudes also,
yet he was clearly desperately needy in the active--
[inaudible] activism he couldn't really function without them, so.
>> The question is what was Woodrow's attitude toward women?
Was he enlightened, was he needy, what was it?
Well, his very famous biographer for Arthur S. Link once said
"This was a man who needed love everyday.
He was unusually dependent on the love and support of women."
And there's no question that that was the case.
He did not really, I don't think, consult with his women
about issues like waging war.
I think he listen to his wife on matters of personnel.
I think he trusted their-- women's judgment about the people near him.
Although Edith was always opposed to Colonel House
and it took Woodrow quite a lot of time and a lot of mistakes
of the part of House before he came around to her thinking.
And no, he was certainly not in favor of women suffrage.
He claimed as a good democrat that it was a state's rights issue
and he was technically always a resident
of New Jersey while he was in the White House.
As you probably know, when you're serving
at the government's pleasure you retain your previous resident
as your official residence.
And so when the state of New Jersey wanted to adopt women suffrage,
Woodrow endorsed it, not coincidentally on the day
when he announced his engagement to Edith
because he thought there would be backlash against his marrying
so soon even thought it was passed the magic one year date
after Ellen's death.
But I think it was no coincidence that he's announced his support
for women suffrage when he announced his engagement, Ken?
>> On Edith when President Wilson had his stroke there were a number
of strong male figures at the White House at that time,
Colonel House who you've mentioned and a number of others.
When Edith tried to assert the control that you described, control
and who would have access and so on, was she challenged in that?
Did she have to fight for that and was that a difficult thing-- ?
>> First of all House was out of there by then.
According to [inaudible] very, very good biography of Colonel House
that rupture came in March of 1919, Woodrow had come back
to the United States-- the question was, weren't there any men
in the White House who could challenge Edith's decision
to keep him isolated.
And I would say and he actually said, you know,
what about Colonel House?
And House was just not around because in March
after Woodrow had come back to the United States to sign legislation
and then returned to Europe,
during the time he was gone he had left House in charge
and whether Woodrow was simply not explicit enough
or whether House completely disregarded what his instructions
were, House did a number of things that made Woodrow very angry.
He compromised a great deal on certain aspects of the language
about the League of Nations.
And Woodrow came back and said "I'm just gonna have
to do this all over again."
And in addition, House had been feeding his son-in-law
who was a very highly placed newspaper man, a lot of information
that seemed to think or that seemed to suggest
that House was running things
and Woodrow Wilson was kind of just window dressing.
Neither of the Wilson's was happy about that one bit.
So he never saw House again after he left Europe.
And House asked to come and see him and Edith just said no.
She said it will upset the president too much to see you.
And Woodrow had a long history.
I mean people have said "Well, Edith made him break up with all
of his friends 'cause she was such a witch and she was so jealous."
But Woodrow had a long history going back to his marriage
with Ellen being very intensely close with somebody
and then breaking just permanently with him.
His best friend at Princeton University,
Jack Hibben was one of them.
But there were a whole-- they're probably half of dozen people
like this and there were was some interesting newspaper articles.
Really the only person who was there was Lansing.
Lansing had always-- the Secretary
of State had always had a subsidiary role,
Woodrow had appointed somebody was basically a clerk
so that he could run affairs.   Joe Tumulty was his male secretary.
He really didn't have that much power.
He was younger.
Edith certainly had him under control.
Yes, ma'am one most last question?   >> One more question.
>> Yup.   >> You had mentioned that--
in the passing that Edith really didn't want to vote, did--
I mean, are there writings
of hers indicating what her feelings were about suffrage?
I mean here the women are picketing outside of the White House
like what her dialogue with them was?
>> She was furious with them.   She was very, very indignant.
Now this is her memory of it afterwards but I have no doubt
that that particular part of her memoir was accurate.
A lot of it is pure fiction.   [ Laughter ]
>> But she was indignant.
She thought they were rude to Woodrow who invented them to come
in for a coffee and they of course thought was very insulting
and they said no and she felt that was rude.
And so she didn't-- at one point the White House physician Cary Grayson
who was very, very close to her.
He's the one who introduced her to Woodrow.
They were friends before she married-- even met Woodrow.
He wrote to his wife and he said, you know some of the people--
some of the suffrages think that she influenced Woodrow to approve
of suffrage in New Jersey
and the joke is she doesn't approve of suffrage at all.
So I think he knew her attitudes and he was reporting them to his wife
who also knew Edith very well.   So I think that's pretty conclusive.
Thank you.   >> Thank you.
Let's--   [ Applause ]
>> We wanna thank Kristie Miller for really sharing
with her not only her wonderful job of research here in the Library
of Congress but, you know, in an articulate well-organized way.
I think she's opened up new territory for us to contemplate
and for American historians to contemplate.
I also wanna thank the Manuscript Division for once again helping
to cosponsor a major program here at the Library of Congress.
Just in passing I wanna mention on the subject of first ladies,
it's been quite a year for programming even with the Center
for the Book with the first ladies.
Last year we cosponsored with the National First Ladies Library,
a symposium on the first White House Library and this was based
on a research project at the Manuscript Division but largely
at which time we discovered that the very first White House Library
which happened during the presidency
of Millard Fillmore was really inspired
by the person behind it was Abigail Fillmore and that in fact that--
so we're pushing that back away in terms of the influence
of first ladies in our culture thanks for the resources
of the Library of Congress.
We're now gonna have the book signing.
You could buy the book at the Library of Congress special discount
and we're gonna put Kristie over in the corner
and also we're continuing a new tradition
as at the end she will sign books which we are now just carrying
in the Library of Congress shop again for a limited period of time.
So we're able to put the final signature on this project.
Let's thank Kristie Miller one more time and join us there.
[ Applause ]
>> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress.