Ellen and Edith: Woodrow Wilson's First Ladies

Editor's Foreword

ix } { EDITOR’S FOREWORD Alone among twentieth-century presidents, Woodrow Wilson had two first ladies during his eight years in the White House. His first wife, Ellen Axson Wilson, died in August 1914 after eighteen months as the woman in the White House. Fifteen months later, Wilson was remarried to Edith Bolling Galt, a resident of Washington, D.C., who served as first lady during the remainder of Wilson’s presidency. Two women of very different characters and personalities thus contributed their talents to the emerging institution of the first lady during this critical period in American history. Kristie Miller has tracked the complex relationships that the wives of Woodrow Wilson had with their talented and troubled husband. She has re-created with sensitivity and insight the marriage of Ellen and Woodrow, including the future president’s intimate linkage with Mary Allen Hulbert Peck after 1908. Miller follows Ellen Wilson’s role in her husband’s presidential candidacy in 1912, and her efforts to improve Washington, D.C., in the brief time that her health gave her in 1913–1914. Wilson’s second marriage began with controversy over his romance with Edith Galt and the attempt of his close advisers to prevent or postpone the union. But the role of Edith Wilson provoked even more questions during Woodrow Wilson’s stroke and its aftereffects from the autumn of 1919 until he left the White House in March 1921. Was Edith the first woman president? Did she serve the national interest with her handling of her husband’s medical condition? Miller addresses these and other related issues with a sure knowledge of the literature on Edith Wilson and with insights gained from her own research into primary sources. The result is a sensitive, gripping narrative of how private and public emotions interacted at a pivotal moment in the history of first ladies. No better introduction exists to how love and marriage shaped the triumphant and tragic elements in the life of Woodrow Wilson and his two first ladies. —Lew Gould This page intentionally left blank ...