Edith Wilson's "Stewardship"

If you were a member of the President's cabinet in 1919 had an urgent message for him, needed the President's signature or had a policy to discuss with him, you would not find yourself in front of the President with your inquiry, but instead you would be presenting it to his wife, Edith Wilson.

Now called the First Lady President, Edith Wilson did oversee the matters of this country for over a year after her husband, Woodrow Wilson, suffered from a stroke in September 1919.

The President was now partially paralyzed. He was bedridden and unable to perform the highly taxing job of running this country.

Edith insisted that Vice President Thomas Marshall should not take over the role of President because she believed it would crush her already weakened husband.

Without a second thought, Edith decided that she would serve as proxy for the President and she was certain that, in time, he would be well enough to begin his duties again.

To the country and the press, Edith's role was called a "stewardship" as the President needed rest and would be fulfilling his duties from his bedroom suite.

However, behind closed doors, the reality of the situation was very different than what was told to the public.

President Wilson's chief of staff Joe Tumulty said of Edith during this time, "When the great illness came she had to stand between him and the peril of exhaustion from official cares, yet she could not, like the more fortunately obscure, withdraw her husband from business altogether...Her high intelligence and her extraordinary memory enabled her to report to him daily...At the proper time, when he was least in pain and least exhausted, she would present a clear oral resume of each case and lay the documents before him in orderly arrangement."

Under Edith's careful eye, anything that the President needed to see went through her hands first. If she decided that the information was pressing enough, she would take it to her husband and, while there, she would read all of the documents to him. Working together, they would make notes and suggestions and the next morning, the First Lady would bring the paperwork back to the cabinet member.

Woodrow Wilson already had a fervent trust in his wife; even asking for her advice while they were courting. This partnership during his illness was natural to both of them.

She saw her role as keeping the President informed, but not overwhelmed as he recovered.

At times, it must have felt as if the weight of the world was on her shoulders while she worried about her husband's health and oversaw the details of the Executive branch.

But Joe Tumulty also said of her, "No public man ever had a more devoted helpmeet, and no wife a husband more dependent upon her sympathetic understanding of his problems... Mrs. Wilson's strong physical constitution, combined with strength of character and purpose, has sustained her under a strain which must have wrecked most women."

Up until her death, Edith insisted that she never assumed full power of the presidency.

She was merely being a loving helpmate to her husband who happened to be the President of the United States.