On the Road with President Woodrow Wilson 

By

Richard F. Weingroff 
Table of Contents

Table of Contents .................................................................................................... 2

Woodrow Wilson – Bicyclist .................................................................................. 1

At Princeton ............................................................................................................ 5

Early Views on the Automobile ............................................................................ 12

Governor Wilson ................................................................................................... 15

The Atlantic City Speech ...................................................................................... 20

Post Roads ......................................................................................................... 20

Good Roads ....................................................................................................... 21

President-Elect Wilson Returns to Bermuda ........................................................ 30

Last Days as Governor .......................................................................................... 37

The Oath of Office ................................................................................................ 46

President Wilson’s Automobile Rides .................................................................. 50

Summer Vacation – 1913 ...................................................................................... 61

Winter Vacation - 1913 ......................................................................................... 63

In Pass Christian ................................................................................................... 65

Back to Harlakenden House – 1914 ...................................................................... 76

Harlakenden House – 1915 ................................................................................... 81

The Big Announcement ........................................................................................ 93

The Wedding ....................................................................................................... 112

The Honeymoon .................................................................................................. 117

The Road Bill ...................................................................................................... 124

The AASHO Bill ................................................................................................. 131

The Final Push .................................................................................................... 134

Getting to Shadow Lawn ..................................................................................... 136

XII. Good Roads ............................................................................................. 140

Transportation ................................................................................................. 141

Supporting the President ..................................................................................... 145

President Wilson’s Front Porch Campaign ......................................................... 149

The Good Roads Speech in Indianapolis ............................................................ 153

The Second Term ................................................................................................ 166

The Post War Period ........................................................................................... 173

The 1920 Election ............................................................................................... 190

Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 198
1 

On the Road with President Woodrow Wilson 

President Woodrow Wilson initiated the Federal-aid highway program by signing 

the Federal Aid Road Act on July 11, 1916. He does not appear to have played a 

direct role in securing congressional approval, but his team at the Department of 

Agriculture, particularly Director Logan Waller Page of the Office of Public 

Roads and Rural Engineering, was influential. Nevertheless, President Wilson 

favored such a program because he understood, from personal experience, that it 

was needed.

For information on development of the 1916 Act, see “Creating of a Landmark” 

on this Web site at https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/highwayhistory/landmark.pdf

Woodrow Wilson – Bicyclist

On March 1, 1869, Thomas Woodrow Wilson, a 12-year old, saw the Hanlon 

brothers riding velocipedes on Broad Street in Augusta, Georgia. David V. 

Herlihy, the author of Bicycles: The History (Yale University Press, 2006), wrote 

in Adventure Cyclist magazine that Tommy, as he was known, “was practically an 

eyewitness” to the inception of the bicycle. “He may even have ridden the old 

boneshaker himself because two rinks flourished briefly near his home . . . .” 

Whether he tried the boneshaker is unknown, but Tommy was not gripped by the 

growing enthusiasm for bicycling that began with the introduction of the ordinary 

– the bicycle with a large front wheel and a small back wheel. Today, it is 

difficult to comprehend how extensive the Bicycle Craze of the 1880s and 1890s 

was following introduction of the ordinary or “English Bicycle.” The worldwide 

craze included the formation of city, State, and national bicycle clubs, such as the 

League of American Wheelmen (L.A.W.), the most influential of them; city 

bicycling free of trolley schedules and fares; construction of velodromes for 

learning, practice, and exercise, similar to the roller and ice skating rinks of a later 

era; bicycle racing, a sport that was as popular in its time as Nascar is today; 

bicycle sale and repair shops in every city, one of which was the source of income 

for Orville and Wilbur Wright as they developed the first self-propelled airplane 

to take flight; fashions, including the then-scandalous “bloomers” for women; 

opportunities for African Americans such as Marshall “Major” Taylor, one of the 

most famous bicycle racers in the world; and national advocacy by the L.A.W., 

bicycle makers, and “cranks” (fans) for good roads. The bicycle, in short, was a 

revolution. 

In 1883, while Woodrow was practicing law in Atlanta, his 16-year old brother 

Joseph (Josie) caught the bicycling fever in Wilmington, North Carolina. He 

bought a Columbia ordinary, one of the premier brands, and soon founded one of 
2 

the South’s early bicycle clubs. “Josie did his part for the cause, suing the State of 

North Carolina to give wheelmen access to a local turnpike.” 

He promoted the bicycle to his older brother in letter after letter (in one, he wrote 

“Hurrah!!!! For the bicycle”), but Woodrow was not persuaded: 

Woodrow did not truly fit the wheelman mold. For starters, he was not 

much of an athlete. At five feet 11 inches, he towered over his younger 

brother, and he had played some baseball in his college days, but both his 

eyesight and his general constitution were poor. Besides, he was 

approaching the 30-year milestone, an age when many wheelmen hung up 

their wheels to get on with life. Indeed, Woodrow was already dating the 

woman he would soon marry, Ellen Louise Axson. 

In 1884, when Joseph went to military school, he left his Columbia with 

Woodrow, hoping he would try bicycling. “Whether Woodrow ever dared to 

mount the Columbia and take it on a furtive spin or two is not known, [but] if he 

did, he never succumbed to ‘high wheel fever’”: 

And by 1887, it seemed that Woodrow would never cycle. He had married 

Ellen, become a father to the first of their three daughters, and was fully 

engaged in his new career as a university professor, teaching ancient 

history and international law. 

Joseph, returning from school, became the secretary-treasurer of the bicycle club 

and an agent for two bicycle companies, Columbia and Ridge. 

Woodrow, increasingly experiencing fatigue and headaches, believed that exercise 

might help him overcome his illnesses, but resisted the bicycle until a variation, 

called the “safety,” with same size wheels, arrived in the United States from 

England: 

Although it was at first widely dismissed as an eccentricity, the diminutive 

chain-driven bicycle from Great Britain quickly gained traction. With the 

adoption of pneumatic tires, the revamped bicycle was at last ready to 

deliver on its original promise to provide efficient, enjoyable—and 

reasonably safe transportation. It soon toppled the old high wheel and 

threw open the gates of the cycling kingdom to the general population. 

The safety reached the United States in 1882. 

As the safety displaced the ordinary, Joseph lost interest. “If he could no longer 

mount his ‘ordinary’ with his head held high, it was time to give up the sport 

altogether.” His older brother, however, finally caught the fever:
3 

Along with millions of others, Woodrow would get swept up by the great 

bicycle boom of the 1890s . . . . Woodrow probably purchased his first 

bicycle around 1894, after he had returned to Princeton as a professor. For 

the next 16 years or so, even after the bicycle had lost its cachet [to the 

automobile], and even after he had assumed the university’s highest 

administrative post, Woodrow continued to rely on his bicycle to get 

around campus. [Herlihy, David V., “Woodrow Wilson, Cyclist,” 

Adventure Cycling, June 2017.] 

At an unknown point, he joined the L.A.W., which published Good Roads

magazine monthly beginning in 1892 (“The Illustrated Monthly Magazine 

Devoted to the Public Roads and Streets”). All members received a free 

subscription to the magazine. Whether Wilson received and read the magazine is 

unknown, but what an author wrote in 1882 would hold true, namely that “the 

moment any person becomes a wheelman he is instantly and ardently convinced 

of the necessity for improved highways. Both his vote and his voice can be 

depended on . . . to support legislation to secure better roads and streets.” The 

sentiment behind this statement would inspire the Good Roads Movement of the 

1880s-1890s that accompanied the Bicycle Craze. [Bates, Lewis J, “Effect of the 

Bicycle on Our Highway Laws,” Wheeling, October 1882, page 40; cited in 

Mason, Phillip P., The League of American Wheelmen and the Good Roads 

Movement 1890-1905, M.A. Thesis, The American University, 1957, page 49]. 

(The L.A.W. sold the magazine to a private publisher, E. L. Powers, in 1895.] 

His often poor health took a bad turn in 1896, as A. Scott Berg wrote in his 2013 

biography: 

While writing a letter in 1891, Wilson had complained of difficulty in 

holding his pen. He thought little of it until late 1896, when pain shot 

down his right arm, his hand froze, and some of his fingers became numb. 

He was alarmed enough to consult a doctor in Philadelphia. The 

physician, probably not fully apprised of the professional and financial 

pressures under which Wilson had been toiling, dismissed the condition as 

“writer’s cramp.” Looking back on Wilson’s medical history with a 

century of hindsight and knowledge, later experts would presume an 

occlusion of his left middle cerebral artery. In other words, Woodrow 

Wilson had evidently suffered a small stroke. 

The prescription for the 39-year old Wilson was a break from the pressures he 

faced, especially from writing, and he took advantage of the opportunity to spend 

9 weeks in Scotland and England. Ellen, with her daughters to look after, 

declined to go, but she urged him to bicycle his way back to health. 
4 

The 12-day trip across the Atlantic Ocean on the S.S. Ethiopia “proved tonic. His 

writing hand rested completely, as his ambidexterity allowed him to take up a 

pencil with his left.” [Berg, A. Scott, Wilson, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2013, pages 

124-125] 

By the time the ship docked in Glasgow, Wilson had made friends with Charles 

A. Woods and his wife from Marion, South Carolina. The new friends toured 

Glasgow and Edinburgh before bicycling 100 miles southeast to Carlisle, his 

mother’s birthplace, stopping in Ayr and Dumfries. 

In Carlisle, he searched for his maternal grandfather’s home or church and his 

mother’s birthplace, and while the hunt was not successful, he found the 

Caledonian air “exhilarating and entertaining.” With his friends delayed by 

bicycle repairs, Wilson took the train to Keswick, then bicycled to Grasmere in 

the Lake District, describing the ride as “16 enchanting miles.” 

The Woods caught up Wilson in the Lake District. 

The trio continued southeast to York. From there, Woodrow cycled some 

200 miles to London before taking a train back to Glasgow to board his 

homeward-bound steamship. He had enjoyed his first cycle tour 

immensely, especially his visit to the Lake District. [Herlihy] 

The Lake District of England would entrance Wilson. A recent guide to the area 

stated:

The compact and easily accessible corner of the North West is packed with 

the best of everything that England has to offer including cycling. It has 

all of the land over 914m (3000 feet) with England’s highest summits, the 

largest and deepest lakes and rare wildlife such as red squirrels, nesting 

osprey and a solitary golden eagle that desperately needs a mate. The 

scenery was wild and dramatic before man arrived, first settling in the 

fertile valleys to grow crops and rear cattle, and then venturing into the 

fells to mine copper, lead and other ores. By medieval times the region 

was criss-crossed by packhorse tracks that linked the main commercial 

centres of Ambleside and Keswick with the outside world. Over time 

these tracks became the roads we know today. Some have very steep 

gradients and cross the highest pass in England providing cyclists with 

challenging rides amid stunning scenery . . . . 

Despite being called Lake District, there is only one lake – Bassenthwaite Lake – 

everything else being ‘waters’, ‘meres’ or, in the case of the smaller expanses of 

water, ‘tarns’. [Barnett, Richard, Introduction, Cycling in the Lake District: 

Week-Long Tours and Day Rides, Cicerone, 2016] 
5 

Wilson returned to England in 1899, this time with Ellen’s brother Stockton: 

Woodrow even joined the Cyclists’ Touring Club so that the two could 

enjoy discounts at certain hotels and restaurants. His surviving clubissued Pocket Record reveals that his mount was an 1899 Columbia Model 

59, purchased for $75. 

After they discovered that Stockton could not keep up with his brother-in-law, 

“Woodrow graciously insisted that they do most of their travels by train, with the 

bicycles stored in the baggage car.” In the Lake District, they continued their 

bicycle touring: 

Wilson wrote to Ellen that he and Stockton had just ridden along “the 

most beautiful road in the world” as they followed the River Eamont. He 

also described the “perfect” conditions they had enjoyed, including “keen 

fresh air out of the West [and] intense sunlight and quick moving shadows, 

showing every peak and line of the mountains, every sloping shore, every 

home, or group of trees or herd of cattle . . . . 

He added that the trip was therapeutic. Once again in need of rest, he found 

“unspeakable peace” in a restful change from his hectic world. 

Stockton felt bad about holding up his brother-in-law who “loved his bicycle, 

loved the rides along the fine British roads, and had looked forward to the ride 

from Edinburgh to southern England, all by wheel.” In Surrey, England, Stockton 

stayed behind to let Woodrow enjoy bicycling around England. 

Berg summarized the trip: 

At Ellen’s insistence, he took another vacation, cycling through Cumbria 

with her brother Stockton. Woodrow retraced much of the itinerary of his 

first trip abroad . . . . Although he enjoyed a brief detour to Ireland—

roaming the quads of Trinity College in Dublin in search of Burke’s 

spirit—and shed tears in St. Giles’s Church in Edinburgh, where he heard 

the very hymns his mother had sung to him—there remained “no spot in 

the world in which I am so completely at rest and peace,” he said, “as in 

the lake country.” [Berg, page 133] 

He returned home refreshed.

At Princeton

In June 1902, Woodrow Wilson became the 13th president of Princeton, where his 

bicycle became his primary mode of transportation: 
6 

While others were turning to various forms of motorized transportation, 

Woodrow remained true to the bicycle. One evening, a student was riding 

his motorbike through the distant outskirts of Princeton and spotted the 

university president dutifully pedaling his bicycle home. The surprised 

young man offered Wilson a tow, which the professor sheepishly accepted 

on the condition that he be released just before they reached the campus so 

that he would not risk being recognized or humiliated. [Herlihy]

Wilson would return to the Lake District in 1903. This time, however, Ellen 

accompanied him, making the cycling of earlier visits impossible. They toured 

England and Scotland, crossed the Channel to France, Italy, and Switzerland 

On May 28, 1906, Wilson awakened without sight in his left eye, pain in his left 

shoulder, and some paralysis in his right hand. With Ellen, he visited his 

Philadelphia ophthalmologist, Dr. George de Schweinitz, who diagnosed a blood 

clot and rupture in the eye. Recalling previous symptoms, Dr. de Schweinitz “saw 

a graver medical picture.” He was concerned about the flow of blood in the 

carotid artery. Hardening of the arteries was involved, but really it was another 

stroke. The prescription was rest. [Berg, page 150] 

He turned over his responsibilities at Princeton to an acting president, and 

returned to the Lake Country with his family, once again for a bicycle-less 

vacation. Staying in the two-story Loughrigg Cottage in Rydal, they enjoyed a 

relaxing vacation:

He and Ellen visited all the [William] Woodworth haunts, at which she 

frequently opened her paint box; with his daughters, he walked the 

neighboring “fells,” clearing his head when he was not losing himself in 

conversations with local shepherds. He hiked as much as fourteen miles 

some days. 

He wrote to a friend, “No doubt God could have made a lovelier country than this 

Lake District, but I cannot believe he ever did.” 

He visited an oculist in Edinburgh who found Wilson’s eye restored enough to 

resume reading, “though he noted a scotoma, a blind spot to which Wilson was 

already adapting.” He could return to work. The family returned to Princeton in 

early October. [Berg, pages 142-153] 

Biographer Arthur Walworth summarized the medical results:

His left eye never recovered fully, in spite of his assurance to his wife that 

he would train it to behave. His hand still bothered him, but a pen with a 

large handle was made to relieve the pain of writing. After meals a bottle 

of whiskey was set beside him and he measured out a medicinal dose, then 
7 

apologized roguishly to his family for not sharing his liquor with them. By 

pruning his engagement calendar, systematizing his work, and insisting on 

ample sleep, he was able to take up his task again. [Walworth, Arthur, 

Part 1, Woodrow Wilson, Penguin Books, Inc., 1969 (Revised Edition), 

pages 98-99] 

After a few months of working too hard, he was again in need of rest. Ellen 

insisted he follow doctor’s orders and take a solo vacation to Bermuda. He asked 

Ellen to accompany him, but she said she must stay home “like the fixtures.” 

[Walworth, part 1, page 99] 

He arrived in Bermuda in January 1907. Berg described his activities as “studying 

and loafing”: 

In the mornings, he composed outlines for the short lecture series on 

government he had agreed to give at Columbia; in the afternoons, he 

strolled the waterfront, explored the island on bicycle; or viewed the 

surrounding sea and reefs in glass-bottom boats. 

At a dinner party he met Mary Allen Hulbert Peck. Her first husband had died, 

and she was about to divorce her second husband. They formed an instant 

friendship that he always claimed was platonic. Wilson left the island 2 days after 

the meeting. [Walworth, pages 98-100] 

After losing a frustrating battle regarding social conditions at the university, 

Wilson once again experienced numbness and pain in his right arm and shoulder 

attributed to neuritis. He again sailed for Bermuda on January 18, 1908. 

According to Berg, he “felt unmoored,” not only because of the dispute he had 

lost, but because he and Ellen, for the first time in 20 years, “faced an empty 

nest.” As Berg explained, their three daughters had moved away to live their lives

apart from their parents: 

With the loss . . . melancholia frequently overcame Ellen. She sometimes 

needed to put distance between herself and Woodrow. When he went 

away, she took to visiting relatives in Georgia. 

No sooner had the Bermudian docked and Wilson checked into the Hotel 

Hamilton than he went in search of Mrs. Peck. [Berg, pages 167-168] 

He would enjoy visiting with her and also met her friend, Samuel L. Clemens, 

better known as Mark Twain. For Twain, Bermuda was a magical place. Starting 

in 1867, he visited the island eight times; his time there added up to about 6 

months. It was, as author Daniel Hoffman wrote in his book about Twain’s 

fascination with the island, “a great deal of time for a man so constitutionally 
8 

restless.” [Hoffman, Donald, Mark Twain in Paradise: His Voyages to Bermuda, 

University of Missouri Press, 2006, page 1] 

Twain wrote about Bermuda in articles and his rambling autobiography. Based on 

his visit in 1877, he wrote about the island’s roads: 

Take any road you please, you may depend upon it you will not stay in it 

half a mile. Your road is everything that a road ought to be: it is bordered 

with trees, and with strange plants and flowers; it is shady and pleasant . . . 

it carries you by the prettiest and peacefulest and most home-like of 

homes, and through stretches of forest that lie in a deep hush sometimes, 

and sometimes are alive with the music of birds; it curves always, which is 

a continual promise, whereas straight roads reveal everything at a glance 

and kill interest.

Your road is all this, and yet you will not stay in it half a mile, for the 

reason that little seductive, mysterious roads are always branching out 

from it on either hand, and as these curve sharply also and hide what is 

beyond, you cannot resist the temptation to desert your own chosen road 

and explore them. You are usually paid for your trouble; consequently, 

your walk inland always turns out to be one of the most crooked, involved, 

purposeless, and interesting experiences a body can imagine. [Quoted in 

Hoffman, page 43] 

After returning to New York City after a stay in Bermuda in 1907, Twain returned 

for a quick trip in March. During this quick trip, Twain had met Mrs. Peck, who 

had spent the winter on the island as her marriage dissolved. She had met 

Woodrow Wilson, just a few days earlier. [Hoffman, page 79] 

After Ellen Wilson insisted that her husband stick to a good-health plan of taking 

a winter vacation, he returned to Bermuda in 1908, arriving on January 20. He 

soon resumed his friendship with Mrs. Peck. Through her, he met Twain at her 

island home, Shoreby: 

Clemens and Wilson shared a spicy meal at Shoreby, but at coffee 

Wilson’s high-minded talk about government left Clemens bored. 

[Hoffman, page 96] 

According to Walworth, Wilson enjoyed the near-daily company of Mrs. Peck: 

In Bermuda, Wilson loved the company of Mark Twain, too, and would 

spend mornings with him over croquet, or a game of miniature golf of 

their own invention. Though the humorist and his friend [wealthy 

industrialist] H. H. Rogers cut capers and clowned together, they put on 

party manners when the president of Princeton approached. This made it 
9 

hard for him to lose his dignity in the carefree, boyish play of which he 

seemed never to have had enough. He could not cut loose from his 

position. [Walworth, part 1, pages 100-101] 

(Miniature golf took place on a putting green with nine holes at a time when 

Bermuda did not have a full golf course.) 

One thing that Twain and Wilson agreed on was the bad influence of the 

automobile on the island. A few small automobiles had been imported to 

Bermuda by then, along with a motorized omnibus, nicknamed the “Scarlet 

Runner.” Stable owners complained that the omnibus went too fast, frightened 

the horses, and created unsafe conditions on the island’s roads. 

Then, in March 1906, wealthy newspaper publisher James Gordon Bennett had 

shipped a large and expensive French automobile, a De Dion-Bouton, to Hamilton 

harbor on his luxurious steam yacht, the Lysistrata. Writer Keith Archibald 

Forbes wrote: 

It bumped noisily over the unpaved roads of the town while amazed 

Bermudians gawked wide eyed from every window and droves of panting 

schoolboys raced behind it. It traveled at an average rate of 15 miles an 

hour, much faster than any horse and carriage in Bermuda could reach and 

sustain. Schoolboys loved it but there were many others who were not 

amused, whose horses were frightened, or who had nightmares that 

“horseless carriages” would drive away very important visitors like Mark 

Twain. [Forbes, Keith Archibald, “Mark Twain and Bermuda,” Bermuda 

Online at http://www.bermuda-online.org/twain.htm] 

“Bennett’s noisy, smelly motor car” prompted a campaign, led by Wilson, to ban 

motorized vehicles from the island. He wrote a petition to the Bermuda 

legislature:

We, the undersigned, visitors to Bermuda, venture respectfully to express 

the opinion that the admission of automobiles to the island would alter the 

whole character of the place . . . 

The island now attracts visitors in considerable numbers because of the 

quiet and dignified simplicity of its life. It derives its principal charm 

from its utter detachment from the world of strenuous business and 

feverish pleasure in which most of us are obliged to spend the great part of 

our time . . . . [W]e are confident that the free introduction of such 

vehicles, especially by visitors, would in the mind of everyone capable of 

appreciating the natural and wholesome pleasures of the place make it a 

place to shun rather than to resort to . . . . 
10 

The danger to be apprehended is chiefly from reckless tourists who would 

care nothing for local opinion or for the convenience and safety of others. 

This is one of the last refuges now left in the world to which one can come 

to escape such persons. It would, in our opinion, be a fatal error to attract 

to Bermuda the extravagant and sporting set who have made so many 

other places of pleasure entirely intolerable to persons of taste and 

cultivation. [Hoffman, pages 98-99] 

The comment about the “extravagant and sporting set” was a direct reference to 

Bennett, his yacht, and the automobile it had carried.

The petition appeared in the island newspaper, the Royal Gazette, on February 1. 

On February 4, the newspaper carried a letter signed “Americus” that called the 

automobile “the worst affliction that has cursed the world since the beginning of 

civilization.” Citing one example, Americus explained that at least the Spanish 

Inquisition had as justification “the salvation of souls, but there is no possible 

excuse for the use of the mercilessly murderous automobiles because they are 

employed solely for the personal gratification of individuals whose frenzied desire 

for pleasure cannot be satisfied without the excitement of some pursuit which will 

bring them continuously face to face with danger to life and limb.” As if that 

were not bad enough, “In many instance homes and farms are mortgaged to obtain 

the means for the gratification of the monstrous.” [Hoffman, page 97. Hoffman 

did not speculate on the identify of Americus.] 

Forbes described a different process for the petition. Twain and Wilson 

abandoned their golf games:

They drafted a petition to the Bermuda Legislature demanding that 

motorized vehicles be totally banned in Bermuda . . . . Wilson and Twain 

lobbied local legislators extensively to ensure the success of their petition. 

It was effective. It was helped hugely by the fact that in 1908 the first bus 

on the island . . . frightened . . . . a horse, causing a doctor to be tossed to 

the ground. That incident is believed to have been one of the catalysts – 

Mark Twain in Bermuda was another – that led to the passing of a law that 

would ban all motor vehicles from Bermuda’s roads. 

The assembly and Governor approved the Motor Car Act of 1908, which banned 

all motor vehicles from Bermuda. The ban remained in effect until 1946. 

[Forbes] 

That summer, at Ellen’s insistence, Wilson returned to the Lake District, this time 

alone. “This would allow him to cycle his way back to health,” but also prevent 

him from returning to Bermuda to renew his friendship with Mary Hulbert: 
11 

Woodrow admitted to her that his affair was “indiscrete,” but he insisted 

that it was “not improper.” He agreed, nevertheless, to abide by Ellen’s 

proposal. After all, now that he was in his early 50s and in the midst of a 

full-blown mid-life crisis, there was much he could ponder on a third cycle 

trip: his poor health, his troubled marriage, his three growing daughters, 

and his increasingly rocky tenure at Princeton—not to mention his as yet 

unfulfilled political ambitions.

Arriving in Glasgow, he retrieved his bicycle for brief trips to Sterling and 

Edinburgh. After arriving by train in Lockerbie, “he began to cycle in earnest.” 

His bicycle took him to Carlisle, through Penrith to Keswick, Grasmere, and 

Coniston. He took the train to Drigg, then took a 2-day ride around the Western 

Lakes. After a stay in Glasmere, he returned to Glascow where he boarded a 

steamship bound for home, “a fully recharged man.”

[Unless otherwise cited, all quotes are from Herlihy. Discussion of the Lake 

District visits was supplemented with information in Barnett, Richard, “Woodrow 

Wilson on Wheels,” Cycling in the Lake District, page 30] 

Author Carlton Reid discussed how Wilson’s bicycle travels helped him 

understand the need for good roads: 

It’s almost certain that Wilson’s interest in Good Roads started when he 

was a cyclist . . . . 

Wilson spent many vacations cycle touring in northern England, including 

the Lake District. (His mother was born in Carlisle, north of the Lakes.) 

England’s rural roads of the late 1890s, especially the main ones, were 

mostly covered in tightly-compacted small stones – the macadam system – 

and, by and large, were far superior to the roads Wilson would have been 

used to in America. His cycle tours in Europe would have impressed on 

him the need for better roads, the clamour for which was led by the 

Cyclists’ Touring Club in Britain and the League of American Wheelmen 

in the US. LAW’s ‘Good Roads’ movement – a movement later 

commandeered by motorists who claimed it as their own – was modelled 

on the Roads Improvement Association, founded by the Cyclists’ Touring 

Club and the National Cyclists’ Union in 1886. 

Lobbying by cyclists in the 1890s saw many improvements made to roads, 

although on neither side of the Atlantic was there national administration 

for roads. Roads were deemed to be of local concern only, something 

cyclists worked hard to change, long before motorists came on the scene. 

[Reid, Carlton, “A Cycle Touring US President Kickstarted the Paving of 

America,” The Blog, September 11, 2013 - 
12 

http://www.roadswerenotbuiltforcars.com/wilson/ and Reid, Carlton, 

Roads Were Not Built For Cars: How Bicyclists were the First to Push 

for Rood Roads & Became the Pioneers of Motoring, Island Press, 2015, 

page 47] 

Early Views on the Automobile

President Wilson of Princeton University gave a speech on “The Young Man’s 

Burden” before the North Carolina Society of New York at the Waldorf-Astoria 

Hotel on February 27, 1906. His speech covered several topics, including the 

automobile, where his preference for the bicycle appears to have affected his 

observations: 

I think that of all the menaces to-day, the worst is the reckless driving in 

automobiles. In this the rights of the people are set at naught. When a 

child is run over the automobilist doesn’t stop, but runs away. Does the 

father of that child consider him heartless? I don’t blame him if he gets a 

gun. I am a Southerner [born on December 28, 1856, in Staunton, 

Virginia] and know how to shoot. Would you blame me if I did so under 

such circumstances?

In these comments, he was not rejecting automobiles, but reflecting the 

contemporary concerns about the unintended consequences of the benefits of 

automobiles, in this case fatalities.

He added, in a statement often quoted in histories of the automobile, “Nothing has 

spread socialistic feeling in this country more than the use of automobiles. To the 

countryman they are a picture of arrogance of wealth, with all its independence 

and carelessness.” 

He concluded his speech: 

I don’t believe you realize the growth of socialism in this country. To stop 

it you must do more and better thinking. You must sit tight and stand pat, 

for perhaps you don’t know the beast you are riding. [“Wilson Blames 

Speeders,” The New York Times, February 28, 1906] 

In a time when automobiles shared roads with bicycles, horses, wagons, and 

pedestrians, Wilson’s comments reflected a widespread class division. In the 

1890s and early 1900s, farmers resented the “peacocks” on their bicycles, then in 

their automobiles, who could afford to buy their “machines,” as they were often 

called in those days, and had the leisure time to cruise along the primitive country 

roads scaring horses. Author Carlton Reid explained: 
13 

Working class people felt embittered that they were being shunted to the 

margins of the road by “rich mens’ toys.” Pioneer motorists were pelted 

with stones. There are many recorded examples of this from Germany and 

Switzerland, but missile-throwing was endemic in the Netherlands, 

claimed a German woman motorist, who recorded in her diary in 1905 that 

“a journey by automobile through Holland is dangerous, since most of the 

rural population hates motorists fanatically. We even encountered older 

men, their faces contorted with anger, who, without any provocation, 

threw fist-sized stones at us.” 

Motorists were physically attacked in America, too. Between 1903 and 

1907, farmers shot at motor cars in Minnesota; motorists were pulled from 

their vehicles in Wisconsin; and in rural New York motorists were 

whipped. Roads were sometimes booby-trapped with rakes, glass or tacks 

and ropes or barbed wire were strung across rural roads known to attract 

“scorchers.” [Reid, page 47] 

(“Scorchers” had become a common term for speeding bicyclists, and survived in 

that meaning into the early days of the motor age.) 

Although the spread of socialism was a public concern, automobilists rejected 

Wilson’s linkage of the automobile to the movement. John Parson, a Chicago 

banker who was president of the American Automobile Association (AAA), urged 

Wilson to travel through the Midwest: 

The very opposite of President Wilson’s statement is practically true in the 

farming districts of the West. The small machines that have been built in 

such large numbers recently and that may be purchased for from $750 to 

$1,250 are being used to a large extent in the West, and the discovery by 

the rural residents that these cars can be relied upon for hard usage has 

occasioned a more friendly feeling toward automobiles in general.

Scores of well-to-do farmers are now automobile owners, and where three 

years ago the horseless vehicle was regarded with suspicion, entirely 

different sentiments are entertained now. Just as soon as any class of 

people realize that the automobile is useful for the ordinary work and 

duties of life apart from its pleasurable attributes as a touring car, it will be 

regarded with favor, and this feeling is growing all the time in the 

agricultural parts of the West.

An unnamed New Jersey automobilist who had taken a long trip through Maine 

had expected people in some parts of the State to have never heard of an 

automobile, but found them in use statewide: 
14 

I remember one long, dreary stretch of road over which I traveled with 

some difficulty, not far from the Canadian border, where there were only 

eighteen houses in about fifty miles. I was pleased to see that these 

backwoods residents exhibited considerable interest in my machine, but I 

soon ascertained the reason. The owners of eleven of those eighteen 

homes kept automobiles. One of the most intelligent residents owned an 

old-fashioned second-hand car that he had bought somewhere down in 

Maine, but he kept it in good repair and had found it much cheaper than 

horses. 

“Well, you see, it’s like this,” he said to me, “nearly every house on the 

road is a sort of sportsman’s headquarters, and there’s nothing that catches 

the Summer resorters so much as to tell them we will meet them at the 

station a dozen miles or more away with an automobile. It tickles their 

fancy and makes good business. Then, when my automobile is not at 

work, it stands in a shed and costs nothing to keep. 

Not much socialism in that up in Maine. I could cite scores of cases in 

New Jersey where farmers who two years ago could not say enough 

against automobiles are now motor car owners themselves. 

E. S. Partridge of the Decauville Automobile Company discussed Wilson’s views 

on socialism from a manufacturer’s point of view: 

I trust that President Wilson will not request us to abandon a pastime that 

has practically revolutionized traffic and done so much for the commercial 

world. We have become accustomed to the outburst from time to time of 

occasionally discontented minds not familiar with the subject of 

automobiling, and have allowed these attacks to go unanswered, but as a 

matter of cold fact if any one will investigate he will find that there are not 

as many crazy drivers of automobiles as there are crazy drivers of horses, 

bicycles, or other vehicles. [“Motorists Don’t Make Socialists, They Say,” 

The New York Times, March 4, 1906] 

Despite these denials, Professor James J. Frink in a 1970 book about the adoption 

of the automobile found that at the time of Wilson’s comments, farmers had 

mixed reactions to the motor vehicle:

Early assessments of farmers’ opinion of the motor vehicle by the 

automobile trade journals found little prejudice against the innovation. At 

the turn of the century, Horseless Age found it “gratifying to learn that the 

farmers in many sections of the country are taking a very sensible attitude 

toward the automobile. Recognizing it as the inevitable, soon to be as 

common on our roads as the horse vehicles, they are improving every 
15 

opportunity to accustom their horses to it . . . this is a very hopeful sign 

and proves that more than half the battle for the automobile in rural 

districts is already won” . . . . 

The ire of farmers was unexpectedly aroused against the automobile, 

however, with the advent of widespread informal automobile touring 

during the summer of 1904. Speeding automobile tourists constituted a 

danger both to stock and to horsedrawn traffic and raised clouds of dust 

that damaged crops and settled on farmhouses, barns, and washes hung out 

to dry. These problems were much more severe in rural than in urban 

areas because of the absence of the traffic congestion that reduced speed in 

cities and because of the general lack of any paving whatever on country 

roads. Moreover, in 1904 the farmer could not easily anticipate owning an 

automobile himself soon, for most reputable manufacturers made no 

serious attempt to design cars suited to the farmers’ needs and purses until 

forced to by the apparent saturation of the urban luxury market about 

1906. 

As these comments suggest, farmers gradually embraced the automobile:

Each year farmers [became] more familiar with the motor vehicle, aware 

of its advantages over the horse, and anxious to purchase cars themselves. 

The increasing prosperity of farmers, combined with the appearance of 

rugged, moderately priced cars such as the Ford Model N [1906] and 

Model T [1908], led to the rapid development of a substantial rural market 

for motor vehicles after 1906. The hostility toward the automobile that 

had arisen in rural areas diminished appreciably. [Flink, James J., 

America Adopts the Automobile, 1895-1910, The MIT Press, 1970, pages 

66-70] 

Professor John B. Rae added: 

Mr. Wilson was reflecting the frequent propensity of the intellectual to 

express his concern for the common man by undertaking to determine 

what the common man should go without. As it turned out, he was wrong 

about the automobile, but he was wrong only because there were enough 

other individuals in the United States with the foresight to see what the 

motor vehicle might become and the willingness to take enormous risks to 

reach their goals. [Rae, John B., The Road and the Car in American Life, 

The MIT Press, 1971, page 43] 

Governor Wilson 
16 

Woodrow Wilson was governor of New Jersey for a little over 2 years – January 

7, 1911, to March 1, 1913. He focused on fiscal and business issues, and as a 

candidate for President by late 1911, traveled around the country giving speeches. 

Nevertheless, Governor Wilson took several steps to advance the cause of good 

roads. A history of the State’s road network summarized: 

The administration of Democratic Governor Woodrow Wilson “ushered in 

an era of reform that reflected the Progressives’ objective of using 

apolitical specialists, or experts, and the scientific approach to solving 

social and technical problems. In theory, the learned replaced the political 

cronies as the setters of policy, with inefficiency and corruption replaced 

by honest, efficient administration.” 

(The quotation is from A. G. Lichtenstein and Associates, Inc., The New Jersey 

Historic Bridge Survey, Prepared for the New Jersey Department of 

Transportation, Bureau of Environmental Analysis and the Federal Highway 

Administration, NJ Division, 1994, page 41.). 

Governor Wilson chose Colonel Edwin A. Stevens to be Commissioner of Public 

Roads. Colonel Stevens was a graduate of Princeton (1879) where he was a 

classmate and friend of “Tommy” Wilson. After graduation, Stevens received a 

degree of civil engineering from the Stevens Institute of Technology, founded by 

his family. He earned the title of Colonel with the Second Regiment of the New 

Jersey National Guard, which he commanded for 6 years. He would become wellknown nationally among roadbuilders, serving as president of the American Road 

Builders’ Association in 1916. 

The history added: 

During Stevens’ tenure from 1911 to 1918, he transformed the department 

into a place of studied innovation in highway construction. Increases in 

staff and funding allowed Stevens to approach the state’s roadwork needs 

in a professional, business-like manner, appropriate to the increasing 

importance of the road network to New Jersey’s commerce. As Stevens 

pointed out in his 1914 report, “the whole tendency of road legislation in 

this and other states is towards a more centralized control. Roads have 

become matters of general and no longer of merely local interest.” As 

such, Stevens instituted uniform standards for construction and 

maintenance, undertook bridge construction projects across the state, and 

ushered in the era of the New Jersey state highway system.

Although Woodrow Wilson never learned to drive an automobile, he became a 

motorist after winning election as Governor. From his bicycling days, he knew 

the value of good roads, but his experiences as a motorist reinforced that 

knowledge. For example, on March 18, 1912, he was motoring from a dinner of 
17 

the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick at the Hotel Montclair to the Princeton Inn in 

Princeton. He was in Montclair Mayor Ernest C. Hinck’s automobile, 

accompanied by John L. Cox. They left for Princeton around 1 a.m.: 

As the night was intensely dark a message was sent to Chief of Police 

Kiely, asking that a policeman be assigned to act as guide over the roads 

from Plainfield to Princeton.

The journey to Plainfield was accomplished in safety, but after striking out 

from that town the chauffeur steered into a badly mired road. The big 

limousine floundered in the bog and it became necessary for Gov. Wilson 

and his companions to alight and wade about in the mud and water until 

the chauffeur extricated the car. In the darkness the members of the party 

could not see each other as they plodded along the bad stretch of road, and 

when they could board the car again they were unable to get their bearings 

for a time. Finally the automobile reached New Brunswick, far out of the 

shortest route to Princeton. The Governor arrived home about 5 o’clock in 

the morning. [“Gov. Wilson Lost in Jersey,” The New York Times, March 

19, 1912] 

During a little over 2 years in office, Governor Wilson took several steps to 

improve motoring in New Jersey. One of the most important was signing 

legislation in 1912 that called for the State to establish a 1,500-mile State highway 

system. As Colonel Stevens explained in his annual report for 1912: 

The law of 1912 in effect divides our roads, exclusively of city streets, into 

three classes: The State highway, the county road and the municipal road. 

The roads in these classes should vary in respective importance according 

to their classification.

The State highways, when taken over, can be efficiently maintained with 

the present organization and an enlarged force, as soon as adequate 

appropriations are available. [“Road Work of 1912 In New Jersey,” The 

New York Times, January 5, 1913] 

Legislation in 1913, as Stevens said in a statement, “directed the immediate taking 

over of 500 miles of State highways and made appropriation for carrying out this 

work”: 

Taking over the State highways will involve a great deal of organization 

work. I have recommended in the past to the Highway Commission that 

these roads as taken over should be surveyed and the State placed in 

possession of accurate data in reference thereto. This data we have as to a 

few of the more recently improved roads only, and it will be necessary to 
18 

secure it as to all the others. The amount of road to be surveyed will be in 

the neighborhood of 500 miles. [“New Laws Affect Jersey Highways,” 

The New York Times, April 27, 1913] 

The State under Governor Wilson also took a major step on reciprocity. As the 

Nation adapted to the automobile, States began collecting revenue from licensing 

vehicles. Each State had to decide whether to honor the tags from other States, 

the objection being that motorists with tags from one State did not provide 

revenue for upkeep of the roads used in other States. In the absence of reciprocity, 

a motorist had to secure a license plate for each jurisdiction his or her vehicle 

passed through. Professor Flink described the result: 

A welter of license plates flapping from the rear end of a fleeing 

automobile made identification of the car, the main reasons for registration 

to begin with, almost impossible . . . . Automobilists ideally wanted 

regulation of the motor vehicle by the federal government, including a 

single federal license that would be valid in all states and uniform speed 

limits throughout the country 

As early as 1902, the National Association of Automobile Manufacturers 

petitioned Congress for such legislation, but without success. Beginning in 1905, 

the necessary bills were introduced in every Congress, but never emerged from 

committee:

A national legislative convention held in Washington, D.C., in February 

1910 marked the high point of efforts to secure federal motor vehicle 

legislation, but by then the need for a single, national license had been 

fairly well obviated by the general adoption of interstate reciprocity 

provisions and a trend toward increased uniformity in the motor vehicle 

laws of the various states. [Flink, pages 172-173] 

On August 22, 1911, Governor Wilson met with a AAA delegation headed by 

A. G. Batchelor, chairman of the association’s executive committee. According 

to the Times, “the Executive told the motorists he was heartily in favor of real auto 

reciprocity between the States and would do all in his power to push down the 

anti-reciprocity wall about New Jersey.” The 1912 State legislature approved 

what was called the Stickel bill. Governor Wilson signed the bill into law on 

April 2 and welcomed a Connecticut motorist, tag No. 3444. “A handshake with 

the Governor, and the man from Connecticut scurried outside to his car, removed 

his New Jersey license, and proceeded forthwith without hesitancy until he met 

the first policeman to whom he successfully explained the astounding fact that 

nonresident motorists were now welcome in the Commonwealth.” 
19 

Under the law, a motorist from another State that had a reciprocity law could drive 

in New Jersey for 15 days a year. Those staying for a longer period would have to 

pay the regular license fee based on horsepower. [“Favors Auto Reciprocity,” The 

New York Times, August 23, 1911; “Autoists Pleased With Jersey Law,” The New 

York Times, April 7, 1912; “New Jersey Auto Bill Signed,” The Washington Post, 

April 3, 1912] 

(The Supreme Court ruled on this matter in a case sponsored by AAA in 1908 

when a New York motorist, Frank J. Kane, was arrested in New Jersey for not 

displaying local tags. On December 4, 1916, the Supreme Court ruled that the 

States had the power to regulate and tax automobiles within their borders; the 

arrest was constitutional. “The power of the state, in the absence of national 

legislation upon the subject, to regulate the use of its highways by motor vehicles 

moving in interstate commerce applies as well to such as are moving through the 

state as to such as are moving into it only. As applied to vehicles of nonresidents 

moving in interstate commerce as well as to vehicles of residents, the amount of 

the registration fee may properly be based not only on the cost of inspection and 

regulation, but also on the cost of maintaining improved roads.” [Bromley, 

Michael L., William Howard Taft and the First Motoring Presidency, McFarland 

& Company, 2003, page 235; Kane v. New Jersey 242 U.S. 160 (1916)]

(The White House had to address reciprocity when President William Howard 

Taft introduced the first automobiles as an alternative to the horses used by all 

previous Presidents. As Michael L. Bromley explained in his book about 

President Taft’s introduction of the automobiles to the White House: 

It subjected Taft to one of the most vexing problems of early motoring, 

federalism. Not even the President of the United States could run his 

motors without permission of the locals. Or, could he? Or did his auto, 

like the English King’s, “have more rights and privileges than a fire 

engine”?

(Initially, the White House registered its four automobiles and two Secret Services 

automobiles in the President’s home State of Massachusetts as well as in 

Maryland and Virginia. (The District of Columbia did not have a licensing law.) 

However, in 1911, the White House submitted requests for its permits for the 

year, but did not include the fee ($2 per driver, $6 for automobiles of less than 20 

horsepower, $12 for 20-40 horsepower, and $18 for over 40 horsepower). Both 

States refused to issue the permits without payment of the fee. 

(Maryland State Motor Vehicle Commissioner John K. George said, “Mr. Taft is 

president, I know, but all automobiles look alike to me.” State law exempted 

Maryland’s official vehicles, but was silent on White House automobiles. “I 

might trust the President of the United States for the amount, but I’ll wait till I get 
20 

the cash.” He rebuked Sheriff William E. Vlett of Montgomery County, adjacent 

to the District, when he did not arrest Vice President James S. Sherman for 

motoring into Maryland without State tags. George said, “I don’t want that to 

happen again. Princes, potentates, Presidents and Vice President look alike to me 

in this automobile business.” [“Begin War On Autos,” The Washington Post, 

January 11, 1911] 

(The White House argued that the Supreme Court had ruled that State and local 

jurisdictions could not tax government vehicles while they were performing 

proper government functions. Therefore, no fees were due. In Massachusetts, a 

similar dispute had been resolved when Governor Eben S. Draper paid the fee for 

the President’s automobiles. A diplomatic solution also occurred for Maryland 

and Virginia: 

The issue was resolved by executive fiat, just as in Massachusetts earlier. 

The states, said the White House, “reconsidered the matter.” The 

Secretary of Virginia announced that “satisfactory arrangements” were 

discovered. What it was was peace with honor. The governors of 

Maryland and Virginia settled up without admitting defeat. “Regardless of 

the law,” [Governor August L.] Crothers of Maryland said, “I have to-day 

directed that the tags be sent to President Taft for his four automobiles and 

that no charge be made for them. I think it is a courtesy due the Executive 

from a sovereign state that forms a part of the Commonwealth of the 

Nation.” 

(Governor Crothers’ directive to Commissioner George was dated January 31, 

1911. [Bromley, pages 183-185; “No Auto Tax For Taft,” The Washington Post, 

February 1, 1911] 

The Atlantic City Speech

In 1912, the Democratic Party chose Governor Wilson as their Presidential 

candidate during their Baltimore convention on June 25-July 2, 1912. His running 

mate was Governor Thomas R. Marshall of Indiana. 

The party platform covered many topics, including good roads: 

Post Roads 

We favor national aid to State and local authorities in the construction and 

maintenance of post roads. 

The Republican Party had not addressed the topic in its platform. President 

William Howard Taft, who had introduced the automobile to the White House, 
21 

favored good roads but did not believe the Federal Government should use 

Federal funds to build them. [Bromley, pages 233-234] 

The Progressive (Bull Moose) Party, with former President Theodore Roosevelt as 

its nominee, adopted a platform that included the following:

Good Roads 

We recognize the vital importance of good roads and we pledge our party 

to foster their extension in every proper way, and we favor the early 

construction of National highways. We also favor the extension of the 

rural free delivery service. 

As was the tradition, Governor Wilson had not attended the Democratic Party’s 

convention. Instead, on August 7, the party formally notified him of his 

nomination, at which time he delivered his acceptance speech. The notification 

ceremony took place in Sea Girt, New Jersey, home of the New Jersey Governor’s 

summer mansion. Before thousands, he read his earnest and detailed speech, with 

a few interjections to provide a little humor, for about an hour. 

He said the Nation faced “two great tasks”:

One is to set up the rule of justice and of right in such matters as the tariff, 

the regulation of the trusts and the prevention of monopoly, the adaptation 

of our banking and currency laws to the various uses to which our people 

must put them, the treatment of those who do the daily labor in our 

factories and mines and throughout all our great industrial and commercial 

undertakings, and the political life of the people of the Philippines, for 

whom we hold government power in trust, for their service, not our own. 

The other, additional duty, is the great task of protecting our people and 

our resources and of keeping open to the whole people the doors of 

opportunity through which they must, generation by generation, pass if 

they are to make conquest of their fortunes in health, in freedom, in peace, 

and in contentment. 

This second great task included a transportation element: 

In the performance of this second great duty we are face to face with 

questions of conservation and of development, questions of forests and 

water powers and mines and water ways, of the building of an adequate 

merchant marine, and the opening of every highway and facility and the 

setting up of every safeguard needed by a great, industrious, expanding 

Nation. 
22 

In elaborating on the need for a strengthened transportation system, Governor 

Wilson did not address road improvement directly or the provision in the 

Democratic Party’s platform favoring national aid for roads. He did, however, say 

near the end of his address: 

We have set ourselves a great programme, and it will be a great party that 

carried it out . . . . It is solidly based on the facts of our National life, its 

items are items of present business; it is what every man should wish to 

see done who wishes to see our present distempers made an end of and our 

old, free, co-operative life restored. [“Wilson Appeals to ‘Awakened 

Nation,’” The New York Times, August 8, 1912] 

Governor Wilson attended the American Road Congress 2 months later, 

sponsored by the American Highway Association, in Atlantic City, New Jersey. 

On September 30, the opening day of the congress, he delivered a nonpolitical 

welcoming speech to the delegates:

It is with great pleasure that I find myself here facing this interesting 

company and I am very glad that this is not a political convention. I am 

very glad indeed to be released occasionally, not from speaking about 

politics, but from thinking about politics. I am afraid that before you get 

through with the good roads question, a good deal of politics will creep 

into it. I am afraid from some narratives I have heard of the portions of 

certain bills, that politics may have crept into it already, but I think we will 

all agree that it is very desirable indeed that politics should be studiously 

excluded from it. It is a question in which there is no difference which can 

discriminate between party, and in my judgment it is a question in which 

men of good judgment can hardly differ very radically. 

I was interested in thinking, as I came upon the platform, that this was a 

body of men who were joined together to create opinions and to reflect 

further that the very things they were interested in were those things best 

suited to create opinion. A nation is bound together by its means of 

communication—its means of communication create its thought. Its 

means of intercommunication are the means of its sympathy, they are the 

means by which the various parts of it keep in touch with one another, so 

that in performing the very pleasant function of bidding you welcome to 

the State of New Jersey, I feel that I am in a certain sense linking New 

Jersey with the sentiment of the rest of the country. 

The question of highways is a question which has interested my thoughts 

particularly in recent years, because it is one of the few great 

instrumentalities of our public life and of our communal life with which 

the government is of necessity connected. 
23 

The government is not, in the United States, expected to build railroads. 

The government is not as yet expected to own railroads. Railroads differ 

from other highways, though we often speak of them as the highways of 

our commerce, in this important particular, that only those who own them 

can use them, in the matter of putting vehicles upon them—that a 

particular set of individuals by reason of their control of the roads, have 

the exclusive right of way over it. I have been told—I never looked into 

the matter and do not know whether the information is apocryphal or 

not—but I am told when the first part of the great Pennsylvania Railroad 

was built that it was the avowed policy of the State which granted the 

charter to the company, to allow anybody who had a vehicle with proper 

wheels to make use of this railroad as a highway, of course it being 

necessary and understood to be necessary that there should be some 

coöperative understanding so that the vehicles should not collide on a road 

on which they could not pass one another without collision. If that be true, 

then our railroad building started out with the highway idea, namely of the 

absence of the right of exclusive use, whereas the very essence of a 

highway is that it is open to everybody. 

I dare say that some of you are lawyers and have been interested as I have 

been, in one of the details of the right of public meeting. We say that the 

people of the United States, like the people of every other free country, 

have the right to assemble and discuss their affairs, but the question as to 

where they have the right to assemble is a very interesting one. You and I 

can stop on the corner of a street, or on a roadside and discuss any 

question we please. A third friend may join us, and a fourth, a fifth or any 

number up to the point where we begin to interrupt the traffic. So soon as 

the crowd becomes big enough to disturb the normal and free use of that 

highway, then we must go somewhere else, then somebody has the right to 

tell us to break up the meeting or to move on; so that, while we have the 

individual right to use that road, we have not the collective right even to 

monopolize it. It is intended to be an open artery free for any released 

energy to flow in, and so the highway is of necessity a public 

instrumentality. 

It cannot from any point of view be regarded as a private instrumentality, 

and as I look forward to the future of the history of the United States, I see 

that we must do what we have been very backward in doing as compared 

with other nations, we must more and more engage the government in 

providing the general facilities of the common life. (Applause.) There is 

no breach in that of any of our older understandings of the function of 

government. We have never doubted that the government had the right to 

maintain highways. We have never doubted that the government has the 

right to supply these facilities which private endeavor has never been 
24 

expected to supply. Therefore we are not upon a new ground of theory; we 

are merely upon a new ground of practice, and when I think of what the 

highways mean, I feel to be thinking of the whole history of the human 

race. 

Whenever I used to read stories I remember my imagination was most 

fascinated when the characters went on a journey and met the rest of the 

old world. On the old highways, particularly the old English highways, 

you met everybody, from the king to the beggar, from the king to the 

highwayman. You were there in a way to have the adventure, the whole 

experience and adventure of English life because it was there that English 

life interlaced and crossed and was fluid, flowing from one region to 

another, and by the same token, it was upon the highways that men get 

[sic] to contacts which result in the building up of public opinion. 

I was trying to illustrate the fact one day that in some of our great cities 

there is no public opinion, in a way which led me into trouble. I said that 

what generally happened to a man in a city was that when he got in a 

public vehicle or on a highway, he does not talk to anybody, but if he can 

hold himself steady enough, that wherever he happens to be he plunges his 

head into the morning newspaper and experiences a reaction which he 

calls his opinion, but it is not an opinion at all, it is simply the impression 

that a piece of news or an editorial has made upon him, and he cannot be 

said to be participating in public opinion or in opinion at all until he has 

laid his mind along side the minds of his neighbors and discussed with 

them the incidents of today and the tendencies of the time. 

Where I got into trouble was that I ventured to use this illustration. I said 

that public opinion was not typified on the streets of a busy city, but was 

typified around the stove in a country store where men sat and probably 

chewed tobacco and spat in a sawdust box and made up, before they got 

through, what was the neighborhood opinion, both about persons and 

events; and then inadvertently I added this philosophical reflection, that 

whatever might be said against the chewing of tobacco this at least could 

be said for it, that it gave a man time to think between sentences. 

(Laughter and Applause.) And ever since then I have been represented, 

particularly in the advertisements of tobacco firms, as in favor of the use 

of chewing tobacco. (Laughter.) As a means of reflection I dare say that it 

is wholesome; otherwise I will not declare my opinion about it at all. 

(Laughter.) But the illustration nevertheless was an illustration of what I 

think is pertinent to us or rather pertinent to my thoughts in connection 

with what you are doing. 
25 

You know how the Roman Empire used to throw its great highways out 

from Rome until they touched the limits of the Empire—until they 

threaded even the distant island of Britain; and it was like throwing thongs 

out to bind the Empire together. Now the initial purpose of those 

highways was to afford an open road for the armies of Rome so that she 

could throw her power rapidly in any direction; but Rome also, in my 

imagination at any rate, prepared her own destruction by those highways, 

because she could not open them to her own armies without opening them 

also to the people that lived upon their edges, and they could not touch one 

another without forming an opinion about the Roman power, without 

intermingling the influences of different nations for these roads did not 

stop at national confines, and the Roman roads threaded the opinion of the 

world into a nexus and pattern, and I tell you very frankly that my interest 

in good roads is not merely an interest in the pleasure of riding in 

automobiles, it is not merely an interest in the very much more important 

matter of affording the farmers of this country and the residents in villages 

the means of ready access to such neighboring markets as they need for 

economic benefit, but it is also the interest in weaving as complicated and 

elaborate a net of neighborhood and State and national opinions together 

as it is possible to weave. (Applause.) 

It is of the most fundamental importance that the United States should 

think in big pieces, should think together, should think ultimately as a 

whole and I feel, in my enthusiasm for good roads something of the old 

opposition that there always has been in me to any kind of sectional 

feeling (Applause.) to any kind of class feeling. The reason that city men 

are not more catholic in their ideas is that they do not share the opinions of 

the country and the reason that some countrymen are rustic is that they do 

not know the opinions of the city and they are both hampered by their 

limitations. 

I heard of a lady the other day who had lived all her life in the city and in a 

hotel. She made her first visit to the country and spent a week in a farm 

house. She was asked afterwards what interested her most about her 

experience and she said that it was hearing the farmer page his cows. 

(Laughter.) A very urban point of view with regard to a common rustic 

occurrence, and yet that language showed the sharp, inelastic limits of her 

thought. 

She thought much more narrowly than in the terms of a city; she thought 

in the terms of a hotel; and in proportion as we are confined with the walls 

of one hostelry or city or one State, we are provincial, and national thought 

cannot successful build itself upon these foundations in a way that will be 

permanent, so that I believe that the development of great systems of roads 
26 

is, psychologically speaking as well as physically speaking, a task of 

statesmanship. 

I believe that it is the proper study of statesmanship to bind communities 

together and open their intercourse so that it will flow with absolute 

freedom and facility. No one argument ought to be omitted; every class 

has its argument for good roads and putting them all together they form an 

irresistible mass of arguments, but the result of the whole reasoning to my 

mind, is simply this; the United States has up to this time, simply let the 

energies of its people drift. It has thrown the reins on our necks and said, 

“Now here is a continent of unexampled richness; do what you please with 

it, we will try to see that you do not break each other’s heads. We will try 

to see that you are restrained until you get so powerful that we cannot 

restrain you. We will try to see that you do justice until you so combine 

with one another that justice is impossible, but we are not going to lend the 

aid of the government to the actual task of development.” 

That has been the general attitude of our government up to this time. It 

cannot be that attitude any longer. There are things of this sort for 

example, you take not merely the matter of good roads and the carrying of 

goods to market, but of what goods there are to be carried to market, the 

production, the agricultural production per acre in the United States does 

not favorably compare with the production with the older countries of the 

world and the margins are approaching one another. We used to lead the 

world and our grain exports were our chief exports, but the exports of 

grain are going down and down and down because the other margin is 

coming up, the margin of domestic demand and the population is 

increasing faster than the product, so that a great deal of our commercial 

history is about to be altered by the circumstances of agricultural 

production, and I believe that it is a proper function of the government to 

see to it that by the extension of all the varied modern knowledge about 

agricultural processes and about the characteristics of different soils ought 

to be so extended, so carried everywhere to the farmer as to build up on 

the aid of the government this thing that feeds us and ought to continue to 

feed the world; and whenever you speak of that, whenever you increase 

what the United States is doing, you must immediately increase the 

facilities of the United States for handling what it has made after it has 

made it. You cannot rationally increase the prosperity of this country 

without increasing the road facilities of this country. (Applause.) 

I remember having a very interesting and, for me, enlightening 

conversation with a mountaineer once in the North Carolina mountains. 

He was very hot against the excise taxes, which made it practically 

impossible for him, without becoming a criminal, to make whiskey out of 
27 

his corn, and I discussed it somewhat minutely with him in order to get his 

point of view. His point of view was simply this; he had a little farm that 

was a fertile pocket in a remote part of the mountains. It did not pay him 

to take his corn to the market as corn, because by the time he got to the 

market, the very horses that were hauling it would have eaten it up, but he 

could profitably get it to the market as whiskey, and his point was simply 

this that it was unreasonable for the government to forbid his getting a 

market for his corn in the only way in which it was possible for him to get 

a market. 

Now, while we might say that it was not desirable that there should be any 

market at all for the product that he wished to sell, nevertheless the 

illustration will point my moral, namely that it is not worth producing until 

you can release what you produce and that the only way of releasing it is 

by the most facile means of intercommunication and transportation. We 

are merely threading the energies of a nation together, linking them in a 

single pattern or rather we are merely setting them free when we facilitate 

and promote the interest of a congress like this. 

I need not tell you therefore that I am in deep sympathy with the purposes 

of this congress, because in my judgment that would simply be like 

claiming that I was a rational being and I hope that does not require 

argument. I would rather admit it than try to prove it (Laughter.) and if 

you will allow me to admit that I am a rational being, you will allow me to 

say that, as a matter of course, I am profoundedly [sic] interested in the 

purposes of this congress and I consider it an honor that the State of New 

Jersey should have the pleasure of housing you for a little while and 

entertaining you for a little while in consultation about what is at bottom, a 

great national interest. (Applause.) 

[Wilson, Governor Woodrow, Proceedings of the American Road Congress, Part 

II, Sessions Under Auspices Of The American Highway Association, Atlantic City, 

New Jersey, September 30-October 5, 1912, pages 7-12] 

Governor Wilson wrote his own speeches, and would continue to do so as 

President, one of the last Presidents, if not the last, to do so. During the 

campaign, however, Governor Wilson preferred not to read speeches, according to 

The New York Times. He preferred to speak “right off his own bat,” as he put it, 

and his good roads speech may have been an example. 

His secretary, James Tumulty, collected some of Governor Wilson’s better offthe-bat comments, which he shared with the Times. One of them recalled his 

1906 discussion of irresponsible drivers during his bicycle days: 
28 

SIZE AND SAFETY.—I think those great touring cars which are labeled 

“Seeing New York” are too big for the streets. You have to walk almost 

around the block to get out of the way of one of them, and size has a great 

deal to do with your trouble if you are trying to get out of the way. But I 

have no objection on that account to the ordinary automobile, properly 

handled by a man of conscience who is also a gentleman. Many of the 

people I see handling automobiles handle them as if they had neither 

conscience or learning. You know what men do when they have a joyride; 

they sometimes have the time of their lives, and sometimes, fortunately 

[sic], the last time of their lives. [“The Real Wilson Revealed On Stump,” 

The New York Times, October 6, 1912] 

Just before the November 7 election, Governor Wilson was injured in a car crash, 

prompting what the Times called “sensational rumors that he had been seriously 

hurt”: 

The Governor’s worst injury was a scalp wound about three inches long on 

the left side of his head, just back of the forehead. 

He was in a limousine owned by Abram I. Elkus, a New York attorney, 

Democratic Party activist, and Wilson supporter who lived in Red Bank. New 

Jersey. They were returning from a political meeting at Red Bank, where Elkus 

lived, to Governor Wilson’s home in Princeton. As they traveled the main street 

on the outskirts of Hightstown, Elkus’s chauffeur failed to see a bump in the road 

that resulted from workmen repairing the drains. The bump was obscured by the 

shadow of a telephone pole: 

. . . when the machine passed over it, the Governor and Capt. “Bill” 

McDonald, his bodyguard, were thrown violently from their seats. Gov. 

Wilson’s head striking on one of the iron braces on the ceiling as he was 

hurled up, and for a moment he was stunned. Capt. McDonald was tossed 

to one side and his neck was wrenched. 

The chauffeur did not realize how badly his passengers had been shaken 

up, and started to drive ahead. Then the Governor, feeling the blood 

trickling down his forehead, ordered him to turn and go to [what turned 

out to be] the office of Dr. Charles G. Titus in Highstown. 

(Governor Wilson, the Democratic nominee for President, was traveling with a 

bodyguard because just a few days earlier, on October 14, former President 

Roosevelt had been shot in Milwaukee by a man named John Schrank who said 

that “any man looking for a third term ought to be shot.” Items in the former 

President’s winter coat, including the text of the speech he was about to deliver 
29 

and his glasses case, deflected the bullet and saved his life. He gave the speech, 

but the injury kept him off the campaign trail for several weeks.)

After treatment by Dr. Titus, Governor Wilson went home and slept until noon, 

giving rise to rumors that he was more seriously injured than was the case. He 

gave this account of the incident: 

I went to the home of Abram I. Elkus after the meeting in Red Bank and 

we had something to eat. Then Mr. Elkus placed his limousine at my 

disposal and with Capt. McDonald I started for Princeton around 11 

o’clock. Capt. McDonald was on my left in the car. It wasn’t very cold, 

so I didn’t wear a fur coat loaned by Mr. Elkus, and we used it for a lap 

robe. 

Were we going fast? No, I think we must have averaged fifteen miles an 

hour when we reached Hightstown, which is about twenty-seven miles 

from Red Bank. He saw a red light ahead of us on the left of the road, and 

there was a post to the right which cast a shadow over the road. I want to 

say that I don’t think the chauffeur was in the least to blame. 

When we struck the mound at right angles I struck the roof of the 

automobile, and it was a good hard blow, too. There isn’t the slightest 

doubt about that. I had a soft hat on, and that acted as a cushion, but not as 

a defense. I was tossed about the car as it lurched, and Capt. McDonald, 

who was by my side, went through the same contortions. My eyeglasses 

were knocked from my nose and were broken. 

I was astonished to find that my head was bleeding because I did not feel 

badly hurt. But I knew it would be unwise to go on in that condition and 

ordered the chauffeur to stop the car. Some boys directed us to the home 

of a physician. We had to wake the doctor up and when the boys told him 

that Gov. Wilson had been injured he apparently thought they were jesting. 

At first, Dr. [Charles G.] Titus thought it would be necessary to close the 

cut with stitches, but after he had thoroughly cleansed the wound found 

that by drawing the edges closer together and painting the cut with 

collodion the same effect was had.

All the time I was at Dr. Titus’s office, I worried about what Mrs. Wilson 

would think of my delay and I was impatient to get away.

Dr. Titus suggested that I wear a skull cap to conceal the wound, but skull 

caps suggest old age, and that would never do for me [he said with a 

laugh]. 
30 

Dr. [J. M.] Carnochan [the Wilson family physician] says there is no 

reason in the world why I should not do everything I have planned to do. I 

shall, therefore, speak at both Paterson and Passaic to-morrow, even if I 

am conscious of the galleries looking down on my head. 

He summed up, “I guess I’m too hard-headed to be hurt . . . and it didn’t even give 

me a headache.” [“Gov. Wilson’s Head Cut In Auto Shake-Up,” The New York 

Times, November 4, 1912] 

On November 7, 1912, Governor Wilson won 40 States and secured 435 electoral 

college votes (with 266 votes needed to win) to defeat former President Roosevelt 

(6 States, 88 electoral college votes), and President Taft (2 States, 8 electoral 

college votes). 

President-Elect Wilson Returns to Bermuda

On November 15, President-elect Wilson, his wife Ellen, and two of their 

daughters, Eleanor and Janet (known as Jessie) boarded the steamship Bermudian 

bound for a restful vacation in Bermuda after the hectic campaign. (Their third 

daughter, Margaret, remained in New York City where she was studying music.) 

His plan was to avoid work and publicity while relaxing with his family, golfing, 

and bicycle riding. Before leaving, he told reporters, “I’m going to try to be 

‘Incog,’ so that I may have no functions of any kind while there.” He did not want 

to be interrupted by the tasks involving in preparing to take office on March 4, 

1913, least of all Cabinet appointments and other jobs his supporters wanted. He 

said, “anybody comes to see me at Bermuda will get the very reverse of what he 

wants.” [“Gov. Wilson Enjoys His First Day At Sea,” The New York Times, 

November 17, 1912] 

As they boarded the ship, he told newspaper correspondents that, “I’ll feel like 

dancing a jig when I get aboard that boat.” Ten of the correspondents boarded as 

well to cover the President-elect’s vacation, despite his intention not to produce 

any news. His bodyguard, Sam Gordon, was carrying the Governor’s golf clubs. 

[“Wilson Sales on Burmudian,” The New York Times, November 16, 1912] 

They arrived on November 18 to what the Times described as “an official 

welcome as well as an enthusiastic greeting from American visitors and British 

residents who gathered at the Wharf and along the streets to see the distinguished 

visitor”:

As a matter of comity the customs officials passed the baggage of the 

Governor and all members of the party without the usual inspection. They 

were then driven at once to Green Cove Cottage, through streets lined with 

people, while private and public buildings were decorated with flags and 
31 

bunting. [“Bermudians Cheer as Wilson lands,” The New York Times, 

November 19, 1912] 

His bicycle was waived through customs as well.

President-elect Wilson had obtained use of Green Cove Cottage from a friend. 

The “little cottage [was] on a three-mile wagon road trip from Hamilton. It can be 

reached by ferry, too, but the ferry runs at infrequent intervals.” The cottage was 

located on Salt Kettle Creek, which is not really a creek but a small bay. “The 

tiny peninsula is just visible among the trees from the coral road high above it, 

and is reached by a winding white road down the hill.” [Untitled, The New York 

Times, November 26] 

The visit prompted the Times to include a November 24 article in the Sunday 

edition titled, “President-Elect Wilson in a Bicyclist’s Paradise.” By then, the 

bicycle was an artifact of the recent past:

Many an American has doubtless read with surprise within the last week 

that President-elect Woodrow Wilson’s chief recreation on his one 

month’s vacation in Bermuda was to be riding a bicycle. Except for a few 

enthusiasts, the bicycle hereabout has come to be a by-gone. Bicycle 

manufacturers have gone bankrupt—or turned to making motors. It is a 

rare American community these days that retains any of its old wheeling 

fancies. The men who remember, and regret, the time when pedaling was 

a National pastime are for the most part old bald-heads or rapidly getting 

to be. 

But there are no motors in Bermuda, and Mr. Wilson is one of those who 

recognize the sunny archipelago as offering, among its many attractions, a 

freedom from that prejudice which has grown in the United States against 

the once popular diversion. 

When visitors arrive, the Bermuda hotel clerk typically asked, “Have you engaged 

your bicycle?” If the visitors, especially Americans, replied “we don’t wheel,” the 

clerk tells them, “Better learn then. Everybody rides down here.” 

The article explained:

That everybody does ride the stranger discovers quickly. Automobiles are 

not even allowed as transients on the coral islands. The white roads are 

ideal. The horse-drawn equipages are slow. In short, the bicycle is the 

best medium of travel for all who are not too old or too decrepit to pedal—

from the flannel-clad tourist idling away a holiday in the sunshine to the 

native farmer who comes wheeling into Hamilton or St. George for his 

weekly mail.
32 

After extolling the wheeling on the island, the reporter concluded: 

To them that know, it is no cause for wonder that the President-elect has 

chosen the Bermuda Isles for his holiday, or that he considers bicycling 

there the main pleasure of his well-deserved rest. [“President-Elect 

Wilson in a Bicyclist’s Paradise,” The New York Times, November 24, 

1912] 

An article in the Times a few days later asserted:

It seems strange to be in a place where there are no automobiles. Gov. 

Wilson himself was one of those who brought about this state of affairs. 

The roads here are narrow, there are no sidewalks, and when automobiles 

were permitted accidents were unavoidable and constant. Finally, the 

inhabitants and the Winter residents united in a petition to the Assembly to 

prohibit the dangerous machines, and the Assembly condemned all that 

were here and prohibited the landing of any more. Gov. Wilson, who was 

one of the Winter residents, joined in the petition. [Untitled, The New 

York Times, November 26, 1912] 

Reporters accompanying the President-elect found that his efforts to remain 

isolated, free to walk, wheel, and golf were “in serious danger.” He found that 

“public and official distractions,” such as plans for a state dinner in his honor, 

made it “a hard fight to keep from being drawn into the social whirl”: 

Apparently dreading [being drawn into the social maelstrom], he did not 

even take his family with him when he went for a drive today, but was 

accompanied only by Richard Taylor, a Secret Service man . . . . 

Despite the whirl around him, the President-elect “declared today that he is 

beginning to forget politics.” 

Nevertheless, he would be plagued throughout his visit by decisions on his 

Cabinet, which he had said he would not undertake until he returned home. 

Particularly recurring was whether he would nominate William Jennings Bryan to 

be Secretary of State, including whether Bryan would visit him in Bermuda. The 

famed orator, known as “the Great Commoner,” had served two terms in the U.S. 

House of Representatives from Nebraska, and had been the Democratic Party’s 

unsuccessful candidate for President in 1896, 1990, and 1908. His support for 

Governor Wilson eventually would earn him the post of Secretary of State even 

though he ultimately decided not to visit the President-elect in Bermuda.

The reporters noticed that President-elect Wilson was finally recovered from his 

automobile accident:
33 

The injuries sustained by Mr. Wilson in an automobile accident before the 

election do not trouble him any more. The plaster covering the wound on 

his head came off today, showing that the abrasion had healed. [“Hard to 

Keep ‘Incog,’” The Baltimore Sun, November 20, 1912 

On November 21, correspondents reported that the President-elect was being 

forced to change his vacation plans: 

Gov. Wilson was driven to-day into confinement indoors by Bermudians 

and tourists anxious to greet the next President of the United States. His 

programme of bicycling and walks was abandoned, and he was obliged to 

confine his diversion to carriage drives and reading with his wife and 

daughters. 

Moreover, reporters indicated:

Gov. Wilson’s stenographer [Charles I. Swem], by working day and night, 

has nearly caught up with the Governor’s correspondence. The Governor 

is now preparing his message to the Jersey Legislature. [“Mobbed by 

Tourists, Wilson Quits Walks,” The New York Times, November 22, 1912 

One day later, the President-elect discovered one of the reasons why automobiles 

outside of Bermuda were gradually replacing horses: 

Gov. Wilson spent the day in a trip to St. George’s, the former capital of 

the island. A balky horse held up the President-elect’s departure for some 

time. While Gov. Wilson waited impatiently on the veranda of Glen 

Cove, wondering at the delay, the coachman [managing Wilson’s carriage] 

was storming at the obstinate horse up the road. The placid horse seemed 

pleased at the chance of delaying the President-elect. The more the 

coachman urged the less the animal moved, while Gov. Wilson continued 

to pace the veranda, looking at his watch. Suddenly a big palm beside him 

topped, breaking an urn, and increasing the confusion. Finally Gov. 

Wilson and his wife set off in another carriage, their daughters cycling to 

market meantime.

The real news of the day was not the balky horse but a persistent photographer, as 

reported in the Times: 

Gov. Wilson for the first time became angry when a New York 

photographer focused his camera to snapshot his daughters as they were 

leaving. He always objects to their being publicly photographed, and, 

leaving the carriage, walked along with his daughters up the road. He had 

previously requested the photographers assembled to abstain from using 
34 

their cameras. All respected his wishes except the New Yorker, who 

snapped the group. Gov. Wilson flushed crimson. 

“You’re no gentleman!” he explained. “If you try it again I will thrash 

you. I can do it.” 

The offending photographer [identified elsewhere as Vargis] afterward 

cabled to his paper for permission to leave the island, and received an 

answer in a message of one word: “Return.” 

The Post reported Wilson’s angry statement as: “You are no gentleman! If you 

want a good thrashing, keep that up! I can take care of myself in these things! I 

came here especially to avoid photographers!” The Post added that, “Mr. Wilson 

passed the greater part of today in making bicycling excursions in the vicinity of 

his residence.” [“Wilson Threatens To Beat Camera Man,” The New York Times, 

November 23, 1912; “Camera Man Annoys Wilson,” The Washington Post, 

November 23, 1912] 

A page 1 editorial cartoon in Washington’s The Evening Star showed Presidentelect Wilson erecting a screen around himself while photographers waited behind 

a wall to take his picture. The caption: 

President-to-be Wilson, who favors the “open door” policy for the White 

House, has been compelled to lock his gates at his Bermuda retreat.

Calm had returned on Saturday, November 23. In the morning, the President-elect 

and Jessie had taken off on their bicycles “on unfrequented roads to avoid curious 

sightseers. Wearing a golf cap and an old, gray suit, and carrying a market basket, 

he went by almost unrecognized.” When they returned to Glen Cove Cottage, 

Wilson found that his mail had arrived. He had given stenographer Swen the day 

off, but telephoned him to return to help with the replies. He abandoned plans for 

an outing by boat. “The next steamer does not leave until Tuesday, but Gov. 

Wilson wished to dispose of the correspondence at once.” [“Wilson’s Mail Halts 

Recreation Plans,” The New York Times, November 24, 1912] 

The family continued relaxing with tennis, golf, or bicycle rides. His wife and 

daughters usually accompanied him, but on November 29, according to the Times, 

“The President-elect cycled alone over the hills part of the day.” [“Bermudian 

Hits Tornado,” The New York Times, November 30, 1912] 

Despite his plans for an ‘incog’ vacation, he showed reporters a pile of over 200 

letters he had received on possible legislation: 

Pointing to a mass of correspondence, Mr. Wilson said: 
35 

“That is the idea some American people have of giving a man a vacation.”

He also had paid $7 in excess postage fees on mail that included newspaper 

clippings speculating on his Cabinet picks. He said: 

“If you see that Wilson has invited this or that man to come to Bermuda 

relative to appointments in the cabinet, you may be sure that the news 

came way of Constantinople or the Windward passage.” [“Favors Later 

Date,” The Evening Star, November 30, 1912] 

On the morning of December 2, he walked “in his old clothes to Hamilton, where 

he did some shopping for his wife.” The Times added, “One can get lots of things 

in Bermuda cheaper than at home.” [“Bermuda Assembly Cheers Gov. Wilson,” 

The New York Times, December 3, 1912] 

On December 3, the President-elect vented to the reporters about a pet peeve. He 

was receiving large numbers of letters from a wide variety of people, many of 

them ill-informed on the issues, offering opinions on legislation, foreign affairs, 

and Cabinet picks (especially Bryan, pro and con) – all with too little postage on 

them. He not only had to read the letters and respond to them, but “pay three 

cents extra postage on each letter, and there are hundreds of them.” The Times

added, “Perhaps it serves him right for coming to an English ‘playground,’ instead 

of an American one, where cranks can write to him at the cost of a two-cent 

stamp.” [“Many Misguided Correspondents,” The New York Times, December 6, 

1912] 

On December 14, President-Elect Wilson and his family boarded the Bermudian 

for the return to their New Jersey home. The Baltimore Sun reported: 

The island was in holiday array in honor of Governor Wilson’s departure. 

Most of the places of business closed and the residents celebrated the 

occasion. In carriages, on horseback and on bicycles crowds flocked to 

Hamilton early from all parts of the island to bid the distinguished 

American farewell. A military escort was sent to the pier.

The Governor spend his last day on the island quietly. He took a ride with 

Mrs. Wilson and his daughters [by carriage] and paid calls on the 

Governor-General and several families whose guests he had been at 

different times. [“Wilson On Way Home,” The Baltimore Sun, December 

15, 1912] 

The Times added: 
36 

Gov. Wilson gave another exhibition of his ideas of Democratic simplicity 

when it came to getting his baggage and that of his family aboard the 

steamship. There were plenty of persons, official and otherwise, who 

would have been glad to attend to details in this matter, but he let it be 

known quietly that he was prepared to look after his belongings as he 

would have done if he were an ordinary citizen. And he did it. He saw to 

the transportation to the wharf and to the proper bestowal of the various 

trunks and handbags on the vessel. He mingled freely with the people at 

the pier and also with the passengers on the Bermudian after he had gone 

aboard. [“Wilson in New York To-Morrow Morning,” The New York 

Times, December 15, 1912] 

When the ship arrived in New York City on December 16, the Times summarized 

his trip:

The Governor’s stay in Bermuda was one of unadulterated rest. He went 

nowhere except where old friendships made a social breakfast or tea 

unavoidable, and most of the time he wore an old suit of hand-me-downs, 

hung a market basket on the handle bar of his bicycle, and went his lonely 

and unrecognized way. Jessie and Eleanor Wilson did the same thing, and 

the next lady of the White House never even took the trouble to put on an 

evening dress. 

The two girls used to tramp over the hills together in common-sense 

walking shoes and heavy skirts and now and then as they walked toward 

the south shore they would meet a farmer-like person pedaling his way 

over the coral hills with a market basket slung at the side of the machine. 

It was Dad. That was all there was to it. 

Back in New York City: 

On the pier he spent half an hour with his family, going through his 

baggage with customs officials, and waiting for the twelfth piece to come 

ashore, which was a valise that had gone astray from the rest.

Having cleared customs, the family went to the Waldorf-Astoria where they 

would spent the evening before returning to Trenton. 

President-elect Wilson spent some time looking through his awaiting mail:

Then he started a brisk walk up Fifth Avenue with the announced purpose 

of buying a hat. Although the Avenue was crowded, few recognized him. 

At Thirty-seventh Street he narrowly escaped being run down by a delivery 

wagon. He jumped out of the way just in time, and the driver looked back 

and grinned. Several blocks further north Gov. Wilson had to jump out of 
37 

the way of an automobile. An anxious traffic policeman sprang to his 

rescue here, but the Governor had nimbly leaped to the sidewalk and 

reassured the policemen with a wave of the hand. 

Mr. Wilson was accompanied by two Secret Service men, who had 

difficulty sometimes, in keeping up the brisk pace which he set. The 

Governor finally found the kind of hat he was looking for, a soft brown 

felt, and started back for the hotel. 

On the way he was recognized by a small boy, who put out his hand and 

gravely asked, “How are you getting along?” 

“I am getting along fine,” said the President-elect with equal gravity . . . . 

Before he reached the hotel again Gov. Wilson sauntered into an art 

gallery and inspected some of the paintings. Asked if he intended to buy 

some of the pictures he replied that he was merely killing time. During his 

absence from the hotel Mrs. Wilson and her daughters did some Christmas 

shopping. 

A different account of the walk provided the detail that the driver of the delivery 

wagon that nearly ran over the President-elect “looked back, recognized him, 

grinned and shouted: ‘Better get your life insured, Woody.’” [“The PresidentElect Back From Bermuda,” The New York Times, December 17, 1912; “Gov. 

Wilson Home Again,” The Baltimore Sun, December 17, 1912] 

As Herlihy pointed out in his Adventure Cycling article: 

Of course, as he prepared to enter office, President Wilson’s passion for 

cycling was known to the press and frequently lampooned, given that 

many considered the humble bicycle passé . . . . 

In truth, President Wilson did indeed still cherish his bicycle. But he also 

knew that, given his newfound fame and busy agenda, not to mention his 

poor health, it might be a long time, if ever, before he could cycle around 

town again or enjoy another relaxing bicycle tour. After assuming office, 

he became increasingly interested in the emerging automobile, a vehicle in 

which he could still ride while enjoying peace and solitude, albeit without 

the health benefits of cycling.

Last Days as Governor 

Returning to Trenton, President-elect Wilson would serve as Governor of New 

Jersey until March 1, 1913. He planned to use that time to secure approval of 

legislation he considered critical to the State’s future, with Democrats gaining 
38 

control of the State legislature, which convened on January 14. He particularly 

wanted to secure passage of seven bills revising the corporate laws of New Jersey, 

nicknamed the Seven Sisters bills:

“These acts are designed to put an end to trusts and monopolies under the 

laws of New Jersey,” declared Gov. Wilson in a prepared statement 

describing the measures, “and I confidently predict that they will 

accomplish that much desired result.” 

The bills addressed such topics as preventing monopolies, underselling in local 

markets, mergers, the existence of holding companies, and the issuance of watered 

stocks, all topics he had talked about during his national campaign. [“Put End to 

Trusts,” The Washington Post, January 21, 1913] 

During this period, newspaper coverage did not report that he rode his bicycle, but 

provided some indications of his travels before taking the oath of office in 

Washington. His intention was to work during the weekdays, but relax during 

weekends.

On Sunday, December 22, 1912, he slept until noon at the family’s Princeton 

home at 25 Cleveland Lane, finally coming downstairs at around 3 p.m.: 

The Governor put on a pair of gloves and took up a new walking stick that 

had just been presented to him by a Western admirer.

“Do you know,” he remarked, “I feel too much confined by this indoor 

work, and I miss my usual afternoon walk. Today I want to enjoy a real 

long one. Which way looks most inviting?” No one volunteered a 

suggestion, and the Governor said he would like to go on a “seeing 

Princeton” trip. 

President-elect Wilson, who as a college undergraduate became famous 

for his long and lonesome walks, in which he seldom allowed others to 

participate, went out again over his old familiar Princeton pathways today, but this time, instead of seeking solitude, he sought company. He 

took four friends with him and invited others who held back feeling out of 

training. The President-elect tramped five miles over collegiate pathways . 

. . . [“Wilson On A Walk Over Old Ground,” The New York Times, 

December 23, 1912. The paragraph sequence has been altered for clarity.] 

Christmas Day found the President-elect in bed:

Gov. Woodrow Wilson was too ill to-day to partake of that forty-threepound, chestnut-fed turkey sent to him from Kentucky by [U.S. 

Representative] South Trimble. He got a cold in making the trip to and 
39 

from Trenton in an open automobile, and he remained in bed to-day under 

the care of his family physician, Dr. J. M. Carnochan. 

According to Ellen Wilson, “He came home from Trenton last night with 

considerable fever, and I feared that he was about to have a case of the grip.” 

These were among the common ailments that had afflicted Wilson most of his 

life. [“Gov. Wilson In Bed With A Heavy Cold,” The New York Times, December 

26, 1912] 

The President-elect also had to plan for his inauguration. It would be on March 4, 

but he and planners were thinking of postponing the inaugural balls until April 

when weather would likely be more favorable. He resolved the question by 

informing the inaugural committee that it should consider omitting the ball 

altogether. He recognized that many people were looking forward to the ball, but 

he would cancel the event “because of the large indirect expense upon the 

Government incidental to it, and because these balls have ceased to be necessary 

to the enjoyment of the visitors.” 

According to the Times, the President-elect “was amazed to find that it would cost 

the Government $95,000; that the 2,000 clerks in the Pension Building would 

have no work to do for two weeks while the Pension Building was being prepared 

for the ball and while it was being restored to business purposes afterward.” The 

Times also explained his reference to “the enjoyment of the visitors”:

He also learned that the ball had very little if any thing to do with the 

inauguration; that it was simply a money-making affair for Washington, 

and that it was in no sense a representative Washington society event. 

Anybody with $5 and a dress suit can get in, and it is a heterogenous sort 

of affair, which the Governor learned detracted from instead of adding to 

the dignity and impressiveness of the inauguration. [“Calls Off Inaugural 

Ball,” The New York Times, January 17, 1913] 

A later article suggested the real reason for the President-elect’s decision: “he 

feared there would be indulgence in the ‘turkey trot,’ the ‘bunny hug,’ and other 

ragtime dances, and thus provoke what might amount to a National scandal.” 

[“Wilson Banned Ball Fearing Turkey Trot,” The New York Times, January 21, 

1913] 

(The Pension Building, located at 401 F Street NW, is now home of the National 

Building Museum.)

Determined to relax on weekends, the President-elect and Mrs. Wilson were in 

New York City on January 24. He found that relaxing as the president of 

Princeton or the Governor of New Jersey was different from his new 
40 

circumstance. He had visited his dentist in Philadelphia before joining Ellen in 

New York City in the afternoon: 

The governor had agreed to meet Mrs. Wilson on an upper floor of one of 

the big stores, and as he stepped out of the elevator and walked to the spot 

where she was waiting, some one recognized the President-elect. There 

was an immediate flutter among the store employes [sic], who flocked 

from all sides and surrounded the couple. An impromptu reception 

followed, during which scores of eager young women were greeted by the 

governor and his wife. 

Otherwise, their shopping took place without “being generally recognized.” 

[“Wilson Seeking Rest,” The Washington Post, January 25, 1913] 

Governor Wilson signed the Seven Sisters bills on February 19. 

Aware that the President-elect’s doctors had advised him “to turn his mind from 

the weighty consequence of national affairs,” editors of the Post took mock 

exception to the notion that “Washington is . . . a monster of hideous mien., ready 

to drain the vitality and wear down the mentality of the chosen head.” Why was 

he so afraid of Washington, the Post asked: 

Other Presidents have managed to have a fairly good time . . . . There are 

good golf links in Washington, and excellent bicycle paths . . . . As for the 

people of Washington, they have always been considerate toward 

Presidents. Mr. Wilson need have no fear that he will be buttonholed on 

the street or waylaid while on his bicycle. [“Gov. Wilson’s Rest,” The 

Washington Post, January 26, 1913] 

On February 19, Dr. Charles W. Eliot, president emeritus of Harvard, appeared 

before the Judiciary Committee of the Maine legislature in opposition to a bill that 

would repeal the 1909 law that prohibited use of automobiles on Mt. Desert 

Island, including Bar Harbor: 

Dr. Eliot said that the roads in Bar Harbor would not be safe for walking 

or driving if the use of automobiles were permitted. The roads were 

narrow, he said, and conditions were different from those at other resorts. 

The Summer residents paid the greater part of the taxes, and they desired a 

place which was quiet and restful. Those who favored the bill said that 

young persons did not visit Mt. Desert Island because they could not bring 

their automobiles with them.

Following his testimony, Dr. Eliot read a telegram from President-elect Wilson 

supporting a Bermuda-like resistance to the popular vehicle: “I wish you all 
41 

success in keeping the automobiles from Mount Desert Island.” [“Dr. Eliot 

Opposes Bill,” The New York Times, February 20, 1913] 

Although reminiscent of the anti-automobile crusade President-elect Wilson had 

waged with Mark Twain on Bermuda, the fight in Maine would have a different 

outcome. The automobile had proven commercially useful, as Ann Rockefeller 

Roberts explained in her book about the carriage roads in Acadia National Park: 

On the island, the car was perceived from the start as a mixed blessing. 

The summer folk were determined that the island should remain a refuge, 

but most of the year-round residents who had to make a living in the area 

saw it as a very desirable advance and good way to facilitate transport and 

daily activities. The issue was so heated that it ended up in the state 

legislature. At first, in 1908, the summer interests carried enough weight 

to sustain the ban on cars, but the debate continued, and in 1913 the 

commercial interests and year-round residents had gained enough support 

that the legislation was amended to allow cars only on the Bar Harbor side 

of the island. Seal Harbor and Northeast Harbor were safe, as was [John 

D. Rockefeller, Jr.’s] house. But it was just a matter of time until the last 

resistance was swept away, and that happened in 1915. The ubiquitous, 

noisy, smoke-belching autos began to roll over the causeway to the island 

in increasing numbers. [Roberts, Ann Rockefeller, Mr. Rockefeller’s 

Roads: The Untold Story of Acadia’s Carriage Roads and Their Creator, 

Down East Books, 1990, pages 49-50] 

The Post, in a contemporary look at social leaders at seaside resorts, reported: 

After ten years of exclusion, with more or less unsatisfactory results, Bar 

Harbor has at least opened its doors with the welcome sign out to 

automobiles . . . . For a decade motorists have looked longingly at the 

attractive roads and shaded drives of the island. At last the barriers have 

been let down, but only after a long and bitter fight in the legislature, 

contested at every point. The venerable Dr. Charles W. Eliot led the fight 

against the admission of motors, and a powerful lobby at Augusta did its 

utmost, but the feeling was too strong. The question, largely local, got a 

touch of national interest on the reading of a telegram from President 

Wilson to Dr. Eliot hoping that he would be successful in keeping motor 

cars out. [“Social Leaders of Nation Flock To Seaside Resorts,” The 

Washington Post, June 9, 1913] 

As the season progressed, the Times reported on the result: 

Motor cars have practically retired the horse. Automobiles of all kinds and 

descriptions throng the roads of Bar Harbor, and have opened up the 
42 

surrounding country . . . . There are cars of every kind and class here at 

present, including some of the finest French makes . . . . [“Bar Harbor 

May Lose Its Horse Show,” The New York Times, July 6, 1913] 

(Although President-elect Wilson’s telegram did not have the desired effect, he 

would have a positive impact on the island. In 1914, Eliot went to Washington to 

convince officials to preserve the protected area as a national park:

After nearly two years of negotiation and what must have seemed 

interminable delay . . . President Woodrow Wilson signed a proclamation 

declaring the establishment of the Sieur de Monts National Monument on 

July 8, 1916. 

Proclamation No. 1339 set aside 5,000 acres of land on Mount Desert Island 

donated for the purpose to the Secretary of the Interior. The name reflected the 

historic significance of the island, which was discovered and explored by Samuel 

de Champlain, acting under the authority of Sieur de Monts, the royal 

commissioner of New France. The proclamation stated: “The topographic 

configuration, the geology, the fauna and the flora of the island, largely embraced 

within the limits of the Monument, also are of great scientific interest.”

(A little over a month later, on August 25, President Wilson signed legislation 

creating the National Park Service in the Department of the Interior.) 

(On September 27, 1918, Secretary of the Interior Franklin K. Lane announced 

that the monument would henceforth be called Lafayette National Park, the first 

national park east of the Mississippi River: 

With these associations and its own magnificent frontage on the great 

ocean highway which our troops are traversing to France’s aid and for 

whose freedom we are now contending, no more striking expression of 

national regard and amity could be conceived than the creation under a 

name which has become a symbol of international friendship between 

America and France of our first Eastern national park. It will stand as a 

sign, set up forever and visible to all the navies of the world, of that league 

of nations for which the President is wisely striving and from which alone 

true peace can come. [“New Name For Mount Desert,” The Washington 

Post, September 28, 1918] 

(Despite the name change, the area remained, technically, a monument. For it to 

become a true national park, another step was needed: 

This required an act of Congress, and, because of congressional 

preoccupation with the war effort, it took years of ingenuity to achieve. 

Not until February 26, 1919, did the Sieur de Monts National Monument 
43 

become Lafayette National Park . . . . So the national monument that had 

been named for an early French explorer became a national park named for 

the Frenchman most celebrated as a sympathizer and supporter of the 

American Revolution. 

(President Wilson signed the law designating Lafayette National Park by statute

on February 26, 1919 (Public Law 65-278). Congress changed the name to 

Acadia National Park in 1929, with President Calvin Coolidge signing the 

legislation on January 19, 1929 (Public Law 70-667). Secretary of the 

Interior Roy O. West explained: 

It is established that the name “Acadia” is of native origin, coming from an 

Indian word apparently describing the region and its use among the early 

fishermen and traders from across the sea in the accounts brought back to 

Europe by them before recorded exploration of it first began by French or 

English. [Extension of Boundary limits of Lafayette National Park, ME., 

And Changing Name of Park to Acadia National Park, Committee on 

Public Lands and Surveys, United States Senate, 70th Congress, 2d 

Session, Report No. 1425, January 7, 1929, pages 1-2] 

(From 1913 to 1940, Ann Rockefeller Roberts’ grandfather, John D. Rockefeller, 

Jr., financed and oversaw construction of the park’s most famous feature, 57 miles 

of carriage roads for hikers, bikers, horseback riders, and carriage – and no 

automobiles. Roberts’ book describes them: 

Mount Desert’s beautiful carriage roads fit so perfectly into the landscape 

that it seems they must always have been there; built of native materials 

and landscaped for a natural effect, they curve gracefully across the 

island’s dramatic topography. [Roberts, back cover] 

(Roberts acknowledged the irony of a Rockefeller creating an auto-free area:

The automobile represents another of the wonderful ironies of both my 

family and the carriage roads. Its introduction onto the island was one of 

the principal reasons that Grandfather began to build the carriage roads. 

At the same time, the automobile’s immediate and extraordinary success 

was the cause of the stupendous growth of the Standard Oil Company and 

its subsidiaries after the turn of the century, from which came all the 

Rockefeller wealth. Without the car, the family fortune that allowed 

Grandfather to help create Acadia National Park and build the carriage 

roads would not have existed, and yet Grandfather’s roads were built in 

order to keep the car at bay. [Roberts, page 4]) 
44 

On February 21, 1913, Governor Wilson traveled to Philadelphia to see his 

dentist, then traveled to New York City to visit Colonel Edward M. House, his 

friend and political advisor. At House’s home, he met with William F. 

McCombs, his former campaign manager and current chairman of the Democratic 

National Committee. McCombs had hoped for an appointment in the Wilson 

Administration but the President-elect was doubtful that McCombs would be able 

to “work in harness” with other members of the new government. As Berg wrote, 

“More to the point, Wilson simply did not like him and resented even having to 

spend time with him.” 

Nevertheless, the Times wrote of the meeting, “William F. McCombs doesn’t 

seem to be as much on the outs with Gov. Wilson as some newspaper reports 

would indicate.” The three men had dinner, then went to the Knickerbocker 

Theatre where they shared a box for a presentation of the British musical comedy, 

“The Sunshine Girl,” which had opened on February 3: 

He said before he went in to see this one that he wanted to get diversion, 

and he got it, but he was not overwhelmingly enthusiastic. [Berg, pages 

267-268; “Wilson and McCombs Go To See A Show,” The New York 

Times, February 22, 1913] 

(Governor and President Wilson often went to the theater, where he preferred 

comedy to drama; he was fond of vaudeville and often attended performances in 

New York City and Washington. His second wife, in her memoir, explained his 

interest:

When he left his desk or office, he apparently closed that door in his mind, 

and was ready to play; then he would play with the abandon of a boy. 

Frequently, at night, we would go to the Oval Room upstairs after dinner 

and he would put a record on the Victrola and say: “Now, I’ll show you 

how to do a jig step.” He was light on his feet, and often said he envied 

Primrose, the minstrel dancer, and wished he could exchange jobs. 

Mr. Wilson enjoyed vaudeville and was a regular patron of Keith’s 

Theatre [at 619 15th Street NW., in Washington]. No matter how foolish 

the skit, he said it rested him because it took his mind off responsibilities 

and refreshed his spirit to see light-hearted people who “took on no more 

at their hearts than they kick off at their heels.” Particularly he enjoyed the 

tap dancing, and Primrose always pleased him. The manager of the 

theatre, Mr. Roland S. Robbins, and his assistant Mr. Chevalier, always 

met us at the entrance and escorted us to our box. [Wilson, Edith Bolling, 

My Memoir, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1939, page 145) 
45 

This trip to New York City was notable for the journey back to Princeton on 

February 22. On the train ride from New York City to Newark, he found a seat, 

but when he changed trains, he had to stand most of the rest of the way: 

So did a lot of other people, and at every station somebody would come 

along and jam the President-elect in the back with a suitcase, step on his 

feet, or push him against a seat. The next President was recognized, but 

nobody offered him a seat, and for that matter nobody offered a seat to any 

of the women who had to stand. 

At Metuchen, the President-elect captured a vacant seat, as the Times recounted: 

A moment later he saw that a woman was standing and he jumped up and 

offered her his seat. He was only man in the car whose gallantry led him 

that far.

The Post added the detail that he had been standing for nearly an hour up to that 

point: 

The President-elect gave up his seat on a train today to a woman who was 

standing in the aisle. She was not near him, at that, but at the other end of 

the car when he spied her, arose, bowed, and beckoned for her to take the 

seat he had vacated. She smiled, thanked him, and took it. 

He finally found a seat at New Brunswick “and dropped into it wearily.” A young 

woman, “a very pretty one, by the way,” asked the future President if she could 

shake his hand. “Why, surely,” he replied, “and it’s a pleasure to meet you.” He 

also gave “a jovial greeting” to a 6-year old girl who introduced herself. 

During the ride, the President-elect expressed his concerns about the situation: 

When the conductor came to punch his ticket for the third or fourth time 

the Governor, who was being crowded by the incoming passengers worse 

than ever, said to him: 

“I wish you would give my compliments to the man who is responsible for 

the management of this railroad, and tell him that it is a very badly 

managed road.” 

The conducted turned red, but made no answer. 

Back home in Princeton, President-elect Wilson remained in doors, forced to miss 

“his usual afternoon walk” because of heavy rain. [“Wilson Has To Stand In a 

Jersey Train,” The New York Times, February 23, 1913; “No Trips For Wilson,” 

The Washington Post, February 23, 1913] 
46 

Governor Wilson, on February 25, informed David S. Crater, New Jersey’s 

Secretary of State, that he would resign effective noon on March 1. He said: 

For three days I will be a private citizen. I feel as though I would like to 

turn a handspring to celebrate the fact that I will have no dignity of office 

to maintain. 

An alternative version of the quote was: 

I shall have the pleasure of being a private citizen for just three days. I 

think I shall celebrate the fact by turning a handspring just to show that I 

have no dignity of office to maintain. 

[“Gov. Wilson Has Resigned,” The New York Times, February 26, 1913; “Back 

To Jersey Fight,” The Washington Post, February 26, 1913] 

He had been Governor of New Jersey a little over 2 years, from January 17, 

1911 to March 1, 1913. To help pay for the move to Washington, he took out a 

$5,000 bank loan. His daughter Eleanor said, “He hated to do it, but we could not 

have made the move to Washington without it.” [Berg, page 272] 

The Oath of Office

Berg described the March 3 trip to Washington: 

On Monday the third, Secret Service men, a large crowd, and a line of 

motorcars waited outside 25 Cleveland Lane. At 10:30, Woodrow and 

Ellen exited the house, choosing to walk to the train station instead of 

riding in one of the automobiles. They made a slight detour, strolling 

down Library Place, past the house they had built years earlier. Friends 

and neighbors paid their respects along the way, though most of the 

townspeople waited for them at the train—a special car followed by a half 

dozen coaches filled with six hundred rollicksome undergraduates. The 

family stood on the back platform as the train pulled out of the campus 

depot at eleven, the First Couple smiling and waving and looking wistful 

as the spires and towers disappeared from view. 

They arrived in Union Station at 3:45, departing for the Shoreham Hotel at 15th

and H Streets in a touring car provided by President Taft along with a chauffeur, 

footman, and two motorcycle policemen. Their three daughters entered a second 

car, also provided by President Taft. They managed to bypass “the chaotic 

gathering of women suffragists who were staging a ‘pageant’ down Pennsylvania 

Avenue and commanding most of the attention that afternoon—5,000 women 

demanding their rights as they paraded in front of a crowd of 500,000.” 
47 

As described in the Times, the trip was circuitous:

Woodrow Wilson, after to-day President of the United States, slipped into 

the Capitol City, and, all unobserved, drove through undecorated and 

deserted residential streets, by a roundabout back-alley route, as it were, 

into the gay city where for the next four years he is to live and hold the 

reins of the National Government. Scarcely a score of persons noticed his 

automobile as it whizzed through the silent streets, and only a few 

applauded him as he reached the hotel. 

The caravan of vehicles followed Massachusetts Avenue to H Street, then onto

15th Street and the hotel. [Berg, pages 272-273; “Wilson Evades Vast Crowd, The 

New York Times, March 4, 1913] 

That evening, President-elect and Mrs. Wilson attended a private dinner for the 

Wilson family as guests of the President-elect’s cousin, John A. Wilson of 

Franklin, Pennsylvania. Mr. Wilson would visit President Wilson many times 

over the two terms. He also was a vice president of AAA; in December 1913, he 

would be elected president of the organization, a post he held until May 1916. 

[“NIP A.A.A. Insurgency,” The New York Times, December 2, 1913] 

The Star described the cousin as: 

John A. Wilson, the President’s cousin, who is dean of the Wilson family . 

. . finds himself very much at home about the Executive Mansion. He 

used to play there more than fifty years ago, when he and Tad Lincoln, the 

youngest son of the Great Emancipator, were “pale.” 

Wilson recalled many stories of the relationship between President Lincoln and 

his rambunctious, hard-to-control youngest son, whose given name was Thomas. 

[“Tells Of Friendship For Tad Lincoln,” The Evening Star, March 7, 1917] 

In an account of the dinner party, the Post reported: 

President-elect Wilson was in high spirits. The wear and tear of the past 

few days had left no trace in his appearance. He was genial, kindly, and 

exceedingly solicitous regarding the members of his family.

The guest list of over 20 family members included Miss Helen Woodrow Bones, a 

favorite cousin. She would join the Wilsons in the White House as the First 

Lady’s personal secretary. [“Wilson Dinner Party,” The Washington Post, March 

4, 1913; Berg, page 271] 

Governor Wilson took the oath of office on March 4, 1913. Although some 

observers had wondered how the first bicycling President would move between 
48 

the White House and the Capitol, he chose neither a bicycle nor an automobile. 

Berg described the choice:

Taft and Wilson entered a large landau drawn by four horses. Great cheers 

greeted them all along Pennsylvania Avenue. In the meantime, White 

House chauffeurs drove the Wilson family in automobiles down side 

streets to the Capitol, where they took seats in the Senate Gallery . . . . It 

was still overcast but a mild fifty-five degrees as the Presidential carriage 

pulled before the crowd, the incumbent appearing happier than the 

incoming President. With little pomp, Wilson took his place on the 

grandstand, which sat slightly above the heads of the 100,000 countrymen 

who stood there in anticipation. [Berg, pages 275-276] 

The Post described the procession along Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol: 

At 10:07 o’clock the ride to the Capitol began. In the first carriage 

were President Taft and Mr. Wilson, Mr. Taft occupying the right-hand 

seat . . . . 

The party moved briskly out of the White House grounds and down 

Pennsylvania avenue, the mounted escorts clattering along beside and 

behind. The streets were packed, and to roars of cheers, President Taft and 

Mr. Wilson gave their acknowledgements . . . . 

At the President-elect’s request the number of secret service men assigned 

to guard the carriage in the procession to the Capitol was reduced to two. 

Vice President (elect) Marshall’s carriage followed closely, and 

immediately behind marched the White House correspondents and the 

newspaper men who have been with Mr. Wilson in the campaign. 

President Taft and President-elect Wilson were escorted to the President’s room, 

where the current President began signing the bills Congress, which was still in 

session, passed that morning. [“Starts Day Early,” The Washington Post, March 

5, 1913] 

With the 62nd Congress finally at an end, President Taft and President-elect 

Wilson went onto the grandstand. Chief Justice Edward Douglass White 

administered the oath of office, with Ellen holding the Bible. 

President Wilson’s Inaugural Address was, as a Post editorial put it, “a model of 

brevity and calm expression.” He began by noting the transition: 

There has been a change of government. It began two years ago, when the 

House of Representatives became Democratic by a decisive majority. It 
49 

has now been completed. The Senate about to assemble will also be 

Democratic. The offices of President and Vice-President have been put 

into the hands of Democrats. What does the change mean? That is the 

question that is uppermost in our minds to-day. That is the question I am 

going to try to answer, in order, if I may, to interpret the occasion. 

The point was not that his party had been successful. “The success of a party 

means little except when the Nation is using that party for a large and definite 

purpose.” By its vote, the Nation called on the Democratic party to change the 

country’s plans and point of view. 

Some old things with which we had grown familiar, and which had begun 

to creep into the very habit of our thought and of our lives, have altered 

their aspect as we have latterly looked critically upon them, with fresh, 

awakened eyes; have dropped their disguises and shown themselves alien 

and sinister. Some new things, as we look frankly upon them, willing to 

comprehend their real character, have come to assume the aspect of things 

long believed in and familiar, stuff of our own convictions. We have been 

refreshed by a new insight into our own life. 

He cited some of his goals, including a strengthened industry, improved labor 

conditions, and changes in the tariff, concluding: 

The Nation has been deeply stirred, stirred by a solemn passion, stirred by 

the knowledge of wrong, of ideals lost, of government too often debauched 

and made an instrument of evil. The feelings with which we face this new 

age of right and opportunity sweep across our heartstrings like some air 

out of God's own presence, where justice and mercy are reconciled and the 

judge and the brother are one. We know our task to be no mere task of 

politics but a task which shall search us through and through, whether we 

be able to understand our time and the need of our people, whether we be 

indeed their spokesmen and interpreters, whether we have the pure heart to 

comprehend and the rectified will to choose our high course of action. 

This is not a day of triumph; it is a day of dedication. Here muster, not the 

forces of party, but the forces of humanity. Men's hearts wait upon us; 

men's lives hang in the balance; men's hopes call upon us to say what we 

will do. Who shall live up to the great trust? Who dares fail to try? I 

summon all honest men, all patriotic, all forward-looking men, to my side. 

God helping me, I will not fail them, if they will but counsel and sustain 

me!

With the ceremonies ended, President Wilson and former President Taft returned 

to their carriage, while their families returned to the White House in automobiles: 
50 

When congratulations on his address were over . . . he was ushered to the 

carriage in front of the stand. Mr. Taft following him into the carriage. 

His smile had not worn off, and it radiated over the crowd as the new 

President doffed his hat to the populace when the procession started. 

There was hardly a minute during the new President’s ride from the 

Capitol to the White House that he did not hear a constantly rising chorus 

of cheers. As his carriage passed up Pennsylvania Avenue, and each 

section of the densely crowded thoroughfare spied the visage of the new 

President, the outbursts seemed to increase in volume and enthusiasm . . . . 

President Wilson doffed his hat continuously in recognition of prolonged 

ovations. 

The carriage reached the White House at around 3 o’clock. There, the current and 

former Presidents, their families, members of the new Administration, and friends 

enjoyed a buffet luncheon. The former President left, while the Wilsons and 

others went to the reviewing stand for a parade that lasted nearly 5 hours. 

[“Nation Acclaims Woodrow Wilson Its President,” The Washington Post, 

March 5, 1913; “The Inaugural Address,” The Washington Post, March 5, 1913] 

One incident had occurred while President-elect Wilson’s carriage was on the way 

from the Shoreham Hotel to the White House: 

One startling incident took place yesterday while President Wilson was 

being escorted to the White House. A cavalryman’s horse plunged toward 

the President’s carriage, and at one time it looked as if he would plant his 

forefeet in it.

A dozen troopers frantically rushed to grasp the bridle, while President 

Wilson calmly leaned out of his carriage and patted the frightened horse 

on the neck. [“Horse Endangers President,” The Washington Post, 

March 5, 1913] 

President Wilson’s Automobile Rides

Shortly after taking office, President Wilson fell into a routine that biographer 

Gene Smith described:

[Wilson], looking better than he had ever looked before (or would ever 

look again), did not find his duties onerous. He spent no more than four or 

five hours a day on his work, and saying he still kept to a schoolboy 

schedule, he did not work on Saturdays or Sundays. 
51 

He enjoyed relaxing on drives around the Washington area in the chauffeur-driven 

White House Pierce-Arrow automobile: 

In the afternoons when the weather was good he and one or more of his 

womenfolk went riding in one of the White House Pierce-Arrows, big 

open cars with right-hand drive and the President's Seal on the door. He 

mapped out a series of routes, and the chauffeur was not allowed to 

deviate from them: The Number One Ride, The Southern Maryland Ride, 

the Potomac. Going on these rides, the First Lady saw things that shocked 

her. She was born in a small town [Rome, Georgia] and grew up there and 

after her marriage lived in a series of small college towns, and the crowded 

big-city back streets and alleys of Washington were a revelation to her. 

She walked through the slums and talked a great deal to the Negro servants 

about their homes, and it became her passion to do something for the 

people who lived in the houses that appalled her. [Smith, Gene, When the 

Cheering Stopped: The Last Years of Woodrow Wilson, William Morrow 

and Company, 1964, pages 5-6] 

Initially, the Presidential automobile was followed by Secret Service men on

motorcycles. This procedure changed after an incident during one of his rides. 

The President’s vehicle was moving along a level road in Maryland. The vehicle 

slowed to allow a car to pass:

As the car went by its occupant, not dreaming who the distinguished 

motorist was, called out in a friendly tone to the President:

“Say, be careful; the bicycle cops are behind you!”

Mr. Wilson turned and there coming along behind him was the secret 

service bodyguard. 

That was its last appearance at the rear of a machine.

From then on, the Secret Service always trailed the President in an automobile of 

their own. (By “motorist,” the reporter meant the passenger driven by a chauffeur; 

the reference to “bicycle cops” is unclear.) [Essary, Helen K., “Social and 

Personal Side of President Wilson and Family,” The Baltimore Sun, March 8, 

1914] 

A third car, filled with journalists, often followed the Presidential Pierce-Arrow

and the vehicle carrying Secret Service agents. 

On March 8, the Star reported on the President’s routine: 
52 

President Wilson began work at 8.30 o’clock this morning, and began 

seeing visitors before 9 o’clock. His program was a pretty lively one. At 

4 o’clock this afternoon he will stop, adhering to his purpose to shut off 

steam at that hour for a little recreation. He has been going on automobile 

rides each afternoon lately, seeing Washington from the same automobile 

Mr. Taft used. A new automobile is being made ready for the President. 

Accompanied by Dick Taylor, a secret service man who was with him at 

Trenton and Princeton, the President yesterday had a long ride through the 

city. The two motor cycle men who followed President Taft now ride 

behind President Wilson, but they no longer wear uniforms. They are in 

citizen’s clothes.

This change in dress was because of several decisions by President Wilson who 

did not like the quasi-regal aspects of the presidency. He also decided that he 

would no longer be accompanied by uniformed aides when in public except on 

state occasions at the White House or army or navy functions. 

On March 8, the First Lady joined President Wilson for his automobile ride. The 

Sun reported that he returned to the White House “at dinner time, his face aglow 

with the flush of wintry air.” 

That evening, President and Mrs. Wilson went to the National Theatre to see 

Billie Burke in “Mind the Paint Girl,” a comedy by Arthur W. Pinero. The 

Wilsons attended “in the most democratic sort of way,” in keeping with the 

newspapers’ theme of a President who preferred “Jeffersonian simplicity.” They 

and their party drove to the theater in two White House automobiles: 

They escaped the waiting crowd by using the side entrance, which brought 

them into the house directly by the boxes. Again by request there was no 

welcome from the orchestra [the formality of playing “The Star Spangled 

Banner”] . . . . The only decoration on the Presidential box was a shield 

bearing the President’s Insignia. 

A Secret Service agent kept guard while the “negro footmen in the White House 

livery, with red, white and blue cockades, were the only other attendants. 

[“Limited To Tariff,” The Evening Star, March 8, 1913; “Strong On Simplicity,” 

The Baltimore Sun, March 9, 1913] 

President Wilson did not always go for drives in the White House Pierce-Arrow. 

On March 11 and 12, for example, he took his first long walks in the city. The 

Post described his March 11 walk: 

Dressed in a pearl gray suit of neat design, a natty hat cocked airily to one 

side, a bright necktie, and carrying a cane, the President left the White 
53 

House . . . . With only James Sloan, the secret service agent 

accompanying him, the President walked briskly from the back door of the 

White House down to the west gate . . . . Outside the White House 

grounds he fell quickly into a long stride that surprised Sloan, who had 

grown used to the more leisurely stroll of Mr. Taft.

He stopped to view the State, War, and Navy buildings, the Corcoran Art 

Institute, the Daughters of the American Revolution building, and the home of the 

Pan-American Union. In addition, “he violated the ‘keep off the grass’ 

injunctions, and cut through Potomac park to the river”: 

Many persons who were taking advantage of the warm afternoon were 

almost convinced that May had arrived ahead of its schedule when they 

saw the natty figure: sans gloves and overcoat, and wearing the Easter 

garb. Then as they drew nearer they were amazed to find that it was the 

President of the United States. [“Nattily Garbed The President Walks, A 

Harbinger Of Spring,” The Washington Post, March 12, 1913] 

On March 12, he went for another walk: 

For a short time during the afternoon the President worked on his 

correspondence, but soon was outdoors enjoying the spring weather. The 

President spied some magnolias in blossom, observed the growing verdure 

of the White House grounds and swung into a brisk walk along Potomac 

drive. 

He reportedly “attracted practically no attention as he strolled through the 

parkways.” [“Ready To Name Four,” The Washington Post, March 13, 1913] 

On March 25, President Wilson and his daughter Jessie were out on a drive when 

they decided to stop for a surprise visit to Speaker of the House James B. 

“Champ” Clark. “A doorkeeper told him the building was closed, but a whispered 

word from a secret service man opened the doors.” The Speaker greeted them and 

gave them a tour. The visitors were “most interested in the reports of the new 

arrangement of seats in the House chamber, and the Speaker acted as their guide.” 

They sampled the benches that proved to be very comfortable. President Wilson 

had to leave for another appointment, but said, “maybe I’ll come up again some 

time.” The Speaker replied, “Yes, come again,” not aware how soon the President 

would return. [“President Makes A Call On The House Speaker,” The Evening 

Star, March 26, 1913] 

In fact, Members of Congress would be surprised by his return to deliver his 

annual message to Congress a few weeks later in the House chamber to a joint 
54 

session of the House and Senate. Not since President John Adams had a President 

delivered the message in person; the messages were typically sent to Congress and 

read by a clerk. The move was so unusual that he explained his reasoning to 

reporters and gave them permission to quote him: 

The reasons are very simple. I think that is the only dignified way for the 

President to address Congress at the opening of the session, instead of 

sending the address to be read perfunctorily in the clerk’s familiar tone of 

voice. I thought that the dignified and natural thing was to read it. It is a 

precedent which it is true has been discontinued a long time, but which is a 

very respectable precedent.

Despite the unusual nature of the April 8 visit, President Wilson wanted to 

minimize ceremony:

To rob the affair of as much formality as possible and make it wholly free 

from ostentatious display, the President went to the Capitol 

unaccompanied by any one save James Sloan, his faithful Secret Service 

guard . . . . When the White House automobile bearing the President and 

his secret service guard reached the entrance to the House several hundred 

persons there applauded and got a smile and a wave of the hand in 

response. 

The First Lady and her three daughters had arrived by automobile earlier and were 

seated in what was known as “the President’s pew.” 

The address concerned primarily the tariff laws. The tariff on imported goods was 

a chief source of government revenue, but had been a subject of congressional 

debate for decades. “It is clear to the whole country that the tariff duties must be 

altered. They must be changed to meet the radical alteration in the conditions of 

our economic life which the country has witnessed within the last generation.” 

Despite these changes, the tariff schedule had remained unchanged; the “task is to 

square them with the actual facts.” He preferred change sooner rather than later to 

free the business community from “the law of legislation and artificial 

arrangement.” He indicated that he would soon present additional 

recommendations on banking and currency laws so that “our fiscal system . . . 

may best serve to open once more the free channels of prosperity to a great people 

whom we would serve to the utmost and throughout both rank and file.” 

He concluded after only 9 minutes, to the surprise of many of those in attendance. 

[“President’s Visit Nettles Senators,” The New York Times, April 8, 1913; 

“Congress Cheers Greet Wilson,” The New York Times, April 9, 1913] 
55 

President Wilson’s automobile rides were usually routine and did not make news, 

but a few drew the attention of newspaper correspondents. For example, on May 

1, 1913, Neighborhood House at 470 N Street, SW., began a flower festival to 

celebrate the return of spring. President and Mrs. Wilson arrived on May 3 in a 

White 

House automobile to observe children in a procession and play: 

Seated in a White House automobile at 5th and N streets southwest, 

President and Mrs. Wilson stayed for more than an hour while more than a 

hundred small children, garbed in fantastic and enticing attire, danced 

about Maypoles in intricate and graceful steps, and played fairy games in 

the street in front of Neighborhood House. 

The White House automobile was some distance from the society people 

watching the festival, and crowded all about it were men, women and 

children from the southwest section of the city. The President delighted 

the crowd when he nimbly jumped over the back of the front seat of the 

automobile in order to see the dances better. He stood up all the time, but 

Mrs. Wilson remained seated. Both applauded the children frequently. 

When the automobile took them away, they were in turn heartily 

applauded. [“Wee Folk Charm Head Of Nation,” The Sunday Star, May 4, 

1913] 

Another newsworthy incident occurred on October 4. Robert Crawford, a 15-year 

old bicycle messenger for the Postal Telegraph Company, collided with President 

Wilson’s automobile at 14th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, SE. Crawford had 

swerved into the automobile’s path while trying to avoid stones thrown at him by 

another boy. The Post reported: 

The President, who was riding in the front seat with the chauffeur, was at 

the boy’s side in an instant, lifting him from beneath the wreckage, while 

the secret service men disentangled the demolished bicycle from under the 

automobile. Crawford’s principal solicitation was his wheel. 

“My wheel, my wheel,” he whimpered; “I’ll have to carry the messages 

now.” 

The President promptly assured him that he would buy him “a nice new 

wheel,” and directed Dr. [Cary T.] Grayson [U.S.N., the President’s 

physician] to attend him constantly. The boy’s mother is employed at the 

hospital [Providence Hospital] where he was taken.

Fortunately, as explained in a White House statement, “The car was going very 

slowly, and was stopped before the wheels could pass over the boy.” Robert’s 
56 

injuries were not serious, mostly consisting of body bruises and scrapes on his 

arms and legs. The hospital’s doctors determined that he would be well enough to 

return to work the next day, but the President insisted that the boy stay in the 

hospital overnight. 

President Wilson visited Robert in the hospital around noon the following day. 

Several nurses walked the President into the ward: 

“Hello, young chap, how are you?” said the President, smiling down on 

the little messenger.

“I’m all right,” replied Raymond [sic]. “Gee, you fellows give [sic] me an 

awful bump yesterday.” 

Robert told the President how the accident had occurred while he was dodging 

stones. “I didn’t know you were in the machine.” After displaying his injured 

ankle and bruised knee, he added, “I’ll be all right in a few days. I had better be, 

or I’ll lose my job.” He had just started working for Postal Telegram Company 

the previous Friday, had worked only 2 days, and did not know how he would pay 

off the remaining cost of the demolished bicycle. He had paid $3 for the first 

installment, with $17 due. 

President Wilson assured him he need not worry about that: 

The little fellow beamed with joy at the President’s visit, introduced 

Mr. Wilson to some of the patients about him, and thanked him for his 

visit with tears in his eyes.

Mrs. Sabina Crawford, the boy’s mother, who is employed at the hospital, 

expressed her appreciation to the President for his attention to her son. 

“There aren’t many folks,” she told Dr. Grayson . . . “who pay so much 

attention to those they run down with the automobiles.” 

At President Wilson’s direction, Dr. Grayson bought a replacement bicycle for 

Robert and had it delivered to the Crawford home on October 13, the day after 

Robert was released from the hospital. Back at work, Robert “was the center of 

all eyes among the messenger boys” as he “exhibits proudly to his friends” the 

bicycle given to him by the President of the United States. [“Wilson Auto Hits 

Boy,” The Washington Post, October 5, 1913; “Wilson Calls On Boy,” The 

Washington Post, October 6, 1913; “Messenger Boy Proud Of Gift From Wilson,” 

The Washington Post, October 19, 1913] 
57 

President Wilson also became caught up in the enthusiasm about the Lincoln 

Highway. In September 1912, Carl G. Fisher, who had made a fortune with his 

Prest-O-Lite compressed carbide-gas automobile headlights, gathered his auto 

industry peers for a dinner in his hometown of Indianapolis. He suggested they 

finance a $10 million Coast-to-Coast Rock Highway from New York City to 

San Francisco. "Let's build it," he told the group, "before we're too old to enjoy 

it!" By mid-1913, Fisher and his supporters had changed the name of the road to 

the Lincoln Highway, established a headquarters in Detroit, and launched a routefinding tour. 

The Lincoln Highway Association announced the route in September 1913 and 

began collecting $5 membership subscriptions, in return for which members 

would receive a certificate and an insignia to place on their motor cars. With the 

encouragement of Representative Frank E. Doremus (D-Mi.), President Wilson 

sent a $5 check and in return received membership certificate No. 1. The 

association, known for its publicity efforts, used his membership to solicit other 

memberships, according to its official history:

For instance, as a feature of the campaign to sell membership certificates, 

they reproduced in halftone President Wilson’s No. 1 certificate and 

offered the reproduction as an illustration to every newspaper which would 

print it. [The Lincoln Highway: The Story of a Crusade That Made 

Transportation History, Dodd, Mean and Company, 1935, pages 94-95] 

In choosing the route for the Lincoln Highway, the association had gone with the 

most direct route practical. In doing so, it upset nearby States, particularly 

Colorado, that on the basis of the route-finding tour, had thought they would be 

included in the route that auto industry executives planned to build with their own 

funds. In late 1913, Maryland and District of Columbia business leaders began to 

promote the idea that the Lincoln Highway, which ran through Philadelphia, 

should pass through Baltimore and Washington. Construction by Maryland of 

State roads would avoid increasing the funds the association would have to raise. 

[“Wants Lincoln Highway,” The Baltimore Sun, December 6, 1913] 

A. R. Pardington, vice president of the Lincoln Highway Association, was in 

Baltimore on December 20 to address the City Club. In introducing Pardington, 

City Solicitor S. S. Field made the case for inclusion, as described by the Sun: 

[He] said that any national highway ought to go to the capital and cross 

Mason and Dixon’s line, and that this was especially true if it is to be 

called the Lincoln Highway. He declared that Lincoln was the true friend 

of the South and that his immortal work and his death had taken place in 

Washington, with which his name would forever be associated.
58 

A Lincoln highway situated altogether in the North and which did not 

reach Washington, Mr. Field declared, would be almost a misnomer. Such 

a boulevard might appropriately be called a motorway, he said, or the 

joyway . . . . But it would be entirely inappropriate to call it the Lincoln 

Highway.

Pardington explained how the route had been selected during the cross-country 

tour, noting that about 62 percent of the population was not far from it: 

He explained how many of the great cities had been disappointed because 

the highway would pass them by, such as Indianapolis, Detroit, Chicago 

and St. Louis, but these, he said, with other cities further off the route, like 

St. Paul, were making plans and had contributed large sums of money to 

build roads to connect with the highway. [“Urges Lincoln Highway,” The 

Baltimore Sun, December 21, 1913] 

On June 1, 1914, the Merchants and Manufacturers’ Lincoln Highway Committee 

put their case before President Wilson. They argued that the Lincoln Highway 

should make a detour from Philadelphia to Washington via Baltimore and from 

Washington to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where it would again link with the main 

route. The Star summarized their argument that this change would not increase 

the cost to the association: 

It has been pointed out that the authority to mark the roads from here to 

Philadelphia and from here to Gettysburg will cost the commission little, if 

anything. 

The Philadelphia to Washington road is practically completed and state 

authorities will bear the expense of completion. From here to Gettysburg 

the states will furnish whatever money is necessary. 

From the District line the road would follow certain streets to the great 

monument being erected in Potomac Park to the memory of Lincoln. 

The streets and roads from the Lincoln Memorial to the Lincoln Highway at 

Gettysburg would be designated by the city and States as the Lincoln Highway. 

The Star added: 

The President sympathized with the presentation of the views of the 

committee to the extent of approving the argument that a great national 

highway named for Lincoln would be inappropriately named if it failed to 

take in Washington . . . . 
59 

The President requested his visitors to submit to him the letter they would 

like to write to the Lincoln memorial highway commission, with 

headquarters in Detroit. If this letter suits him he will send it to the 

commission. [“Lincoln Highway Plea Heard By President,” The Evening 

Star, June 1, 1914] 

He sent the letter on June 19: 

I am sure that the whole country is interested to see to it that there should 

no longer exist a North or a South in this absolutely united country which 

we all love and that the imaginary Mason and Dixon line should be made 

once and for all a thing of the past, and as a small contribution to that end 

I earnestly suggest that the Lincoln Highway Association should grant 

permission to place the official Lincoln Highway markers on the macadam 

roadway running from Philadelphia to Washington, through the properly 

selected streets of the latter city to the Lincoln Memorial now under 

construction, and from thence along the roadway through Frederick, 

Maryland, and from Frederick to Gettysburg. 

I am reliably informed that this route is now or will in the very near future 

be a modern macadam roadway from Philadelphia to Gettysburg by way of 

Washington. The entire expense of the road, I am informed, including 

officially marking the highway, will be defrayed by local interests.

Cordially and sincerely yours, 

Woodrow Wilson 

Although the letter did not mention Baltimore, the road between Philadelphia and 

Washington ran through the city. [“President Responds To Highway Appeal,” 

The Evening Star, June 22, 1914; The Lincoln Highway, page 159] 

In late July, Henry B. Joy, president of the Lincoln Highway Association and of 

the Packard Motor Car Company, replied to the President. The association’s 

work, Joy wrote, “no doubt greatly assisted through your recognition of its work 

in its early stages,” had progressed to the point where virtually every segment of 

the Lincoln Highway had been marked and renamed, especially the segment 

between Philadelphia and Gettysburg: 

Especially is such the case between Philadelphia and Gettysburg, where in 

the counties traversed and also in the cities . . . . the official adoption by 

the local authorities of the name Lincoln Way and the marking thereof and 

the betterments and beautifications in process make the changing of the 
60 

route in accordance with your suggestions, if for no other reasons, outside 

of and beyond the control of this Association . . . . 

It is not possible to undo this wonderful work of the communities whose 

loyal patriotic efforts are making, have indeed made, the Lincoln Highway 

a part of the map of our country. 

The Lincoln Way is the shortest, most direct and practicable route 

consistent with the topography of the country from New York on the 

Atlantic to the San Francisco on the Pacific, and to change from that basis 

principle and extend its length by devious windings from city to city, or 

from point of interest to point of interest, would insure its failure as a 

permanent useful Memorial Way.

It is not within the power of our Association to alter the already 

painstakingly selected and actually adopted route. [The Lincoln Highway, 

pages 160-161] 

Robert N. Harper, the president of District National Bank and a member of the 

local committee, was disappointed by the reply and puzzled by it. President 

Wilson’s letter did not ask the Lincoln Highway Association to change the route. 

“Washington is asking the association not to deviate one foot from its crosscontinent highway, or to spend one extra cent on the loop through Washington. 

We are asking nothing more than the association has already done in Colorado 

and Nevada, where side loops have been laid out marked with the Lincoln 

highway marker.” He could not “conceive any bona fide reason” for rejecting the 

request. [“Opposes Change in Route Of Highway,” The Evening Star, August 2, 

1914] 

However, the Lincoln Highway Association had learned its lesson from those 

other examples. Groups such as the Baltimore-Washington committee saw those 

loops as precedents for their own loops. The association’s history explained: 

Most of the arguments in favor of these changes cited the fact that the 

Association had once varied from its declared principle of directness . . . . 

The directors, however, quickly recognized the error that had been made 

and in the spring of 1915 formally withdrew sanction of the Denver loop 

as a part of the Lincoln Highway. This action evoked a storm of protest . . 

. . The Association stood its ground. [The Lincoln Highway, page 158] 

A 1916 discussion in a good roads magazine of President Wilson’s motoring 

interests explained:
61 

No more ardent motorist ever occupied the White House than President 

Wilson. . . . Mr. Wilson probably has spent an average of two hours a day 

in an automobile since he became president.

He prefers to ride with the top down. ...His choice of a seat depends upon 

the purpose of the ride. If he intends to do some thinking, he is almost 

certain to sit beside the chauffeur. If he is out solely to relax, he joins his 

companions in the [back seat] and mingles in their conversation. An 

automobile load of Secret Service men always accompanies the president's 

car, whether the journey be some 150 miles through the Green Mountains 

or merely from the White House to one of the Washington theatres. 

Motoring is the president's chief form of recreation during his vacations. 

[Brown, L. Ames, "President Wilson the Motorist," Northwestern 

Motorist, September 1916] 

President Wilson was clear about his preferences:

The President loved moderate speeds . . . . He considered twenty-five 

miles an hour fast enough for anyone who wanted to see something of the 

country. Frequently he and Mrs. Wilson took a drive in the [Baker] 

electric, with the Secret Service Cadillac trailing behind. A writer of the 

time was so impressed with the scene that he said they reminded one “of a 

rabbit leading a St. Bernard over the country roads.” 

President Wilson detested the constant presence of the Secret Service, but 

reluctantly observed the law. He managed, however, to eliminate the 

motorcycle police escort used during the Taft Administration. 

In addition to strict orders to War Department garage personnel regarding 

excessive speeding, the President issued a strict plan of operation for the 

garage itself. One reporter described it as more like a fire-engine house 

than a garage. By presidential direction the vehicles were available on 

three-minute telephone notice, day or night. In this way, urgent 

government business could be conducted even while the city slumbered. 

[Collins, Herbert Ridgeway, The Presidents on Wheels, Acropolis Books 

LTD, 1971, pages 138-139] 

Summer Vacation – 1913 

The Wilsons decided on a Summer White House near Cornish, New Hampshire. 

They rented Harlakenden House from American novelist Winston Churchill – a 

two-story brick structure on a hill 3 miles from Windsor, Vermont, with a view of 

the Connecticut River Valley and the Green Mountains. On June 28, the family, 

minus President Wilson, took the railroad to Windsor, then motored to
62 

Harlakendon House. The President remained in Washington after demanding that 

Congress stay in session until it completed work on tariff and currency legislation.

He finally arrived on July 5. The Times described his arrival:

The President’s arrival attracted little attention. Except for a single cheer 

there was no demonstration. The townfolk stared as the President kissed 

Mrs. Wilson and [their daughter] Miss Eleanor and stepped into a waiting 

automobile. Along the way some of the natives waved a flag and 

occasionally an apron fluttered, but the ascent of three and a half miles to 

Harlakenden House was as uneventful as if a party of tourists was passing 

through the mountain country. 

The secret service men followed in another car, while the President’s 

machine plowed through the loose sand and left in its wake an atmosphere 

thick with clouds of dust. Automobiles whirling by in the opposite 

direction contributed more dust, while some passed at dangerously close 

angles, for the roads are narrow and curve along steep embankments in 

places. [“Wilson at Cornish, Sees No Visitors,” The New York Times, July 

6, 1913] 

Because of concerns about congressional activity, President Wilson initially 

planned to return to the city on July 7, but decided to postpone departure for a day 

or two. The Times reported that he was delighted with a drop in the temperature 

and accompanying Autumn-like breezes. “The President had an exhilarating 

day.” He drove to Woodstock, Vermont, for a round of golf. After lunch, he and 

Mrs. Wilson motored to Hanover, New Hampshire, to see Dartmouth College, and 

“after viewing the college grounds they made a wide circuit homeward, a distance 

of thirty miles.” [“Wilson Prolongs His Stay,” The New York Times, July 8, 1913] 

He was still at Harlakenden House on July 8. The Star described his day: 

President Wilson tried another golf links today, this time the nine-hole 

course at Dartmouth College. He left Cornish early, and, motoring thirty 

miles over green hills and valleys, arrived there before noon. The college 

town is filled with summer school students and some of the young women 

tripped enthusiastically across the links to greet the President . . . . 

The President played a fair game, but found the links much more difficult 

that the Woodstock course, where he was yesterday. [“To Remain 

Another Day At the Summer Capital,” The Evening Star, July 8, 1913] 

(On July 9, the Star observed on its editorial page that, “President Wilson motors 

and plays golf with enthusiasm. That story about his only being bicycle riding 

was evidently campaign fiction.”)
63 

At some point during his stay, President Wilson had the following experience: 

He was driving at his usual moderate rate of speed along one of the New 

Hampshire roads when a heavy farm wagon came suddenly into view 

around a sharp turn. The horses, frightened at the apparition of three 

automobiles bearing down upon them—the president’s car is always 

followed by the Secret Service machine and usually by another car 

carrying newspaper men—reared and wheeled. The hoofs of one of the 

horses came within a few inches of striking the rear of the president’s 

machine, where Mr. Wilson was seated, for fortunately the accident was 

averted by the chauffeur’s action in putting on more speed until his 

passengers were safely past the danger. Barring an occasional skid on a 

slippery road or greasy asphalt, this is probably the nearest any president 

has come to real danger while in an automobile. [Collins, page 138] 

He left for Washington on July 13. His family stayed in New Hampshire to enjoy 

activities such as a motor trip through the White Mountains. 

President Wilson would return to Harlakenden House twice more in 1913 for brief 

visits with his family, during which he enjoyed golf and motoring along what the 

Star called “the woods-bordered roads of New Hampshire.” [“White House Dull 

on Labor’s Holiday,” The Evening Star, September 1, 1913] 

Winter Vacation - 1913 

President Wilson had been ill for several days in December and wanted to relax, 

free from the pressures of work. However, he could not leave until he signed the 

landmark Federal Reserve Act (Public Law 63-43). It created the central banking 

system that was intended to stabilize the economy and free it from the economic 

panics that the country had experienced on a regular cycle. 

The signing ceremony took place on December 23 a little after 6 p.m., as 

described by Berg:

And on December 23, the President held another signing ceremony in his 

office, surrounded by his family as well as the officials who had 

contributed to the bill. For this occasion, he had purchased three gold 

pens, which he handed to Congressman [Carter] Glass [D-Va.], Senator 

[Robert L.] Owen [D-Ok.], and Secretary [of the Treasury William G.] 

McAdoo. He spoke for a few minutes, expressing his belief that, on the 

heels of the tariff bill, this act “furnishes the machinery for free and elastic 

and uncontrolled credits, put at the disposal of the merchants and 

manufacturers of this country for the first time in fifty years.” Wilson 

could not find the words to express his “deep emotions of gratitude” at 
64 

being part of something so beneficial to the business of America. [Berg, 

page 316] 

(According to the Times: 

In addition to the three plain gold pens purchased by the President with 

which to attach his signature, Senator [William E.] Chilton of West 

Virginia had presented another gold pen, which he asked the President also 

to use. 

With Senator Chilton’s pen President Wilson wrote the words: 

“Approved, 23, December, 1913” . . . . Then he took up one of the plain 

gold pens and wrote his first name, “Woodrow,” with it. With the second 

of the plain gold pens he wrote the first syllable of his last name, and 

finished his signature with the other pen. [“Wilson Signs The Currency 

Bill; Promised Friendly Aid To Business,” The New York Times, 

December 24, 1913] 

At 10:45 p.m., that night, President and Mrs. Wilson, two of their daughters, and 

other family and staff entered the Presidential rail car, attached to a Southern 

Railway train, for a trip to Pass Christian, Mississippi, where they would spend 

the holiday season. (Daughter Jessie had married Francis Bowes Sayre in the East 

Room of the White House on November 25, 1913; they were honeymooning in 

London and Paris.) The Times reported: 

The President does not intend to do any work while he is away except in 

writing or answering such personal letters as may be necessary. 

Arrangements have been made at Pass Christian for giving the President 

every protection from annoyance or interruption, and Dr. Grayson has 

gone along to see that he has a complete rest.

The only exception to rest was consideration of nominees to the Federal Reserve 

Board. The Post added: 

Dr. Grayson in the meantime intends to bring the President back to 

Washington in tip-top physical condition. Dr. Grayson has arranged a 

program of golf, motoring, and walks, which he believes will prove most 

beneficial to Mr. Wilson. Since the President was taken ill about a month 

ago he has been unable to get out as much as he desired. This, coupled 

with the confining work—the tariff and currency bills and the patronage 

question—kept him at work almost constantly since he took office, and he 

feels the strain. [“Wilson Off For Rest,” The Washington Post, December 

23, 1913] 
65 

Before leaving, President Wilson ensured that every policemen, messenger, 

workman, and domestic servant at the White House received a Christmas turkey, 

130 in all. (“With turkeys selling in the local markets at 30 cents a pound this 

feature of the President’s Christmas expenditures is supposed to have cost him 

about $400.”) [“President Off For A Rest,” The New York Times, December 24, 

1913] 

In Pass Christian

A couple years later, writer William K. Gibbs compared the area to France’s 

Riviera on the northern coast of the Mediterranean: 

America has her Riviera on the Gulf Coast of southern Mississippi . . . . 

The spell of America’s Riviera will hold you; make you want to linger 

long past the time you planned to direct your course toward home. I say 

this without reservation; one seldom, if ever, finds parting from this 

inspiring section of the Gulf Coast an easy matter . . . . 

Here Nature has given her master stroke to surroundings that form a 

picture with an appeal that makes one loathe to leave for places less 

favored by the Great Artist.

Three communities, according to Gibbs, constituted America’s Riviera. Pass 

Christian was on the west, with Biloxi on the east. Gulfport was in the middle. 

[Gibbs, William K., “America’s Riviera,” Motor Age, January 18, 1917, pages 5-

9] 

The Wilsons were on the train on Christmas Eve as it rolled through Georgia. At 

Gainesville, the train stopped at the station to change engines. President and 

Mrs. Wilson came out to the car platform with their two daughters to point out the 

house where Margaret and honeymooning Jessie had been born. The home had 

been occupied by Ellen’s Aunt Louisa Hoyt Brown on South Bradford Street 

when the two girls were born. 

The President asked the small crowd where Tom Haney, the long-time station 

master, was:

“Here he is,” said a voice, as the individual referred to, a somewhat aged 

but vigorous-looking station master, appeared. The President and the 

station master shook hands warmly . . . . 

“Who lives in the old house,” the President asked, and the stationmaster 

knew by the direction of the questioner’s nod that he meant the birthplace 

of his daughters. 
66 

“Nobody; it’s closed up,” said Haney. “But how are you, Mr. President? 

We hear you have been ill.” 

“I am quite well,” replied the President smilingly.

“Maybe you better not stand out in the cold,” cautioned someone in the 

crowd, and the President thanked him for his solicitude. The engines were 

changed quickly, and the train started, while the handful of spectators 

waved good-bye. 

Elsewhere, the President had been greeted by large crowds, especially in Atlanta. 

[“The South Throngs To Greet Wilson,” The New York Times, December 25, 

1913] 

On December 25, the train arrived in Pass Christian, where a small crowd greeted 

them with holiday best wishes. The White House automobiles, shipped to Pass 

Christian in advance, took the party to the Herndon mansion, “located in the 

fashionable East End, and [it] has a commanding view of the Gulf of Mexico.” 

The Times described it:

The residence is one of the oldest on the coast, and is a fine example of 

colonial architecture, somewhat modified by the old French and Spanish 

styles which prevailed in this section many years ago. The house stands 

far back in high and spacious grounds, with a superb Gulf view between 

trees directly in front. Around the edge of the grounds is a row of stately 

cedar trees, planted before the civil war, while nearer are sweet olives, 

palms, and other semi-tropic trees.

A hedge surrounds the grounds on three sides, and in the flower garden 

there now are blooming roses, chrysanthemums, nasturtiums, pansies, and 

poinsettia. The house has two stories, with an attic. In front is a long 

colonnade of white columns, supporting the roof from the front veranda. 

A long pier stretches from the shallow beach in front into the Gulf, 

affording water deep enough for bathing. The bathhouse is at the end of 

the pier, and there also is a landing stage for small boats. [No title, The 

New York Times, December 21, 1913] 

President and Mrs. Wilson took a short walk on the beach road along the Gulf. 

Later in the morning, President Wilson and Dr. Grayson took a motor ride to 

Gulfport. In the afternoon, President and Mrs. Wilson walked to the Pass 

Christian post office, which was closed for the holiday. Someone alerted the 

postmistress, Mrs. Annette Simpson, about her famous visitor. She arrived with 

her two little daughters “one of them attired for the occasion in a mortar board hat 

of the collegiate type.” The President told her, “I didn’t think there would be any 
67 

one over here. But I thought I’d try. It’s very kind of you to come over.” He 

bought two 25-cent books of stamps “and in her confusion the Postmistress forgot 

to give him fifty cents change.” She intended to correct her mistake the next day.

After the President and Mrs. Wilson had walked off, Mrs. Simpson told reporters, 

“I wish he had said something about letting me have three more years. They’re 

fighting me hard for the place.” 

Outside, children approached him. He asked their names and wished them a 

Merry Christmas. He and Mrs. Wilson continued their walk before returning to 

Herndon House. [“President Wilson Spends Happy Day,” The New York Times, 

December 26, 1913; “Wilson in Gulf Home,” The Washington Post, December 

26, 1913] 

(The Post Office Department had employed women as postmasters for many 

years, but “women still faced plenty of discrimination in the post,” according to a 

history of the department. In addition to being paid less than men in similar 

positions, women employed as clerks and postmasters were subject to male 

attitudes about the role of women: 

Married women confronted particular obstacles. In 1902, the New York 

Times reported many civil service employers, including the post, requested 

only male names from the registers of qualified applicants. By way of 

explanation, one official said, “Every time a woman is appointed to a 

clerkship in one of the departments she lessens the chances of marriage for 

herself and deprives some worthy man of the chance to take unto himself 

and raise a family.” Postmaster General Henry Payne, who served in 

President Theodore Roosevelt’s administration between 1902 and 1904, 

ordered that women employees who change their names by marriage 

would not be reappointed, adding that wives should “stay at home and 

attend to their household duties.” This official bias against married 

women extended to 1921, when it was lifted by Postmaster General Will 

Hays . . . . [Gallagher, Winifred, How The Post Office Created America: 

A History, Penguin Books, 2016, pages 196-197]) 

The day after Christmas, President Wilson and Dr. Grayson took the White House 

automobile, trailed by the Secret Service in a second automobile, through Gulfport 

to the golf course. As they returned through Gulfport, the President spotted a fire 

on the roof of a home that was owned by Judge and Mrs. J. H. Neville. Judge 

Neville was away, but Mrs. Neville had been standing at the window to watch the 

President pass by: 

Instead she saw the two machines stop in front of the house, the President 

himself alight and dart up the front steps, followed by Dr. Cary T. 
68 

Grayson, U.S.N., the Secret Service men and the chauffeurs, who had 

unstrapped the fire extinguishers from their machines.

“Don’t be alarmed,” said the President to the astonished woman. “Your 

house is on fire, but these men will put the blaze out quickly if you will 

show them the way to the attic.”

After she led the men to the attic, she returned to the President who tried to 

reassure her. She asked, “Will you come into the parlor?” He declined. “No 

thanks, but you might let me get a bucket of water.” By then, however, the fire 

had been put out with little damage to the roof: 

As the party left the house for the automobiles, the Chief of the local Fire 

Department arrived with his hook and ladder and other apparatus, 

followed by Judge Neville, his son and a big crowd. The Judge was 

profuse in his thanks and spoke appreciatively of the President’s 

thoughtful concern for Mrs. Neville. [“President Saves Cottage From 

Fire,” The New York Times, December 27, 1913] 

Gulfport citizens, still thinking about President Wilson’s role in saving the Neville 

house, were considering a formal vote to thank him. On December 27, while the 

President and Dr. Grayson motored to golf in the morning and Margaret and 

Eleanor took a long horseback ride over the Shell Road with friends from New 

Orleans, a volunteer fire fighter told reporters about an incident outside the 

Neville home:

“I was standing outside the Neville residence waiting for the apparatus to 

arrive,” he said, “when a man came up. He noticed my uniform and asked 

me why I was standing there looking at the fire. 

“‘Why don’t you go up there and help?’ he asked.

“I told him I couldn’t go up until the hook and ladder wagon came. 

“‘Well,’ he said, ‘my men could climb up on the inside. I don’t see why 

you can’t.” 

“It suddenly dawned on me that I was talking to the President, and I went 

inside to help.” [“President Wilson 57 Years Old To-Day,” The New York 

Times, December 28, 1913] 

Several children had watched President Wilson and Dr. Grayson play golf. One, 

who had served as the President’s caddie, told reporters, “He’s a good player. 

He’s careful, too.” Another, perhaps disappointed he had not been selected to 

serve as caddie, said, “I didn’t think he played so good, considering he’s the 
69 

President.” Another boy defended the President. “Presidents don’t have to be 

good players.” The Post’s reporter added, “President Wilson really plays a good 

game in view of the fact he took up golf a little more than a year ago.” 

[“President 57 Today,” The Washington Post, December 28, 1913] 

(The Post reported that: 

Pass Christian has a single street, extending along the sheltered waters of 

Mississippi Sound for seven miles . . . . Along the street—“The Shell 

Road” they call it—are the homes of the aristocrats of “The Pass” and the 

wealthy New Orleans folk who live there when summer sun drives them 

from the city. The aristocrats of “The Pass” number about twenty-five old 

families, and in their quaint Colonial homes are to be found such relics of 

the old South as grace great museums.

Back of those old homes is “the road.” By it are scattered the homes of the 

creole and negro population of “The Pass,” numbering more than 1,700 

people. They are the fishermen and the laborers and the dreamers in the 

sun. [“Pass Christian People Respecting President’s Desire For Privacy,” 

The Washington Post, January 4, 1913]) 

On Sunday, December 28, President Wilson’s birthday, he, Ellen, and 

Dr. Grayson attended a Presbyterian church in Gulfport where they heard a 

sermon on personal responsibility. After the service, they went for a drive: 

The Presidential party motored to Biloxi, twelve miles further east along 

the coast before turning back to Pass Christian. On the way the President 

saw four aged Confederate veterans in gray uniforms hobbling along the 

road, leaning heavily on their canes. 

“How do you do?” said Mr. Wilson as he ordered his car to slow up. 

“Howdy,” they answered, but passed on without recognizing the President. 

Further along the road the party saw Beauvoir, the old home of Jefferson 

Davis, with its tiny office near by.

The automobiles were covered with mud when they got back, for a heavy 

rain fell during the night and a drizzle continued most of the morning. 

Many telegrams filled with birthday greetings awaited the 57-year old President 

Wilson at Pass Christian:
70 

He took a short nap after luncheon and started for a walk late in the 

afternoon. He had not gone far when a little girl met him with a bouquet 

of flowers.

“Many happy returns of the day,” she said. The President thanked her 

warmly. It was a simple tribute—the single visible evidence, it seems, that 

the outside world recalled the birthday of the nation’s Chief Executive. 

He later told friends it contrasted with his visit to his birthplace in Staunton, 

Virginia, before the Inauguration when large crowds cheered him, “but he 

appreciated it just as much.” [“Wilson Worships In Little Church,” The New York 

Times, December 29, 1913] 

The following day, as the White House automobile approached the golf course, 

boys “clambered on the running board of the President’s automobile . . . and 

engaged in a free-for-all fight” to be his caddy: 

The President laughed heartily as he leaned out and separated the 

contestants, while one of the Secret Service agents told the boys that if 

they didn’t behave and take their turns in an orderly manner each day they 

would not be permitted to caddy for Mr. Wilson at all. After that a truce 

was declared.

The President played 18 holes “for the first time in many weeks. He made some 

of the holes under bogey, and succeeded in defeating his opponent, Dr. Cary T. 

Grayson, U.S.N., something he rarely does. [“Wilson’s Health Mending,” The 

New York Times, December 30, 1913] 

Reporters agreed the vacation was restoring President Wilson’s health:

The President yesterday motored to the Mississippi Country Club and 

played eighteen holes of golf as though he had not a care in the world. His 

health apparently is improving daily. As he climbed over the bunkers at 

the golf links yesterday there was a resiliency in his step and a vigor in his 

walk that revealed to those who have been constantly observing him how 

much he has been benefited by a week of rest and recreation in the mild 

gulf climate. He is growing accustomed to the stubby grass of the links, 

with its retarding effect on the roll of drives, and made a much better score 

yesterday than usual. 

On the way back to Herndon House, the White House automobiles passed a fire 

on the waterfront that was challenging the Gulfport fire department. “Mr. Wilson, 

however, decided that his service this time were not necessary and continued on to 

his cottage.” [“Lind On His Way To Pass Christian,” The Evening Star, 

December 31, 1913] 
71 

On New Year’s Eve, President Wilson walked into Pass Christian on a shopping 

trip. He bought a toothbrush and a lamp shade. That night, he kept to his sleeping 

schedule and went to bed early. [“President Retires Early,” The Baltimore Sun, 

January 1, 1914] 

On January 1, President Wilson went for his usual golf game in the morning, 

awaiting the arrival of John Lind, his representative in Mexico. Lind arrived on 

January 2, docking in Gulfport. He and President Wilson met in the cabin of the 

scout cruiser Chester until 8 p.m., after which the White House automobiles 

returned the President to Herndon House, declining requests for comment from 

the reporters. [“Wilson Meets Lind on Ship,” The New York Times, January 3, 

1914] 

The reporters, who had been anticipating Lind’s arrival for several days, 

questioned the President the following day. He disappointed them by saying it 

was just a “get-together talk” with no new plan, move, or change as a result. The 

Star reported: 

Mr. Wilson apparently attached little importance to the Lind episode, 

pointing out that the proximity of his personal envoy, coincident with his 

own vacation on the Mississippi coast, had been, as much as anything else, 

a motive for the conference. [“Mexican Program Unchanged by Lind,” 

The Evening Star, January 3, 1914] 

Berg summarized the meeting with information not available to the reporters 

trailing President Wilson:

A storm was brewing the January night Wilson went out to a cruiser at sea 

to confer with John Lind, his special agent in Mexico. Lind reported on 

Mexico’s recent elections, which had prompted General [Victoriano] 

Huerta to nullify the results, dissolve the legislature, and remain as 

dictator. Regional opposition continued to mount, but the leaders 

remained too wary of one another to join forces . . . . Lind urged an 

aggressive attack against Huerta. Unfortunately, the Ambassador was 

neither knowledgeable nor sensitive enough to recognize that the Mexican 

people preferred Huerta to foreign imposition. Knowing he was not 

receiving enough reliable information, Wilson returned from his shipboard 

meeting badly shaken. He felt it was as essential as it was inevitable that 

the Huerta regime should fall, but he was committed to Mexico’s 

determining its own government—no matter how badly he wanted to 

intervene. [Berg, pages 319-320] 

On January 4, the Wilsons attended services at the First Presbyterian Church in 

Biloxi, 23 miles from Herndon House. President Wilson’s presence quickly 
72 

spread, prompting every seat and standing room to be filled. Leaving the church, 

he was greeted by cheers from a crowd:

President Wilson’s party found the 50-mile ride to and from Biloxi the 

most pleasant they had taken since coming to Pass Christian. It lay along 

the Mississippi Sound, which sparkled with sunshine today. The roads 

were good, but the cars moved slowly along the beach, and many families 

ran to their front verandas and waved to the distinguished motorist.

The Sun reported on his health: 

He is being benefited so much by his vacation that each day he is tackling 

more and more the documents which he brought with him for leisurely 

study. The Chief Executive’s health is normal again: In fact, those who 

have been with him for many months say he never looked better. His 

bronzed skin shows the glow of health, and his jaunty step and vigorous 

stroke on the golf links confirm his return to physical strength, which was 

the purpose of his vacation. [“Motors 25 Miles To Church,” The 

Baltimore Sun, January 5, 1914] 

With his vacation nearing an end, President Wilson decided to reward all the 

children he had seen on his trips to and from the Gulfport golf course. The Sun

described his method: 

Since coming here the President has made warm friends with the children, 

who daily run to their front gates to wave greetings to him.

Today there were many expressions of delighted surprise at homes along 

the way when the big White House automobile stopped and a secret 

service man appeared at the doors with a box of candy under his arms, a 

present from the President to his little friends. The President was 

delighted with his role of Santa Claus. 

When news of Mr. Wilson’s generosity spread among the children, it 

became known that many of the youngsters who do not live along the 

route to the golf course were disappointed. They were promised, however, 

that they would not be overlooked and that the supply of candy at the 

Presidential cottage was sufficient to meet all demands.

The Post had a different account: 

As the President motored back to his cottage after golf he distributed a lot 

of candy to the children who greeted him along the way. The little ones 

flocked around his automobile when it stopped and plied him with scores 

of childish questions. 
73 

“Where did you get that automobile?” asked one, and the President 

laughed heartily. 

Tomorrow the presidential automobile will carry more candy, as there 

wasn’t enough to go around today. Ever since the holiday season began 

the President’s family has been receiving boxes of candy from friends, far 

more than could possibly be eaten by them. So the President thought it a 

good idea to give some of the sweets to the children who wave their little 

American flags each day when he passes and always seem so glad to see 

him.

Reporters also wrote about another incident that morning: 

When the chief executive finished his golf game, an old negro approached 

the presidential group. He had difficulty in determining which of the men 

who stood before him was the President, so feeble had his eyesight 

become.

“I’m Ben Williams, Jeff Davis’ old body servant,” he said, “and I wanted 

to meet Mr. Wilson.” 

The President stepped forward and shook his hand. He asked the negro’s 

age.

“I expect I’m 75 anyway,” was the reply.

The old residence of Jefferson Davis, which is now used as a Confederate 

soldiers’ home, is only a few miles from the links, and the negro has lived 

in this vicinity continuously since the days of the Confederacy. [“Wilson 

As Santa Claus,” The Baltimore Sun, January 8, 1914; “New Message 

Begun,” The Washington Post, January 8, 1914] 

The next day, President Wilson continued handing out candy: 

School children lined both sides of the main street singing “America,” and 

people came flocking from stores and shops as the President’s car slowed 

down. A child of twelve handed the President a box and a letter which she 

asked him not to open until he reached home. 

The letter, which President Wilson opened when he reached Herndon House, 

read:

Dear Mr. President: You will find in this box a real, live dove. It flew in 

the door and broke its wing several months ago. We have cared for it, and, 

now that it is well, my mamma says we must give it freedom. If you will 
74 

do me the honor to open its prison and let it fly away to find companions 

of its kind, I shall be very grateful. 

 Lovingly, 

 W.G.

P.S.—Just a little Tennessee girl enjoying the beautiful Southland.

Standing on the veranda of the cottage at sunset, President Wilson opened the 

box. “The bird fluttered for a moment, then paused on a heavy-limbed oak, as if 

preparing for a long flight, and soon was lost in the evening shadows.” 

Representative Byron P. “Pat” Harrison, who represented the congressional 

district that included Pass Christian, was with the President in the automobile that 

day. At the President’s request, Representative Harrison learned that the brownhaired girl was Willa Green, who said she had signed her initials because she did 

“not want anybody to know anything about it.” [“Wilson Frees Girl’s Dove,” The 

New York Times, January 9, 1914] 

As the Star reported, President Wilson had enjoyed his meetings with the children 

who often lined the road between Herndon House and the golf course: 

Hundreds of boys and girls have lined the road on which he motors to and 

from the golf links each day, cheering or waving flags. The President’s 

chauffeur knows the whims of the chief executive and slows down as he 

approaches the little groups. The President often has stopped to talk with 

the children. 

One recent day, one of the boys, Cecil Brown, had halted the White House 

automobile. “I want to give you some candy,” he told the President, “and I want 

you to eat it, because I made it myself”:

The President took the box of homemade candy with him, while Master 

Brown, attired in a Boy Scouts uniform, saluted proudly as the automobile 

proceeded. When Mr. Wilson got through with his important business, he 

wrote the boy thanking him for the gift. 

When the President rode to golf yesterday [January 8], Master Brown was 

again signaling in the road with his flag, but this time he was in civilian 

clothes. He had a box of flowers for the President and a little note. When 

the President got home he read the note. “I liked your letter so much that I 

brought you the flower. I hope you will write me another letter, too, and 

when you get back to Washington I want you to write regularly to me.” 
75 

The President wrote Master Brown that he appreciated the flowers very 

much and was deeply grateful. [“President Answers Children’s Letters,” 

The Evening Star, January 9, 1914] 

January 10 was his last full day in Pass Christian. He motored to the golf course 

for one last round of golf with Dr. Grayson: 

A crowd collected at the links to see the President when he finished his 

game, and along the route going to and from the course, men, women and 

children stood in the road waving flags and cheering. 

They presented him with flowers and other gifts: 

As Mr. Wilson passed the home of former Congressman [Eaton J.] Bowers 

he was given a gigantic bunch of grapefruit, while children along the way 

presented him with oranges and bananas. 

Although he had declined the many invitations he had received while in Pass 

Christian, President Wilson agreed to a farewell reception at Herndon House 

arranged by Representative Harrison:

Automobiles, carriages, rickety traps, crude farm wagons, dust-covered 

saddle horses and crowded trolley cars brought eager people to the 

reception. Pretty girls, aged Confederate veterans in gray uniforms, 

mothers carrying their babies and little children by the score crowded into 

line and passed up the steps to meet the President. 

President stood with Ellen, his two daughters, Dr. Grayson, and other members of 

his party to greet about 2,000 residents: 

Guests were welcomed by the President and Mrs. Wilson, who stood on 

the cottage veranda in the warm, bright sunshine. Mr. Wilson apparently 

enjoyed the occasion immensely, greeting with a cordial smile those who 

shook hands. 

The President is highly appreciative of the manner in which the residents 

have scrupulously observed his desire for seclusion and rest, and it was in 

recognition of their courtesy that he tendered the reception on the day 

before his departure for Washington. 

Reporters noted that it was first reception held during the Wilson Administration. 

[“President Starts Back To Capital Tomorrow,” The Evening Star, January 10, 

1914; “Wilson Receives Them,” The Baltimore Sun, January 11, 1914] 
76 

The Presidential party returned to the station in the early evening of January 11 

and boarded their special train for the trip to Washington. At the station, 

President Wilson told the crowd that he had enjoyed his stay in Pass Christian and 

had obtained exactly the rest he had desired. Pool reports in several newspaper 

agreed:

All told the chief executive has done a great amount of work between his 

games of golf, his long motor rides, and his extended periods of rest. He 

has practically mapped out the course of his administration for the 

remaining months of the present session of Congress. His work has been 

practically uninterrupted either by callers on official business or by the 

curious among the gulf coast people. With the exception of John Lind, his 

personal representative in Mexico, the President has seen absolutely no 

one on business. [“Wilson On Way Here,” The Washington Post, January 

12, 1914] 

The train finally departed after 11:30. 

The train ride today was a restful one for the President and his family. 

Few stops were made, but at many of the towns and cities the special was 

run through slowly while the President stood on the back platform and 

waved his hat in response to the cheers. At Calhoun, S.C., the old 

homestead of John C. Calhoun, 800 cadets at Clemson Military College 

swarmed around the end of the train and gave Mr. Wilson a noisy 

demonstration. [“President Home Today,” The Baltimore Sun, January 13, 

1914] 

Reporters agreed that the vacation had restored President Wilson’s health. 

Back to Harlakenden House – 1914 

In early 1914, Ellen Wilson became ill, weakening from Bright’s disease, a kidney 

ailment, before dying on August 6, 1914. As President Wilson sank into a deep 

depression, Dr. Grayson encouraged him to keep up his golfing and auto rides, but 

nothing seemed to relieve the President’s sadness. 

He and his family went back to Harlakenden House, with President Wilson 

arriving on August 28. Aware of his grief, area residents remained in the 

background. He was reluctant to golf so soon after his wife’s death, but 

Dr. Grayson insisted. He also planned long automobile rides. 

On August 29, he “got a thorough rest” that included a long automobile ride, 

during which he “sped in the White House automobile through the Connecticut 

[River valley] villages past several dangerous turns and bridges, but the only 
77 

mishap was bursting of one of the tires.” [“President Out in Rain,” The New York 

Times, August 30, 1914] 

On the 30th, “The President today found quiet and seclusion automobiling over the 

hills of New Hampshire with Prof. Stockton Axson, his brother-in-law, and 

Miss Margaret Wilson. His route took him high above the Connecticut valley 

through some of the most picturesque scenery of New England.” [“President 

Goes Autoing,” The Washington Post, August 31, 1914] 

On his final full day at Harlakenden House, he motored to Hanover for a round of 

golf with Dr. Grayson. “His game was so strenuous that he broke his driver.” 

[“President’s Vacation Ends,” The New York Times, September 1, 1914] 

The mourning President’s brief vacation did little to relieve his depression. 

In early 1915, Wilson met Edith Bolling Galt, a 42-year old widow who had

inherited a business, the well-known Galt and Bros. Jewelers, from her husband. 

She had married Norman Galt in 1896, but he died in 1908. Smith wrote:

The shop was a profitable one and ran itself with little aid from its owner, 

who was able to travel widely, take a great interest in clothes, particularly 

Paris frocks, and drive around in an electric automobile which, she said, 

was the first ever owned and operated by a Washington woman. She lived 

alone save for two maids in a house on 20th Street, N.W., at New 

Hampshire Avenue [near Dupont Circle]. She was tall and imposing and 

had a beautiful smile and appealing dimples. 

A friend of Mrs. Galt’s told Smith that she drove the electric car like an absolute 

madwoman. [Smith, pages 13-14] 

One day in March, President Wilson and Dr. Grayson were in a limousine in 

Washington when Dr. Grayson saw a friend of his on the street. He pointed out 

Mrs. Galt, as author Erik Larson explained: 

At five feet nine inches tall, with a full and shapely figure and a taste for 

fine clothes, including those designed in the Paris fashion house of Charles 

Frederick Worth, she was a striking figure, with a complexion and manner 

said to gleam, and eyes of a violet blue.

The President asked, “Who is that beautiful lady?” [Larson, Erik, Dead Wake: 

The Last Crossing of the Lusitania, Crown Publishers, 2015, page 37] 
78 

Mrs. Galt was a friend of Helen Bones, the President’s cousin and de facto White 

House hostess since Ellen’s death. Often, they would drive in Mrs. Galt’s car to 

Rock Creek Park for walks. 

They usually ended their visit at Mrs. Galt’s home. But one day after a walk, 

Bones suggested they have tea at the White House. Mrs. Galt, whose shoes were 

muddy, hesitated, feared she would be “taken for a tramp.” Bones assured her 

that President Wilson was off playing golf with Dr. Grayson. As they reached the 

second floor, however, they saw the President returning from a golf outing still in 

his golf clothes. He joined them for tea. With her cheerful manner, Mrs. Galt 

prompted the depressed President Wilson to laugh. Bones wondered “if she was 

hearing right. He had laughed. ‘I can’t say that I foresaw in the first minute what 

was going to happen,’ Helen Bones said later. ‘It may have taken ten minutes’”: 

A few days later Mrs. Galt came to dinner at the White House, and a few 

days after that went riding with the two cousins, she and Helen sitting in 

the back of the car while the President sat by the driver. He seemed very 

tired and hardly said a word while his cousin and her friend chattered 

away.

He cheered up during dinner at the White House: 

In the days that followed, the President and Mrs. Galt went for frequent 

rides with his cousin as chaperone (along with the ever-present Secret 

Service men), and she came often to dine in the White House. 

After Bones invited her friend to the White House on March 23, President Wilson 

sent the White House Pierce-Arrow to pick her up. “Edith wore a purple orchid 

and sat at Wilson’s right,” Larson wrote. The evening continued with 

conversation: 

The evening had a profound effect on Wilson. He was entranced. Edith, 

sixteen years his junior, was an attractive and compelling woman. White 

House usher Irwin “Ike” Hoover called her “an impressive widow. That 

evening, Wilson’s spirits soared.” [Larson, pages 18-19] 

Despite President Wilson’s many concerns, including the war that had broken out 

in Europe in August 1914, Mrs. Galt was a frequent White House dinner guest in 

April, always with others present as etiquette dictated. He began to include her in 

his afternoon rides, with Dr. Grayson, Helen Bones, or another chaperone: 

Here in Edith, in the midst of world chaos, he found a purpose to which he 

could devote himself that took him, if only temporarily, out of his 

apprehension about the widening war and the fate of the larger world. She 

was, to him, “a heaven—haven—sanctuary.” More than this, her presence 
79 

helped him clarify his thoughts about the nation’s trials. On their evening 

rides in the White House Pierce-Arrow, he spoke to her of the war and his 

concerns as he probably would have spoken to his late wife, Ellen, thereby 

helping him order his own thoughts. “From the first,” Edith wrote, “he 

knew he could rely on my prudence, and what he said went no further.” 

The drives with him were “life giving” as she began to feel a bond with him. 

“She had never met a man like Wilson—intensely bright, but also warm and 

solicitous of her feelings. It was all very unexpected.” They found they had some 

common elements in their background. They both were natives of Virginia, he 

from Staunton, she from Wythe. ... 

As for him, his valet, Arthur Brooks, recalled, “He’s a goner.” [Larson, pages 

108-110] 

As she spent more time with President Wilson, she began to look at her life 

differently, but was surprised by what happened on May 4. After dinner at the 

White House, he asked to be alone with her. They walked onto the South Portico 

where they could talk, for once, without a chaperone. He told her of his growing 

love. She protested that, “Oh, you can’t love me for you don’t really know me; 

and it is less than a year since your wife died.” He replied:

I know you feel that, but, little girl, in this place time is not measured by 

weeks, months, or years, but by deep human experiences; and since her 

death I have lived a lifetime of loneliness and heartache. I was afraid, 

knowing you, I would shock you; but I would be less than a gentleman if I 

continued to make opportunities to see you without telling you what I have 

told my daughters and Helen: that I want you to be my wife. In the 

circumstances of the spotlight that is always on this house, and particularly 

on me as the head of the government, whoever comes here is immediately 

observed and discussed; and do what I can to protect you from gossip, it 

will inevitably begin. If you care for me as I do for you, we will have to 

brave this; but as I cannot come to your house without increasing the 

gossip, you, in your graciousness, will have to come here . . . .” 

In a conversation that lasted over an hour, she explained that if he wanted an 

answer now, her answer would be “no.” They had, after all, known each other 

only 2 months; she needed more time. 

He was disappointed in her answer but encouraged by a letter she sent him the 

following day: 
80 

I am a woman—and the thought that you have need of me—is sweet! But, 

dear kindred spirit, with such frankness between us, there is nothing to 

fear—we will help and hearten each other.

She and Helen Bones went for one of their walks in Rock Creek Park where they 

discussed the growing relationship. As they talked, Bones burst into tears. “Just 

as I thought some happiness was coming into his life! And now you are breaking 

his heart.” 

Mrs. Galt was beginning to feel like an “ogre,” but told her friend she could not 

“consent to something I did not feel.” She was, she said, “playing with fire where 

he was concerned, for his whole nature was intense and did not willingly wait; but 

that I must have time to know my own heart.” 

Depressed by her answer, President Wilson found himself “feeling almost 

disoriented as world events clamored for his attention.” 

Unsure about her feelings, whether she loved the man or the President, she agreed 

to continue seeing him under proper chaperonage, often provided by cousin Helen 

Bones. 

Throwing himself into the courtship, he sent flowers, invited her to the White 

House, and took her for automobile rides. “She worried about what to do, but she 

continued to see him for drives and dinners . . . .” Walworth wrote that, “Each 

time she saw him, he stirred an impulse in her to love him and help him to bear 

his burdens; and Helen Bones pleaded his cause on days when duties held him at 

his desk.” [Walworth, Part 1, pages 428-429; Larson, pages 175-177] 

He was in Philadelphia on May 10 for a speech to a group that had just taken the 

oath to become American citizens. Back in the White House, he told Mrs. Galt he 

could not recall what he had said “while in an emotional haze caused by his love 

for her.” He added, “I found myself a little confused as to whether I was in 

Philadelphia or New York! Because my heart was in such a wonderful whirl from 

that wonderful interview of yesterday and the poignant appeal and sweetness of 

the little note you left with me; but many other things have grown clear in my 

mind.” 

President Wilson next saw Mrs. Galt on May 16. Before his April 30 proposal of 

marriage, she had agreed to accompany his party on the Presidential yacht 

Mayflower for a trip to New York City where he would review the Atlantic fleet 

the following day. The Mayflower left from Hampton Roads, Virginia, but as it 

moved up the Atlantic coast encountered a violent storm that left everyone in 

agony, as Smith recounts. Helen Bones stayed in her cabin, wanting to be left 

alone to suffer her agony in private. Even Dr. Grayson, a naval officer, “reeled 
81 

and gagged.” The President’s valet, on a mission to deliver brandy and ice to one 

of the stricken party, collapsed in the dining saloon: 

Mrs. Galt went below and took the liquor from him. She carried it part 

way to the deck but ran out of good health in the hatch and lay on her back 

with her eyes closed, clutching the brandy bottle to her chest. The 

President found her so and could not help laughing at the sight; that made 

her laugh too, and she felt better. 

The incident provided some stability for their relationship. By the time the 

Mayflower arrived in New York City, “the President was talking about his work 

and problems to Mrs. Galt, and she was torn by the desire to help him and the fear 

that really she was unqualified to do so. She worried about what to do, but she 

continued to see him for drives and dinners, with Margaret, Nellie or Helen 

invariably being their companions. [Smith, pages 17-18] 

Harlakenden House – 1915 

President Wilson’s recreational routines were so familiar to reporters that when he 

changed them, they took notice, as shown in this December 1914 Post article:

The President is gradually revising his system of receiving callers, now 

that the days are getting so short that darkness interferes with his usual 

golf matches with Dr. Cary T. Grayson, the White House physician. He is 

now, whenever possible, receiving visitors in the afternoon, instead of the 

morning. 

He goes to his office as soon as he has had breakfast to look over the 

newspapers and attend to pending matters of importance. Then, if the 

press of business is not too great he goes for a golf match or an automobile 

drive. After luncheon he is ready to receive callers. [“President Changes 

Hours,” The Washington Post, December 14, 1914] 

For the summer, President Wilson planned to return to Harlakenden House in 

New Hampshire for a family vacation. Family members, including his daughter 

Jessica and her husband, Professor Francis Sayre of Harvard, were in New 

Hampshire for parts of the vacation. Margaret and Helen Bones asked Mrs. Galt 

to join them:

She did so, driving with Helen via Princeton, where Helen acted as guide 

on a tour of his former haunts. They went on for shopping in New York 

and then to the summer place. [Smith, pages 17-18] 

President Wilson arrived on June 25. He had brought work with him related to 

the European war and issues involving Mexico. The Times reported: 
82 

Mr. Wilson spent almost the entire afternoon and evening looking over the 

estate and attending to some correspondence, but took a short automobile 

ride before dinner. He plans to devote practically all his time while here to 

golfing, automobiling, reading and resting. He will play golf each 

morning twenty miles away at Hanover, N.H., and in the afternoons he 

will motor through the picturesque Connecticut Valley. [“President 

Cheered On Trip To Cornish,” The New York Times, June 26, 1915] 

As planned, he was on the road the following day:

With members of his family, the President spent a very quiet and 

uneventful day and night. He remained at the “Summer White House,” 

working on some correspondence this morning, and late this afternoon 

went automobiling to Hanover, N.H., and White River Junction, Vt . . . . 

In the course of their drive the President and his party became lost several 

times and Mr. Wilson personally called to three natives along the roadside 

and asked the way. In neither instance did the men show any sign of 

recognizing him. [“Wilson Loses Way On Automobile Trip,” The New 

York Times, June 27, 1915] 

On June 27, President Wilson, family members, the Secret Service, and the 

reporters in a third car, drove to Vermont, spending 5 hours “riding through 

forests, up and down steep inclines, part of the time in a driving rain”: 

The drive took the Presidential party over roads seldom traveled by 

automobiles . . . . The chauffeurs of the two cars carrying the party were 

from Washington, and the President knew the country at least as well as 

any one with him . . . . 

Several times his automobile was driven into “blind” roadways and had to 

be backed out in order to proceed on its way. In one place the machine 

plowed down a steep hill in mud up to the hubs, and in others it ran beside 

ravines with mountain streams far below. The chauffeur is a careful 

driver, however, and at no time was the party in any danger. 

During the ride the President frequently remarked on the impressive 

scenery. Going down a narrow gorge, the automobile was forced to stop 

to allow a horse and wagon to pass, and at another place it had to slow up 

while a farmer pushed to one side an obstinate cow that insisted on 

standing in the middle of the road. 

His goal was Woodstock, Vermont, “but in the mountains he lost his way and 

drove in many directions,” resulting in an oft-repeated anecdote:
83 

At one place the automobiles were stopped, and Mr. Sayre leaned out and 

spoke to a farmer standing beside the road. 

“Where does this road go?” asked Mr. Sayre. 

“I’ve been living here all my life and it never went anywhere,” replied the 

man, while the President tried to preserve his gravity. [“President 

Explores Byways Of Vermont,” The New York Times, June 28, 1915] 

A different version had the man replying, “Whar does this road go? It don’t go 

anywhere so far as I know, it’s been here as long as I have.” 

A second account, from The Baltimore Sun, began: 

Becoming lost in the course of a motor run to Woodstock, Vt., today, 

President Wilson hit upon a plan of exploration and [ad]venture with the 

result that he covered 76 miles of rough, rugged and winding mountain 

roads in this State [Vermont] and New Hampshire. His own and all 

known records for these parts was shattered by the President’s experience.

This account continued: 

So the Presidential party set out to explore the road that didn’t lead 

anywhere, devoting five hours to the fun until a driving rain compelled 

them to head homeward. 

The secret service men that trailed the President had a hard time of it over 

the oxen trails and precipitous paths unfamiliar to the tread of an 

automobile and at one point the entire party landed in a swamp, from 

which it was found difficult to extricate the machines.

In contrast the party scaled some of the highest peaks of the lower ridge of 

the Green Mountains. A stop was made at the rough monument which 

commemorates the spot where the Johnson family of pioneers was 

captured by Indians in 1754, and at one or two farmhouses. Altogether it 

was the most remarkable outing the President had during his three 

summers at Cornish. [“Wilson Astray In Auto,” The Baltimore Sun, June 

28, 1915] 

President Wilson continued his travels on the 28th when his trip carried him “110 

miles over the green mountains to Rutland, Vt.” The trip took six hours, and 

included a stop at a tea house along the way. The Secret Service vehicle 

experienced engine trouble “and the President was several miles on his way home 

before the other car overtook him.” [“President Watches Foreign Situation,” The 

New York Times, June 29, 1915] 
84 

Presidential business intervened to interrupt the vacation President Wilson 

needed. Since learning on May 7 that a German submarine had sunk the 

passenger liner Lusitania, with the loss of 1,198, President Wilson had spent 

considerable time on the issue of submarine warfare. Diplomats from the two 

countries were trying to agree on the wording of a note from Germany indicating 

it would no longer target passenger vessels. The diplomatic negotiations became 

more strained when a German submarine sank the Dominion Liner Armenian, 

with reports of several Americans lost. The situation in Mexico also was again 

occupying his time. 

On June 29, the newspapers reported that President Wilson had decided not to 

visit the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco; the war in Europe was at a 

critical point:

One reason why the President wishes to remain in the East is that he wants 

to be ready to take immediate steps toward ending the European war if any 

of the belligerent nations or any neutral nation calls on the United States to 

lend its help in that direction. 

He also had decisions to make regarding Mexico, but: 

Late this afternoon the President, with Miss Margaret Wilson, Miss Helen 

Woodrow Bones, and Dr. Cary T. Grayson took a 50-mile automobile ride 

to Lake Sunapee, N.H.; Newport, N.H., and Claremont, N.H. [“Wilson 

Prepared For A Peace Move,” The New York Times, June 30, 1915; 

“Angeles Is Ignored,” The Washington Post, June 30, 1915] 

Drizzly weather kept the President from an automobile ride on June 30 while he 

continued to wrestle with the issues before him. “After devoting several hours to 

officials business” on July 1, “the President put on a rubber hat and coat and went 

with Dr. Cary T. Grayson for a long walk in the rain through the woods 

surrounding Harklakenden House.” [“Fail To See President,” The Washington 

Post, July 1, 1915; “Wilson Relieved Over The Armenian,” The New York Times, 

July 2, 1915] 

On July 1, President Wilson, with family and Dr. Grayson around him, touched a 

telegraph key at Harlakenden House to open “Wilson Day” at the Panama-Pacific 

exposition. 

Some pressure was relieved because he learned that the Armenian had been 

“engaged in admiralty business,” which meant it was not an “unarmed 

merchantman” as President Wilson had referred to ships such as the Lusitania. If 

President Wilson felt relief, he was not able to enjoy peace in his automobile: 
85 

Automobiling was impossible today because of the bad condition of the 

roads, and therefore, the President was indoors most of the time, reading 

and working on official correspondence from Washington. [“Wilson 

Guides Inquiry,” The Washington Post, July 2, 1915] 

On July 3, the Times noted that Mrs. Galt had arrived. Although the reporters 

were aware of her frequent visits to the White House and suspected the reason, 

they informed readers that she was “a guest of Miss Helen Woodrow Bones.” 

[“Wilson Studies Peace Plans,” The New York Times, July 3, 1915] 

Following a bombing on Capitol Hill and an assassination attempt on the son of 

financier J. P. Morgan on July 3, the Secret Service increased its forces 

surrounding President Wilson. As explained in the Post: 

The corps of nine secret service men attending President Wilson here 

today took additional precautions to guard him, following detailed reports 

from Washington of the bomb explosion that wrecked part of the Senate 

early this morning.

Chief Joseph Murphy will ride in the President’s automobile from now 

[on] at all times until the vacation is over and three of his men will be in 

constant attendance. 

Despite the news, President Wilson, Dr. Grayson, Helen Bones, and Mrs. Galt 

“took the most difficult automobile ride of his present trip to New England. 

Misdirected by a farmer, he rode across a mountain and over very bad roads for a 

distance of 100 miles. [“President’s Guard Will Be Increased,” The Washington 

Post, July 4, 1915; “Wilson Told Of Attack,” The Baltimore Sun, July 4, 1915] 

President Wilson spent a quiet 4th of July at Harlakenden House. When he and 

has party, including Mrs. Galt, went for their automobile ride, their car and that of 

the Secret Service were “running around the edge of Echo Lake near Ludlow, 

Vermont, when they suddenly came upon a group of persons surrounding a small 

machine hanging over the side of the road.” Dr. Grayson and President Wilson 

left their automobile to see if anyone had been hurt. The injured had been taken to 

a nearby farmhouse:

The President then offered to have his automobile pull the wrecked 

machine back over the embankment, but an auto truck had already been 

sent for and therefore his assistance was not required. Several persons 

recognized him and thanked him for his offers . . . . 

They rode for eighty miles through some of the most beautiful sections of 

the Green mountains. [“Wilson Offers Help To Wrecked Autoists,” The 

New York Times, July 5, 1915] 
86 

One highlight involved President Wilson’s first grandchild, born on January 15, 

1915, in the White House. The mother was Jessie Sayre, the President and Ellen’s 

middle daughter: 

“The Fourth” was celebrated tonight at Harlakenden House, for the benefit 

of Francis Woodrow [sic] Sayre, the President’s infant grandson. “Baby” 

Sayre received a box of fireworks and they were touched off while 

Mr. Wilson and others of the household watched the proceedings from the 

porch. [“Wilson’s Quiet Fourth,” The Washington Post, July 6, 1915] 

(The baby’s name was Francis Bowes Sayre, Jr.)

He returned to the road on July 10 with his usual companions, including Mrs. 

Galt. Their 75-mile ride passed by Lake Sunapee:

When his machine stopped to avoid frightening a horse, a small 

automobile bumped into the White House car from behind, breaking the 

front lights on the small automobile.

The President and Mrs. Francis B. Sayre, Miss Helen Woodrow Bones and 

Mrs. Norman Galt, of Washington, were shaken up by the collision. An 

automobile carrying secret service men a short distance behind came 

quickly to the scene. 

The secret service men jumped out to see what was wrong, and soon 

learned that the President’s party had suffered no hurt, and that the five 

men in the other car were uninjured. 

All concluded that the President’s chauffeur was not to blame. “His automobile 

was going at comparatively slow speed,” as preferred by President Wilson. The 

Post’s account of the incident added the detail that, “During the trip the 

automobile chased two small deer for 300 or 400 yards, while their mother 

watched the proceedings from a nearby field.” [“Wilson In Auto Crash,” The 

Washington Post, July 11, 1915] 

For the next few days, President Wilson’s days were dominated by the exchange 

of notes with Germany, working with staff at Harlakenden House and in 

Washington to fashion a note with precisely the same message. The goal was to 

stop unprovoked attacks on passenger ships and keep the United States out of the 

European war. 

He was not able to enjoy golf and automobile rides as freely as in the past. News 

reports focused on the deliberations, but did occasionally mention his pleasure 

rides. For example, during a lull in Germany-related discussions, he treated 
87 

July 13 as a holiday, taking a 60-mile “automobile spin through the Green 

Mountains in the afternoon,” according to the Times: 

He wore a smile when he passed people he had seen before, and once, 

when he overtook an automobile which had been having trouble and got 

stalled, he stopped and genially asked if he could be of any assistance. 

The occupants were two exceedingly pretty girls, Margaret McCleary and 

Charlotte Amsden, and they overlooked a large opportunity. Instead of 

having the President get out and help them fix their machine, they thanked 

him and told him they had just got it fixed. They knew it was Mr. Wilson, 

too, for as soon as the President had whizzed by, Miss McCleary hopped 

out of the machine, waved her hands frantically to some girl friends further 

up the road and shrieked, “I’ve just been talking to the President!” 

[“Wilson Deliberate In Framing Reply,” The New York Times, July 14, 

1915] 

Finally, on July 17, he began preparing to return to Washington for discussions 

with his Cabinet regarding Germany. It had been his longest stay away from 

Washington since becoming President. The Post reported: 

During his three weeks’ visit here in the Cornish hills, Mr. Wilson’s health 

has improved, and he has gained several pounds in weight. Members of 

his family will remain here after his departure, and he will return later, if 

possible. 

The President played golf this morning and went automobile riding this 

afternoon. [“Wilson Starts Today,” The Washington Post, July 18, 1915] 

The Post summarized the trip back to Washington: 

Despite the fact that no details of the President’s return trip were given out 

in advance, he was greeted by large crowds at every stop on his way back 

to Washington this afternoon. At several places he stepped out on the rear 

platform of his private car and shook hands with as many people as time 

permitted. 

Virtually all the people of Cornish and Windsor, Vt., saw their 

distinguished summer neighbor off from the “summer capital.” He waved 

his hand and took off his hat to the assembled crowds as they applauded 

him.

The President paid particular attention to the babies at the different stops. 

At Bellows Falls, Vt., he asked that a small red-headed boy be lifted to 

shake hands with him, and at Greenfield, Mass., chucked a baby under the 

chin. 
88 

“It is rather hot weather for babies,” he remarked to the mother. [“Wilson 

Ends Vacation,” The Washington Post, July 19, 1915] 

On July 23, President Wilson’s note was presented to the German foreign office 

as well as to the press. The Post summarized it:

Germany is notified that the United States insists as solemnly as ever on 

the immunity of American citizens from jeopardy while proceeding on 

peaceable missions on the high seas. In the name of the long friendship 

between the two nations, the German Government is solemnly warned that 

a repetition of illegal acts of German submarines “must be regarded by the 

Government of the United States, when they affect American citizens, as 

deliberately unfriendly.” 

This is strong language in diplomatic intercourse. “Deliberately 

unfriendly” are the concluding words of the American note, and they are 

interpreted as the more significant for that reason. [“Reject German 

Proposals,” The Washington Post, July 24, 1915] 

Rather than wait in Washington for Germany’s reply, President Wilson left for 

Harlakenden House in the afternoon. He had asked the Department of War to 

provide a report on national defense, but while waiting for it he would consider 

defense issues. He told a well-wisher at the Cornish railroad station, “I am not 

expecting a vacation, but am coming to Cornish for an uninterrupted opportunity 

for work.” [“Wilson at Cornish; Takes Up Defense,” The New York Times, July 

25, 1915] 

Nevertheless, he had some time for pleasure. On July 29, President Wilson, 

“contrary to his usual custom since he has been here, dodged the cares of his 

office to a large extent today, and wooed the charms of golf and a long auto ride.” 

The President, his daughter Margaret, Helen Bones, and Mrs. Galt traveled about 

75 miles “skirting the Connecticut River on the Vermont and New Hampshire 

sides.” [“Wilson On Long Auto Trip,” The Washington Post, July 30, 1915] 

He took another ride on July 30, with the Times noting that he was unable “to play 

golf because of the absence from Cornish of Dr. Cary T. Grayson, his physician 

and golf partner,” who was visiting in Boston The ride took President Wilson, 

Mrs. Galt, and others “through sections of Vermont and New Hampshire.” The 

rides helped him overcome feeling “slightly depressed” after “the arduous work 

he performed in writing the last note to Germany.” [“President Feeling Better,” 

The New York Times, July 31, 1915] 

The daily rides continued on July 31 despite news reports that a German 

submarine had sunk the Leyland liner Iberian. Reports indicated that the liner, 
89 

like the Armenian, was carrying a cargo of 600 horses, plus 69 horsemen, and 

other material for the allies. He refused to discuss the incident in the absence of 

official word:

Mr. Wilson spent the entire afternoon automobiling with members of his 

family. He rode for more than seventy miles through Woodstock, Vt., 

South Woodstock, Vt., and other small towns over roads winding between 

hills and mountains. It was one of the most beautiful rides the President 

has had since coming here. [“President Hears of Attack,” The New York 

Times, August 1, 1915] 

President Wilson interrupted his daily rides on August 3 to spend the day with his 

sister, Mrs. Anne Howe, and her family: 

This afternoon he failed to take his usual automobile ride because of the 

arrival here of Mrs. Anne Howe, his sister; Prof. George Howe, of North 

Carolina University, his nephew; Mrs. Anne Cothran, his niece; and 

Josephine Cothran, a small grandniece. [“Wilson Has Quiet Day,” The 

Washington Post, August 4, 1915] 

On August 4, rain prevented his daily automobile ride, but he resumed his rides 

the following day. As on previous occasions, his ride included a crossing of the 

Cheshire toll bridge over the Connecticut River near Claremont, New Hampshire. 

The Cheshire Bridge Company had built a covered wooden toll bridge at this 

location in 1806. The Springfield Electric Railway company purchased the bridge 

in 1897 and replaced it with a three-span steel Pratt truss bridge, 600 feet long and 

20-feet wide. (The bridge was replaced in 1930.) The toll for crossing the bridge 

was 15 cents, a fee that applied to the President of the United States as to all 

others: 

Mr. Wilson on his vacation here has motored across this toll bridge 

perhaps a score of times and always without being recognized by the 

74-year-old toll keeper. Each time he has leaned down from his seat 

beside the chauffeur and paid the 15 cents from his own pocket. 

On August 5, President Wilson had the 15 cents ready as the car pulled up to the 

bridge, “but he found that at last the aged keeper had recognized him as the 

country’s Chief Executive”:

Instead of the accustomed “Fifteen cents, please,” Mr. Wilson was greeted 

with:

“Are you the President of the United States?”
90 

Mr. Wilson smilingly acknowledged his identity.

“I never saw a President before,” said the keeper,” and I would like 

to shake hands.” 

They shook hands, the keeper collected his fee and the Presidential 

automobile speeded back to Harlakenden, the summer White 

House. [“Shakes Hands With Wilson,” The Baltimore Sun, August 

6, 1915] 

President Wilson was still at Harlakenden House on August 9, with the Civil War 

in Mexico very much on his mind. After several hours of work, he, his daughter 

Jessie, and Dr. Grayson went for an afternoon automobile ride. About 3 miles 

along, the President’s automobile rounded a bend and discovered another 

automobile overturned at the bottom of an embankment: 

Mr. Wilson and Dr. Grayson hurried to investigate. They found Miss E. 

A. Swasey, Mrs. Emma Hathaway and C. C. Judd, all of Norwich, Vt., 

underneath the automobile, and the President helped to pull them out. 

They were badly bruised and frightened, but an examination by 

Dr. Grayson showed that none of them was seriously injured. 

The President and Dr. Grayson assisted the two women to the road and 

then Mr. Wilson directed the secret service men accompanying him to 

remain behind and render all assistance possible. Those in the overturned 

automobile did not recognize the President and did not know who had 

helped them until later, but they thanked him profusely for his aid. The 

secret service men took the two women to Windsor, Vt., in another 

machine. [“Wilson Aids Autoists,” The Washington Post, August 10, 

1915] 

On August 11, President Wilson left for Washington to consult with officials on 

the situation in Mexico:

President Wilson, while on a brief outing with members of his family, was 

halted by a man near Cornish Flats, N.H., who presented to him thirteen 

four-leaf clovers “for luck.” The President smilingly accepted the clover 

and thanked the man warmly. The man, who said he had picked the 

clovers especially for the President, told Mr. Wilson that he had presented 

to a President many years ago a bunch of thirteen four-leaf clovers. [No

title, The New York Times, August 12, 1915] 

His family, along with the White House automobiles, remained at Harlakenden 

House. 
91 

On August 20, he interrupted discussions of Mexico and other issues for an 

excursion by automobile to Philadelphia. The trip was a surprise to White House 

staff who did not initially know where President Wilson was. He and Dr. Grayson 

left around 6 a.m. in a light car usually used only in the city, with six Secret 

Service men in a separate automobile behind them. 

Reaching Baltimore, the Presidential cars turned the wrong way. After seeking 

directions, they went in the right direction and arrived in Philadelphia shortly after 

1 p.m. The main purpose of the trip was to visit his oculist, Dr. de Schweinitz, for 

a checkup:

News of the President’s coming had preceded him, however, and a crowd 

of photographers and moving-picture men greeted him as he stepped from 

the automobile at the door of the oculist. He remained with the oculist less 

than half an hour and was told that his eyes were in excellent condition.

It was time for lunch:

An invitation to have lunch at a Philadelphia club was declined and the 

President decided to go to a hotel. He rode along to the hotel and passing 

by astonished employes [sic] and guests who recognized him, took an 

elevator to an upstairs dining room. 

Selecting a table, the President ordered luncheon apparently oblivious to 

the startled glances of others who had no idea he was in Philadelphia. 

Dr. Grayson joined him afterward. 

While the President had gone to the hotel, Dr. Grayson had traveled to the railroad 

station “on a fruitless mission to engage a private car to return to Washington.” 

President Wilson thought a return trip by automobile would be “too tiresome and 

long.” Dr. Grayson learned that a private car was not available, but reserved seats 

on a Pullman drawing room before joining the President at the hotel for lunch: 

After lunch the President decided he wanted exercise and started through 

the downtown section of Philadelphia. He swung along Walnut street 

unnoticed by other pedestrians. 

At one corner an automobile of the Philadelphia water department almost 

bumped into him. Then a mounted policeman recognized the President 

and appointed himself a special guard throughout the walk. 

Mr. Wilson passed from one street to another, and finally turned into 

Chestnut street, where the sidewalks were crowded. There he was 

recognized and followed, and a crowd soon had gathered which the secret 
92 

service men had trouble keeping back. The throng still was along when 

the President entered the Pennsylvania station. 

President Wilson took the train back to Washington, but kept the door of his 

drawing room open: 

The other passengers were much interested, and Master Robert Swan, 5 

years old, of Norfolk, Va., was presented to the distinguished traveler at 

his father’s request.

Because of the sudden decision to drive to Philadelphia, the White House did not 

have a car waiting for President Wilson and Dr. Grayson when they reached 

Union Station. Instead, they hired “a public auto” to take them to the White 

House. 

Although President Wilson portrayed the visit as routine, Dr. Grayson 

acknowledged the real reason in a letter to his wife that was released along with 

10,000 other documents when Dr. Grayson’s family donated them to the 

Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library: 

My number one patient in this house had an accident last night with one of 

his eyes – the good one, which is bad now. [The usually bad eye was 

virtually useless, according to Berg, the result of a hemorrhage in his 

retina.] I am hurrying off to Philadelphia with him at six o’clock 

tomorrow morning to consult with an eye specialist. We are going by 

motor. I think we can make the trip less noticeable in this way. 

He added that the newspaper reporters, when they hear of the trip, “will read 

something like this: The President made his annual visit to the oculist etc etc.” 

It had been an historic trip: 

He returned this evening by train, after having broken some presidential 

precedents. He had been lost on the road, had lunched unannounced in the 

public dining room of a Philadelphia hotel, strolled through the streets of 

the business section of Philadelphia, rode back to Washington in a public 

railroad car, and drove to the White House in a hired automobile. 

[“Wilson On Hasty Trip,” The Washington Post, August 21, 1915; 

“Wilson Pays Visit To Philadelphia,” The New York Times, August 21, 

1915; Chandler, Michael Alison, “A President’s Illness Kept Under 

Wraps,” The Washington Post, February 3, 2007; Berg, pages 284-285] 

Although President Wilson had wanted to return to Harlakenden House, he 

remained in the White House dealing with issues related to Germany and Mexico.
93 

In a memoir, Mrs. Galt recalled her vacation at Harlakenden House: 

Whenever my thoughts turn back to that wonderful summer, there seems 

about it all a halo of gorgeous colour from the flowers, and music made by 

the river where nearly every day we walked when the President was there. 

He was like a boy home from school, when he could steal a week-end 

away from Washington and come there to the peace and quiet of the hills. 

When we walked we would try to forget that lurking behind every tree was 

a Secret Service man. We would go, always a car full of us, on long motor 

rides through that lovely country, exploring new roads and sometimes very 

bad ones, getting back in the late twilight for tea on the terrace, or stopping 

at a picturesque little teahouse en route . . . . [My Memoir, page 71] 

The Big Announcement

Mrs. Galt returned to Washington on September 3 after visiting friends in New 

York. During her time with President Wilson in New Hampshire, she became 

certain that she loved him – the man, not the President. [Walworth, part 1, page 

430] 

At her home, she found flowers, a note of welcome, and a reminder that she had 

agreed to dine with President Wilson at the White House on the day she returned: 

After dinner . . . Galt and the two cousins, Helen and the President, went 

for a ride through Rock Creek Park. He talked about the problem of 

keeping the United States out of the war and ended by saying that he had 

come to understand her reluctance to assume the responsibilities his wife 

must necessarily have during such difficult times. The car had as 

passengers a Secret Service man and the chauffeur, and Helen was sitting 

right beside her, but despite them she put her arms around his neck and 

said, “Well, if you won’t ask me, I will volunteer.” So it was decided. 

The next morning they told Margaret and Nellie they were engaged. 

[Smith, pages 14-19] 

His advisors were concerned about the engagement, as Walworth described: 

Inevitably the politicians grew anxious. The image in which the people 

liked to cast him was that of their President in the last era of acute crisis—

Abraham Lincoln—a remote, lonely patriarch, worn by personal sorrow 

and bowed by the grief of mankind. What would the people think if they 

learned hat he was courting like a college boy? [Walworth, part 1, page 

430] 
94 

In view of the concern, she thought they should wait to announce their 

engagement until after the 1916 election. He “protested that he needed her now. 

‘If the people do not trust me,’ he said, ‘now is the time to find out.” 

Around this time, President Wilson sent a large check to Mary Hulbert, formerly 

Peck, the friend he had met in Bermuda. Their friendship had continued when he 

became Governor of New Jersey and President of the United States, mainly 

consisting of letters they exchanged; even in the White House, he sent weekly 

letters on Sunday after she moved to California. Their friendship had occasionally 

prompted gossip, including during the 1912 election, and now, following his 

engagement to Mrs. Galt, his staff raised the prospect of blackmail, insinuating 

incorrectly that Hurlbert, as she became after her second divorce became final, 

was displaying improper notes from him, prompting gossip on the West Coast. 

President Wilson did not know that his advisers had conceived the rumor and 

were deceiving him to preserve his image. He could not understand how his 

friend could betray him, but he was determined not to expose Mrs. Galt to gossip 

that he attributed to political scuttlebutt. He tried to write a note releasing her 

from her pledge to marry him, but instead asked Dr. Grayson to tell her 

everything. 

After a sleepless night, President Wilson received a note from her. Fearful of the 

content, he put the envelope in his pocket, unopened. He did not know she had 

written:

I am not afraid of any gossip or threat, with your love as my shield. This is 

my pledge, dearest one, I will stand by you—not for duty, nor for pity, not 

for honour—but for love—trusting, protecting, comprehending love. 

Sunk in depression, he stayed in his chamber on September 18. 

Mrs. Galt, puzzled that he had not replied to her note, responded immediately 

when Dr. Grayson, fearful for the President’s health, asked her to visit the White 

House: 

Taken to a darkened chamber on the second floor of the White House, she 

saw on the pillow a pallid face with deep-set, glowing eyes. He said no 

word, but held out a thin hand. She took it and found it icy cold. When 

she released it, Grayson had gone, the valet had gone, and they were alone 

in perfect understanding. 

A few days later, on September 22, he talked with Colonel House. President 

Wilson explained that his relationship with Hurlbert had been entirely platonic 

and that he would not be concerned if any of his letters to her were made public 

even though some were more emotional than prudent. As for the large check, her 
95 

son had lost money in his fruit business; the President had sent her a check for 

$7,500 to buy two mortgages. Still believing the rumor his aides had concocted, 

he said that if she was showing his letters to gossips that might lead to blackmail, 

they could publish every letter as far as he was concerned.

Colonel House did not want to tell him how his advisors had fabricated the story 

about his friend, Walworth wrote: 

The Colonel . . . could merely give reassurance in general. Asked to 

decide when the betrothal should be announced, he was moved by the 

pathos of his friend’s loneliness. It seemed to him that scandalous gossip 

should be checked by announcing the engagement. Moreover, when he 

met Edith Galt he found her truly charming and inspiriting. His ego was 

touched by her lively interest in him and her revelation that the President 

spoke of him as a man of “lucid mind . . . almost like a business clearinghouse.” 

On October 1, after considering the President’s request, Colonel House wrote to 

him. “I do not believe anything is to be gained by delaying the announcement of 

your engagement.” [Walworth, part 1, pages 431-433] 

The announcement went out on October 6, 1915: 

The White House 

Washington, Oct. 6, 1915 

The announcement was made today of the engagement of 

Mrs. Norman Galt, of this city, to President Woodrow Wilson. 

Tumulty read the message at 8 p.m. to correspondents summoned to the White 

House for the occasion. He told them that the newspapers were not to report the 

news until October 7 “to prevent the calling of extra newspapers through the 

streets of Washington and other cities.” [“Engagement Has been Rumored For 

Three Months,” The Washington Post, October 7, 1915] 

Tumulty told the reporters: 

Mrs. Norman Galt is the widow of a well-known business man of this city, 

who died eight years ago. She has lived in Washington ever since her 

marriage in 1896. She was, before her marriage, Miss Edith Bolling of 

Wytheville, Va., where her girlhood was spent, and where her father, 

William H. Bolling, acquired considerable distinction as one of the State’s 

ablest attorneys.
96 

It was Miss Margaret Wilson and Miss Bones who drew Mrs. Galt into the 

White House circle. They met her first early in the autumn of last year. 

During this recent summer Mrs. Galt spent a month at Cornish as the guest 

of Miss Wilson. It was through that intimacy with his daughter that the 

President had the opportunity of meeting Mrs. Galt. It is needless for me 

to add that Mrs. Galt is a woman of charming personality. [“Future Bride 

Was Introduced Into White House Circle By Eldest Daughter of 

President,” The Washington Post, October 7, 1915] 

President Wilson had written this summary and showed it to Mrs. Galt for her 

approval. 

At the White House on October 6, family, friends, and government associates held 

an informal dinner to celebrate the announcement.

The reaction, contrary to advisors’ fears, was what today would be called a media 

frenzy. Reporters scrambled for every detail they could find about Mrs. Galt. The 

Post reported on October 7: 

Today the entire country sees him in a new and interesting light, and 

political issues and differences are lost to sight, while from every quarter 

good wishes are sped to the White House. 

The Baltimore Sun reported: 

The President appeared very happy today when he went to the executive 

offices. Late in the afternoon he went personally to the telephone and, 

calling up all his friends among prominent Democrats now in town, 

informed them of his engagement. The news thus spread quickly over 

Washington and he was overwhelmed with congratulations tonight. 

During the afternoon the President and Mrs. Galt went for an automobile 

ride.

(On this same day, President Wilson had announced his support for woman’s 

voting rights in his home State of New Jersey, which reporters thought an odd 

coincidence. The White House had done so “hoping thus to minimize the adverse 

reaction of feminine voters.”) 

Reporters had begun to notice Mrs. Galt at Harlakenden House and how the 

President paid special attention to her even though she, technically, was visiting 

his daughter Margaret and her friend Helen Bones. She had been present when 

the President and Margaret held the first social affair since Ellen Wilson’s death, a 

tea for neighbors from the Cornish artist colony on July 28. Reporters also had 

observed her frequently visiting the White House, in the automobile for long 
97 

rides, and nearby during official events, such as in the reviewing stand at the 

Grand Army of the Republic parade on September 29 in Washington. 

Now, reporters were freed from their restraints. Her every move was news; 

wherever she went, she was trailed by reporters, photographers, and motionpicture cameramen. In the next few months, newspapers reported on her travels to 

assemble her trousseau, to select a wedding gown, or visit friends or family, as 

well as her activities with President Wilson. 

The initial newspaper reports used the biographical information Tumulty had 

provided and described her, sometimes inaccurately, for readers. The Times

described her: 

In the circle of people who have known Mrs. Galt for many years she has 

been regarded as a woman of unusual beauty, gifted with a natural charm. 

Friends speak of her as being constantly sought out as a delightful 

companion, remarking especially on her thoughtfulness and capacity for 

accomplishing anything she chose to undertake (The New York Times, 

October 7, 1915] 

The Sun explained:

Mrs. Galt’s resemblance to the late Mrs. Wilson has frequently excited 

comment. She is a strikingly pretty woman in her late thirties, slightly 

below medium height and has a graceful, rather plump figure. Her hair is 

brown and her eyes are gray blue. Her prettiest feature is her mouth, 

which is curved and expressive . . . . She has a graceful, vivacious 

manner, and is well informed on all the subjects of the day and takes a 

keen interest in politics. [The Baltimore Sun, October 7, 1915] 

On the day after the announcement, the White House continued receiving 

congratulations from around the country and the world. The Post reported: 

When the President received callers yesterday, and when he left and 

entered the White House he was wearing a broad smile, and seemed very 

happy . . . . 

[Mrs. Galt’s] simple, pretty home, in Twentieth street, at the intersection 

of New Hampshire avenue, where the vine climbing its east wall is just 

turning a rich crimson and bronze in the autumn sunshine, having taken on 

a new interest over night, caught momentarily the eye of many passing in 

its locality. Mrs. Galt, with heightened color, laughed and joked, as she 

spent the morning answering telephone calls of friends who wished to 

congratulate her. She was extremely shy when asked regarding details of 

her plans. 
98 

“I am very happy,” she said, “but I am of no importance, and the less the 

newspapers print about me at this time the more I will appreciate it, and 

so, I am sure, will the President.” [“On Trip With Fiancee,” The 

Washington Post, October 8, 1915] 

In short, the Sun reported, “the bride-elect of President Wilson awoke this 

morning to find herself world famous. The eyes of America, especially, were 

centered on the happy woman who is to be the mistress of the White House”: 

A thrill of romantic interest ran through Washington society when it was 

learned that the future first lady of the land is a direct descendant of Indian 

royalty and traces her ancestry back through nine generations to 

Pocahontas, the good Indian princess whose saving of Capt. John Smith’s 

life is one of the classic tales of American history. So far as is now 

known, she will be the first mistress of the White House in whose veins 

runs the blood of the royal race which originally ruled the land. 

[“President May Hasten Wedding,” The Baltimore Sun, October 8, 1915] 

(Mrs. Galt’s relationship to Pocahontas was valid, as described in “Many 

Americans Trace Their Ancestry to Pocahontas,” published in The Sunday Star on 

November 7, 1915. Also see Smith, pages 15 and 140, and Berg, page 356) 

The public did not have to wait long to see her for themselves. On October 8, 

President Wilson, Mrs. Galt, her mother, and others traveled to New York City by 

train in the Presidential Pullman car, known as the Superb. The Post reported: 

From the time of their arrival this afternoon until late tonight they were 

New York’s chief object of interest, and each time they appeared in public 

they were followed by thousands. 

For the first time since he became President Mr. Wilson gave way as a 

center of attraction to another. The people showed anxiety to see him, but 

their eyes were centered on the woman who within the next two months is 

to become the “first lady of the land.” 

. . . Both the President and Mrs. Galt were evidently pleased by the 

reception accorded them. They were slightly shy on their first appearance 

in public as an engaged couple, but acknowledged applause with smiles. 

They made no attempt to hide themselves, and every time they appeared in 

public they were side by side. 

The President . . . was happy and jovial throughout the day and his usually 

stern face was constantly wreathed in smiles.
99 

Shortly after arriving at the Hotel St. Regis, the President, Mrs. Galt, and her 

mother went for an automobile ride: 

The ride was up Fifth Avenue to Central Park, past the Mall and the 

Sheepfold [known today as the Tavern on the Green], north in the West 

Drive to Ninety-sixth Street, through this street to Riverside Drive, and up 

the Drive to 136th Street. The return ride was down Broadway from 136th

Street to 110th Street, east to Central Park, down the East Drive of the Park 

to Fifty-ninth Street, out there into Fifth Avenue, south in the avenue to 

Thirty-Second Street, and then west to the Pennsylvania Station. 

At one point on Riverside near 108th Street, “the President’s soft felt hat blew off. 

It rolled across the Drive, but was quickly recovered by one of the Secret Service 

men, who jumped from an automobile behind the President’s.” 

Leaving the hotel for the ride, the couple was delayed for a few minutes “by a 

large corps of photographers.” The President turned to Mrs. Galt, who said, 

“Certainly, let them take the picture.” The President and Mrs. Galt smiled as the 

photographers snapped their photographs. The President asked, “Did you get a 

good picture?” The photographers “in chorus as the automobile moved away,” 

called “Yes, thank you”:

Early on the ride the President was recognized and pedestrians and many 

persons turned, bowed, smiled and waved handkerchiefs and hats. 

Frequently the President raised his hat in reply and Mrs. Galt bowed and 

smiled.

Automobile [occupants] sought to get near the President’s car to see the 

couple, and as a result before he had proceeded far[,] upward of 100 

automobiles were in pursuit, and the secret service men and city detectives 

had a hard time keeping them back.

After a dinner party with Colonel and Mrs. House, the President and Mrs. Galt 

went to the theater to see Grumpy., “but the President and Mrs. Galt were easily 

the stars of the evening. As they entered the theater the entire audience arose and 

applauded. The applause continued until the President, Mrs. Galt, and Miss 

Bones appeared in their box and were seated.”

As would frequently be the case, Mrs. Galt’s attire interested the public. For the 

dinner and theater, “Mrs. Galt wore a low cut gown of black, relieved by a large 

corsage bouquet of red roses. Over her gown she had an elaborate opera cloak of 

red and black. She wore no ornaments in her hair. [“Cheer Bride-Elect,” The 

Washington Post, October 9, 1915; “President Returns With Future Bride,” The 

New York Times, October 10, 1915] 
100 

(Grumpy, which had opened at the Emerson on September 13, starred Cyril 

Maude, a British actor famous for his role in the play as a grumpy retired lawyer 

who solves a crime to satisfy his loved ones.) 

President Wilson spent the evening at the home of Colonel and Mrs. House, while 

Mrs. Galt and her mother stayed at the hotel. 

While the couple was automobile riding, Dreicer & Co., sent several rings to 

Colonel House’s home: 

One of the firm’s salesmen took the assortment of gems to the residence of 

Col. House, where the President made a choice of the many handsome 

stones. 

While en route from the St. Regis to dinner at the home of Col. House, the 

President slipped the ring on Mrs. Galt’s finger. 

It is described as a magnificent solitaire, set in platinum, and is said to be a 

very expensive stone. [“Mrs. Galt Wears Ring,” The Washington Post, 

October 10, 1915] 

On October 9, they took the train to Philadelphia where the Phillies were playing 

the Boston Red Sox in the second game of the World Series. Entering New York 

City’s Pennsylvania Station at around 11 a.m. and walking through the waiting 

room, “they laughed and chatted, and with bows and smiles acknowledged the 

boisterous greetings of the several hundred persons in the station among whom 

they passed on their way to the train.” The Times observed: 

It seemed that whatever self-consciousness they may have had on Friday, 

when they first appeared together before the curious public in New York, 

had disappeared. Both were unaffectedly gay.

About 100,000 people lined the route to the Baker Bowl at 2622 North Broad 

Street, home of the Phillies. They arrived a few minutes past 2 o’clock as the 

game was about to begin. As they appeared in the runway, the 20,000 fans 

greeted them with thunderous applause: 

Forty thousand eyes were turned upon them. Mrs. Galt was a wondrous 

picture in a midnight blue tailleur gown with black satin and underbodice 

and sleeves, and broad-brimmed hat of black velvet trimmed with fur and 

surmounted by a feature ornament. 

As they made their way to the box the band struck up “Tipperary,” and a 

storm of plaudits boomed even from the distant centre-field bleachers
101 

[sic]. The President swept off his light felt hat and the smile of Mrs. Galt 

caused the hundreds near them to hold their breath in wonderment 

An ideal vision of the perfect “outdoor woman” she appeared as she stood 

there, a bit timidly.

In the box the President held his fiance’s arm. She blushed and bowed to 

the right and left. Still smiling, she greeted Mayor [Rudolph] 

Blankenburg, President [William F.] Baker of the Phillies and the 

members of the National Baseball Commission.

For a moment she held in her gloved hand the milky white ball that the 

President was to throw to the diamond for the official opening of the 

second game of the baseball classic. Straight and true, the President tossed 

the ball toward the serious-visaged boxman and Mrs. Galt patted his arm 

in commendation. [“Thousands Acclaim Her,” The Baltimore Sun, 

October 10, 1915] 

Around the box, Mrs. Galt was the center of attention, especially among the 

women. “Women who peeped in her direction first glanced at her face and then 

looked for her left hand. They were disappointed when they did not see the ring. 

‘I am so sorry she has on gloves,’ was the remark of many splendidly dressed 

Philadelphia women say on all sides.” 

The Phillies beat the Boston Red Sox in the game, 2 to 1, and went on to win the 

World Series, four games to one. “It was a capital game,” President Wilson told 

reporters, “and I enjoyed every minute of it.” 

As they drove along Broad Street after the game, President Wilson “was 

compelling to stand up in his automobile . . . and, bareheaded, return the 

salutations. Both going to and returning from the park Broad street was packed 

and the cheering was spontaneous and hearty. At some points bells and a variety 

of noisy instruments, including automobile horns, gave a noisy welcome. 

[“Tender Ovation To President And Fiancee At Game,” The Sunday Star, October 

10, 1915] 

The Wilson party returned to Washington “in record time, the special train making 

the run in 2 hours and 35 minutes, or at the rate of about 62 miles an hour.” The 

group had a dinner party at the White House to relax after the game. [“Went 

Home In A Hurry,” The Baltimore Sun, October 10, 1915] 

During the evening, President Wilson and Mrs. Galt decided to visit his brother 

Joseph and his family in Baltimore on Sunday. The drive in the White House 

automobiles took 90 minutes. “The day was cold, and the members of the party 

bundled themselves up in rugs.” After initial greetings, they walked to the 
102 

Franklin Street Presbyterian Church. Crowds had gathered outside the brother’s 

apartment building and the church to see the President and his fiancée: 

Mrs. Galt wore a beautiful blue taffeta gown, a black velvet hat, trimmed 

with fur, champagne-colored gloves, and a short face veil, and smiled 

happily at the crowd. The President, too, smiled continually. 

Because it was Sunday, the crowds did not cheer “but the people voiced their 

approval of the President’s choice in audible comments”:

On the third finger of her left hand Mrs. Galt wore the diamond 

engagement ring given her by the President in New York. It had been 

reported that the platinum ring was set with only a solitaire diamond, but 

today it was noticed that it also had several smaller diamonds in the 

narrow gold band. 

After a family luncheon in Joseph’s apartment, President Wilson and Mrs. Galt 

returned to Washington: 

It was after 3 o’clock when the visitors started back for Washington, 

driving from the apartment house through a street lined with people. 

During the return trip the President’s automobile traveled rapidly, but was 

recognized by many people. A constable on a motor cycle charged the 

driver of one of the machines following the President of exceeding the 

speed limits, but made no arrest. [“Bride-Elect Is Guest,” The Washington 

Post, October 11, 1915] 

Washington observers had a very modern name by contemporary standards for the 

relationship between President Wilson and Mrs. Galt: 

Washington has begun to call the wooing of Mrs. Norman Galt by 

President Wilson a “motor courtship,” as their daily rides into the country 

had been going on for weeks unremarked by the public before the 

engagement was announced.

It now transpires that ever since the President returned from Cornish he 

has been taking long motor rides. Persons here thought that he was 

driving with his cousin, Miss Helen Woodrow Bones, who did, as a matter 

of fact, leave the White House with him in the motor. Usually, however, 

she went no farther than Mrs. Galt’s home, where the President’s fiancée 

changed places with her and the pair of lovers went out over the hill roads 

of Virginia or through beautiful stretches of Maryland country. 

Few persons who passed the motor knew that the lady by the President’s 

side was not one of the White House family, for Mrs. Galt resembles in 
103 

appearance Miss Bones and she usually wear blacks, which the ladies at 

the White House wore in mourning for the first Mrs. Wilson until the 

engagement was announced. [“‘Motor Courtship’ of President Is carried 

On Without The Public Knowing His Companion’s Identity,” The 

Washington Post, October 19, 1915 (from The New York Evening Mail)] 

On October 12, newspapers reported: 

Recently the President has taken to walking more than ever before . . . . 

President Wilson did a little shopping today. He walked from the White 

House to a leather goods store and bought a traveling bag. This gave rise 

to the impression that he was preparing for a wedding trip within the 

immediate future. In the afternoon he walked from the White House to 

Continental Memorial Hall, not far away, where he delivered an address at 

the silver jubilee of the Daughters of the American Revolution. 

Mrs. Galt occupied the Presidential box in the hall at 1776 D Street, NW. “This 

was her first appearance at any public function here with the President since their 

engagement was announced”:

As Mrs. Galt entered the box the large crowd which had assembled for the 

celebration, mostly women, applauded. 

When Mr. Wilson entered the hall he smiled recognition to his fiancée, 

who returned the glance. [“Wilson Nuptials To Await Congress,” The 

New York Times, October 12, 1915; “Members of D.A.R. Observe 

Jubilee,” The Evening Star, October 12, 1915] 

Newspapers reported on October 12 that “President Wilson’s romance grows 

apace.” The telephone company was installing a private telephone line connecting 

the White House with Mrs. Galt’s home at 1308 20th Street, NW., “and now the 

President may phone his fiancée directly without sending the call through central.” 

According to the “whispers” of friends, the telephone had been in frequent use “in 

spite of the fact that the President has spent every spare moment in the company 

of his fiancée since their engagement was announced.” 

As for Mrs. Galt, “So persistent have become the calls upon Mrs. Galt that her 

house telephone has been disconnected.” Her mother, staying with Mrs. Galt, also 

had her telephone disconnected for the same reason. [“Private Wire From White 

House To Mrs. Galt’s Residence; Date Of Wedding A Profound Secret,” The 

Washington Post, December 12, 1915 (from The New York World); “President To 

Name Wedding Day Soon,” The New York Times, October 15, 1915] 

On Saturday, October 16, two White House automobiles left at around 9:00 a.m. 

for an 80-mile trip to Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia. The President’s vehicle 
104 

included Mrs. Galt, Miss Bones, Secretary Tumulty, and friends. “It was raining, 

and the roads were muddy, but the holiday makers were not to be discouraged.” 

Their destination was Hill Top House overlooking the Potomac and Shenandoah 

Rivers, an inn and resort “kept by a negro family.” The President registered, 

writing, “Woodrow Wilson and party”: 

Hill Top House is run by Thomas Lovett, who took the greatest pleasure in 

escorting the party over the hotel, taking them on to the great balcony, 

where can be seen the beautiful country for miles around, including 

numerous points of historical interest . . . . 

After viewing the scenery the party went into the main dining room for a 

dinner which had been arranged for them with much hustle and bustle and 

care when it became known that they intended to stop. The honor of 

serving the distinguished party went to Martha Smith, a negro girl. 

“You ought to eat a lot of this,” she told the President. “It’s home 

cooked.” 

“I expect to,” returned Mr. Wilson, smiling. The three ladies at the table 

laughed merrily.

The dinner included roast lamb, fried chicken, boiled ham, creamed rice 

and “corn dodgers,” the well-known Southern corn cakes. There were 

20 other guests in the public dining room where the dinner was served. 

Martha couldn’t help afterward announcing with pride that she had 

insisted on the President eating two pieces of chicken and two corn 

dodgers. She said the others in the party ate heartily, too, but her 

particular attention had been devoted to the President. 

The White House had called ahead to let the owner know the President would be 

visiting, and that he was particularly looking forward to the inn’s famous apple 

pie. Unfortunately, the inn did not have any apple pie on hand that day, or enough 

time to bake one for the President. He had to settle for a dish of “poor man’s 

pudding.” He paid for the dinner and tipped Martha. 

Some accounts reported: 

After the luncheon the future first lady of the White House stepped upon a 

pair of scales and weighed herself. She registered 160 pounds. 

The party left for Washington around 2:30 p.m., “making the trip in three hours 

over good, but, sometimes, muddy roads” in a continuing drizzle: 
105 

The news that the President was in the vicinity had preceded him on the 

return trip, and at Frederick, Rockville, and other towns, many people 

waited to see the White House automobile go by and tried to get a glimpse 

of Mr. Wilson and Mrs. Galt. 

They arrived at the White House in time for the evening meal before a night out at 

the Belasco Theater at 17 Madison Place for George Bernard Shaw’s Androcles 

and the Lion. Because the party was to arrive late, the President had asked the 

theater to reserve a box in the middle tier instead of the more conspicuous 

Presidential box he would normally occupy. “Few persons in the theatre knew of 

the presence of the President and his bride-elect until the intermission, when the 

house was flooded with light.” [“Wilson At An Old Inn,” The Washington Post, 

October 17, 1915; “Wilson On Holiday Trip With Fiancee,” The New York Times, 

October 17, 1915; “Wilson Has Long Drive,” The Baltimore Sun, October 17, 

1915] 

President Wilson and Mrs. Galt took another long ride on Saturday, October 23. 

“They disappeared at 9 o’clock and it was far past noon before the news finally 

leaked out that they had motored to Emmitsburg, Md., near the Pennsylvania 

border, to lunch with Mrs. Galt’s brother-in-law,” Sterling Galt, owner and editor 

of the Emmitsburg Chronicle: 

Without taking any of the White House attaches into his confidence, the 

President ordered his automobile for 9 o’clock, entered it with his 

daughter, Miss Margaret Wilson, and followed by the Secret Service car 

called at the home of Mrs. Galt. In five minutes they were away and when 

last seen in this city they were speeding across Connecticut avenue bridge . 

. . . 

Meantime officials at the Executive Offices were at a loss to locate their 

chief and his party. Phone calls were made to Baltimore, Ridgeville, 

Harpers Ferry and Frederick, but until the Frederick report reached town 

no clue was received as to the destination of the motorists. 

One report indicated: 

The day, which seemed threatening in the morning, turned out to be ideal 

for an automobile trip. The air was crisp and there was a strong, cold 

wind. The sun was bright all afternoon, however, and set off ideally the 

red, yellow and half-green leaves of the autumn.

The article also described the stop at Mrs. Galt’s house:

The White House automobiles, which stood outside the Galt residence for 

a short time, attracted much attention. The President and his daughter 
106 

went into the house, returning soon afterward with Mrs. Galt at the arm of 

Mr. Wilson. He helped her down the steps and into the automobile, as a 

group of schoolgirls, gathered in front of the old Italian embassy, 

pronounced the future bride to be “perfectly lovely.” 

The party left Washington immediately, going through Rockville, Md., 

Frederick and other smaller towns along the line to Emmitsburg. They 

were recognized in some of the villages, for the telephones along the line 

were kept busy announcing that the famous party was about to pass along. 

In several places small crowds gathered and cheered. Mr. Wilson 

smilingly removed his hat and bowed in every case. 

Discussing Mrs. Galt’s shopping trips and wardrobe, the article added: 

Incidentally, it is said, as Mrs. Galt wears every day the corsage bouquet of 

orchids which the President sends her, the selection of black or dark blue 

or gray costume is almost imperative for street wear, if the flowers are to 

have their proper setting. 

After lunch with Galt and his family, the President and Mrs. Galt returned to the 

White House in time for dinner. [“Wilson ‘Lost’ 6 Hours,” The Baltimore Sun, 

October 24, 1915; “Mr. Wilson On Trip With His Fiancee,” The Evening Star, 

October 23, 1915; “Lunch With Mr. Galt,” The Washington Post, October 24, 

1915] 

The workweek ended, President Wilson and Mrs. Galt made another long 

automobile ride on Saturday, October 30. With Dr. Grayson and Mrs. Galt’s 

brother along for the ride, they drove to Annapolis, the capital of Maryland. 

Although the football team of the Naval Academy, based in the city, was playing 

North Carolina Agricultural College, the President declined to attend the game to 

“avoid the crowd”: 

The arrival at Annapolis was unheralded, and occurred just at the time 

when the usual crowd of out-of-town persons were getting here for the 

football game . . . so that to most of the population it was not known that 

the chief executive of the nation was within the city.

After driving slowly through the streets of the town, the party entered the 

Naval Academy, where they drove through the many shaded roadways. 

No salute was fired, nor was any official notice taken of the President’s 

presence.

They visited with Captain Edward W. Eberle, superintendent of the academy and 

visited the State House to meet briefly with Governor Phillips L. Goldsborough. 
107 

Captain Eberle and Governor Goldsborough offered to go with them to the 

football game, but President Wilson declined. After lunch at Carvel Hall, they left 

the city. (Carvel Hall was the best known hotel in the city, with a view 

overlooking the Severn River, the Naval Academy, and the Chesapeake Bay.) 

[“Motors To Annapolis,” The Washington Post, October 31, 1915] 

By now, the couple had settled into routines that the Post could describe: 

The President and Mrs. Galt live their daily life serenely indifferent to the 

curiosity in official life as to their plans. They drive together in the 

morning, frequently lunch together, either at the White House or Mrs. 

Galt’s house, and always take an automobile ride in the afternoon. When 

the President does not dine with Mrs. Galt and her mother, Mrs. Galt and 

her mother dine at the White House. Once a week the President takes a 

day off. He and Mrs. Galt and a proper chaperone, either Miss Helen 

Woodrow Bones, Miss Margaret Wilson or Mrs. William Bolling, go for a 

long ride through Virginia or Maryland, as they did yesterday.

When Mrs. Galt dines at the White House, she and the President and the 

rest of the family adjourn to the octagon room, which is the upstairs sitting 

room of the Wilson family, for an evening of poetry, music and song. The 

President reads from his favorite poets, often closing the book and reciting 

from memory. Mrs. Galt, who is a finished pianist, improvises melodies 

and sings. When Miss Margaret Wilson is absent, records of her voice are 

listened to by the President and Mrs. Galt. The President is very fond of 

old Scotch songs, and Miss Margaret Wilson has made records of several 

of his favorite ones. 

The curiosity regarding Mrs. Galt is almost unbelievable. Crowds stand 

outside of her modest little home on Twentieth street awaiting the chance 

to get just one glimpse of the woman who is soon to be the first lady of the 

land. When the White House car is in front of the door, the policeman on 

the beat has his hands full. Although when the President is paying an 

extended call on his fiancée, he sends the White House car away, the 

presence of four secret service men on the curbstone reveals the fact that 

the chief executive is inside. [“Going To Shadowlawn,” The Washington 

Post, October 31, 1915] 

One typical aspect of their outings was avoiding movie cameramen:

When the principals in the coming wedding rose and went for their 

morning walk, a camera was waiting and when they entered their autos, a 

battery faced them, ready to show their every movement to a curious 

world. 
108 

Often, Dr. Cary T. Grayson has been forced to put himself between a 

camera and Mrs. Galt in order to protect the next first lady of the land and 

often the White House auto has been forced to make detours to foil the 

knights of the film.

Now, however, on November 3, the Post could report: 

The offensive attention which the moving picture men have given 

President Wilson and his fiancée, Mrs. Norman Galt, has come to an end. 

There will be no further necessity for resorting to ruses to escape the ever 

open eye of the camera. The men who turn the cranks have agreed to let 

the chief executive and his bride-to-be strictly alone. They do not only 

hold up the white flag of truce, but surrender unconditionally . . . . 

The movie men realize at last that they may have been a nuisance. The 

fact is, they have been able to get fewer feet of film of the President and 

Mrs. Galt, despite their constant activity, than of any other of the many 

notables in Washington. [“Rid Of The Movie Men,” The Washington 

Post, November 3, 1915] 

On November 4, President Wilson took the train to New York City, where he was 

to speak on national defense at the Manhattan Club at the Biltmore Hotel. 

Mrs. Galt was already in the city, staying in the St. Regis Hotel, for a shopping 

trip with Helen Bones and her niece, Agnes E. Gordon: 

Colonel E. M. House met the [President’s] party at the station and they 

drove in Colonel House’s automobile to the St. Regis Hotel, where the 

President was greeted by Mrs. Norman Galt, his fiancée. The route to the 

hotel was over Thirty-third Street to Fifth Avenue. A dozen automobiles, 

occupied by Secret Service men, detectives, and reporters, followed, 

forming a parade which attracted much attention. 

President Wilson and Mrs. Galt had intended to go for a ride through Central Park 

before the speech, but in view of the threatening weather, they canceled the ride. 

He remained at the hotel until leaving for Colonel House’s residence to prepare 

for the speech. [“President Meets Fiancee,” The New York Times, November 5, 

1915] 

President Wilson stayed overnight with Colonel House’s family, but canceled 

plans to leave for Washington in the morning. Instead, he, Mrs. Galt, and their 

party attended a luncheon at the home of Cleveland H. Dodge, a businessman, 

philanthropist, and friend and adviser to President Wilson. 
109 

From there, President Wilson and Mrs. Galt entered separate automobiles for the 

ride to Pennsylvania Station: 

In Seventh Avenue, just outside the station, the automobile in which the 

President was riding narrowly escaped running over Mario Pashi, a boy of 

10, who was crossing the driveway. The boy dodged just in time, but his 

left arm was bruised by the mud guard. Mr. Wilson ordered his car 

stopped, and it was not until he had heard the boy shout that he was all 

right that the President proceeded. The boy had been told who was in the 

car, and he stood on the curb, grinning and rubbing his arm, as the 

automobile went on its way. 

Mrs. Galt was already in the President’s private rail car when he arrived. “As he 

walked through the station the President was heartily cheered. He removed his 

hat and bowed to the crowd.” [“President Pleased By Reception Here,” The New 

York Times, October 6, 1915; “Wilson Auto Hits Boy,” The Washington Post, 

November 6, 1915] 

On the morning of Saturday, November 6, President Wilson walked from the 

White House to Mrs. Galt’s home, accompanied only by his Secret Service agents: 

On the way to pay his call, the President was assailed by some small boys, 

who did not know his identity and began shooting peas at him through 

peashooters. The chief executive did not seem to mind the assault very 

much, but he did turn so that the boys, if they wanted to, might recognize 

him, and when they did they sent up a cheer. The President took the affair 

good humoredly and smilingly waved his cane to the boys as he passed on. 

That afternoon, the couple went for an automobile ride. 

Unfortunately, the reported truce with the moving picture men proved to be 

incorrect: 

The moving picture men were again busy yesterday. They have organized 

themselves into groups, some of them agreeing to snap the president and 

his fiancée when they are walking and others limiting their efforts to the 

automobile in which they ride. A system of signals has been adopted, so 

that when one photographer learns that the automobile is to take a certain 

course he notifies his brother “movie” man. A shrill whistle will summon 

a horde of camera men, and a certain popular song, sung by the prize tenor 

of the aggregation, means that a good point of vantage would be the 

northeast corner. The President and Mrs. Galt have been watching these 

maneuvers with good-natured interest and expect before long to know the 
110 

signals so well that the “movie” men will be forced to change them. 

[“Motors With Fiancee,” The Washington Post, November 7, 1915] 

The next day, Sunday, the President and Mrs. Galt took a long drive “along the 

picturesque roadways of Virginia.” [“Motors With Mrs. Galt,” The Washington 

Post, November 8, 1915] 

The following Saturday, November 13, the two continued their tradition of getting 

lost on their ride in the White House automobile. “The habit of disappearing from 

Washington Saturdays has become a permanent one with the President, who gives 

no hint of where he wants to go, except to his chauffeur.” [“Lost Again To 

Washington,” The Evening Star, November 13, 1915] 

The Post reported the next day that the President, Mrs. Galt, and her mother had 

taken a 150-mile automobile ride through Baltimore, Westminster, and other 

small towns and villages in Maryland:

While going through Baltimore the President and his party were 

recognized by only a few, but during a stop at Westminster many people 

crowded around the car. The President shook hands with several men and 

women in the crowd. 

Soon after leaving Westminster the President’s automobile was run up a 

side road, and there the party ate lunch they had taken with them from the 

White House. 

Farmers driving along the main road nearby noticed them and stood up in 

their wagons to get a better view of the picnic party. [“Picnics With 

Fiancee,” The Washington Post, November 14, 1915] 

On Monday, November 20, the President and Mrs. Galt, with the President’s 

daughter Margaret, took a 175-mile automobile trip, the longest they had taken 

since announcing their engagement. (One article states that the trip was 120 miles 

long.) Their destination was Point Lookout, Maryland, at the point where the 

Potomac River enters the Chesapeake Bay:

The route lay through a historic portion of Maryland, a region with which 

the outer world did not come much in contact until the automobile and 

improved roads made it possible . . . . 

Among the towns through which the party passed was Leonardtown, one 

of the early settlements on the Potomac. Here a stop was made at the 

Leonardtown Hotel, where the President was recognized and some of the 

townspeople shook hands with him. 
111 

One elderly man told President Wilson, “You are the first President I’ve seen 

since Mr. Pierce. He patted me on the head way back before the Civil War.” 

(President Franklin Pierce won election in 1852 and served a single term, 1853 to 

1857.) Many in the crowd wanted to shake Mrs. Galt’s hand, too. She “smilingly 

greeted them.” 

The party enjoyed a picnic luncheon, prepared at the White House, along the 

roadside at about noon on the way to Point Lookout. At Point Lookout, they left 

the automobile to view a monument. During the Civil War, a Union prison camp 

at the site held thousands of Confederate soldiers. The memorial, still in place, is

on a mass grave holding over 3,300 soldiers who died while in custody. (The 

number of buried soldiers is in dispute.) 

The road from Leonardtown to Point Lookout passed through Ridge, “a small 

village, which claims the distinction of casting a solid Democratic vote in political 

elections.” It had 11 registered voters. Knowing that the President’s automobile 

would have to return through the small town, the townspeople decided to give the 

 President and Mrs. Galt a reception on their homeward trip: 

The decision was carried out in first-class style. A band had been engaged 

and backed by twenty or more of Ridge’s population. It played patriotic 

airs as the White House motor car entered the village street on the return to 

Washington. There was some cheering and much waving of flags, and the 

President and his fiancée acknowledged the compliment as the car passed 

slowly along. 

The band, consisting of three farmers with two horns and a bass drum, played 

“America” as the White House automobile passed along the main street. “His 

automobile slowed down and he waved his hat.” [“President On Motor Trip,” The 

New York Times, November 21, 1915; “Wilson Again In State,” The Baltimore 

Sun, November 21, 1915] 

On Thanksgiving, November 25, President Wilson abandoned his plan to spend 

the day with Mrs. Galt. Instead, he locked himself in his private study with his 

typewriter to prepare his annual message to Congress. The message had to be sent 

to the public printer on November 26. He did, however, have time for a short 

automobile ride before having Thanksgiving dinner with Mrs. Galt and his family. 

 [“Busy Day For Wilson,” The Washington Post, November 26, 1915] 

That weekend, they were in New York City where President Wilson stayed with 

Colonel House while Mrs. Galt stayed with a close friend, Gertrude Gordon 

(described in some accounts as a cousin) at 12 West Tenth Street. President 

Wilson left in the White House automobile around 10 to pick up Mrs. Galt – 
112 

trailed as usual in the city by automobiles filled with Secret Service men, police 

detectives, and reporters. The President and Mrs. Galt attended the Fifth Avenue 

Presbyterian Church at 55th Street. They drove to Miss Gordon’s home for dinner: 

The ride was up Fifth Avenue, through Central Park, across Seventysecond Street to Riverside Drive, and up the Drive to 157th Street, where 

the automobiles turned south, going down the Drive and Fifth Avenue to 

Miss Gordon’s home. 

After dinner, they drove to the St. Regis Hotel where they stopped for a 15-minute 

visit with the President’s sister, Mrs. Howe. They then took an hour-long ride 

along Riverside Drive before returning to Miss Gordon’s home: 

Riverside Drive was teaming with hundreds of automobiles, and through 

these the President’s car had to thread its way. Because of Mr. Wilson’s 

wish, the police department automobile dropped behind, but whenever a 

traffic jam occurred, the police car shot ahead and made an opening. He 

and Mrs. Galt rode in the closed limousine, and were recognized by only a 

few persons. At Fifth Avenue and Fourteenth Street, on the return from 

the ride, the motorman of a cross-town surface car attempted to cross in 

front of the President’s limousine. A shout from the police made him stop 

to let Mr. Wilson and those following him go by. 

Mr. Wilson accompanied Mrs. Galt inside Miss Gordon’s house and remained a 

few minutes. He reappeared alone and drove to Colonel House’s home. 

President Wilson left for Washington shortly after midnight, while Mrs. Galt 

remained behind to continue shopping to complete her trousseau. [“Wilson 

Spends Day Here With Fiancee,” The New York Times, November 29, 1915; 

“Wilson Back Today,” The Baltimore Sun, November 29, 1915] 

The Wedding

Mrs. Galt remained in New York City for several days for shopping, fittings, and 

final say on her wedding gown. She returned to Washington on December 2. 

Finally, on December 4, the White House revealed the couple’s wedding plans: 

It was announced at the White House today that the marriage of Mrs. Galt 

and the President will take place on Saturday, the 18th of December. As 

previously stated, the ceremony will be performed at Mrs. Galt’s home, 

1308 Twentieth Street, N.W. The only guests will be Mrs. Galt’s mother, 

her brothers and sisters, the President’s brother and sister, his daughters 

and the members of his immediate household. No invitations will be 

issued. 
113 

President Wilson wrote the announcement on the morning of December 4, then 

visited Mrs. Galt for her review. 

All other details were left out of the statement, leaving others to speculate on the 

time of the ceremony, the name of the officiating clergyman, and, course, the 

design of the wedding gown. Reporters suggested that details, particularly about 

time, were left out to avoid a crowd of spectators from appearing outside Mrs. 

Galt’s home.

Plans for the honeymoon also were not revealed, leading to speculation that they 

might leave Washington on the Presidential yacht Mayflower for a coastal 

destination, possibly Pass Christian. However, as speculators admitted, nothing 

was stopping them from going to Union Station to take a train to their honeymoon 

destination. [“Wilson Weds Dec. 18,” The Washington Post, December 5, 1915; 

“Wilson To Wed December 18,” The Baltimore Sun, December 5, 1915; “Wilson 

Wedding Is Set For Dec. 18,” The New York Times, December 5, 1915] 

News accounts during this period did not indicate whether the President and his 

fiancée had time for their daily automobile rides. However, according to the Post, 

they did take a drive on Sunday, December 12: “President Wilson and his fiancée, 

Mrs. Norman Galt, discussed plans for their approaching marriage while motoring 

yesterday afternoon.” [“Motors With Mrs. Galt,” The Washington Post, 

December 13, 1915] 

The Times described the President’s movements during the day of the wedding: 

The rain was falling just about as hard as rain can fall when President 

Wilson stepped out of the White House at 9:30 o’clock this morning and 

stood under the great portico waiting for his motor car. He was whistling, 

and did not seem to be a bit depressed by the weather conditions. He 

greeted a policeman cheerily. The President wore a suit and his head was 

covered by a gray soft hat.

“What was he whistling?” repeated the policeman later, in answer to a 

question. “I don’t know. He whistles in fragments, and doesn’t carry a 

tune very well. I’ve often heard him whistling when he comes back to the 

White House.” 

President Wilson stepped back inside to avoid the rain, but his car finally arrived: 

When the car came he stepped into it briskly. The chauffeur did not have 

to be told where to go. In a very few minutes the President was at 

Mrs. Galt’s house. He did not remain there long. When he left he 

returned to the White House. 
114 

The Sun described the wedding, which took place at 8:30 p.m.: 

All arrangements for the wedding ceremony were carried out perfectly, the 

President arriving at his bride’s home shortly after 8 o’clock and the 

remainder of the wedding party, which numbered less than 30, following 

soon after . . . . 

Everything was in readiness for the ceremony when the President arrived 

and it proceeded without music. Neither the President nor Mrs. Galt had 

any attendants and there were no ushers or flower girls. Neither the army, 

the navy nor the diplomatic corps was represented, and the occasion was 

essentially what both of the couple had wished it to be—a home wedding . 

. . . 

Just at the hour set for the ceremony the President and his bride appeared 

at the head of the staircase, which was decorated with ferns, asparagus 

vines and American Beauty roses. They descended to the lower floor, 

where the guests were grouped about informally. 

The Reverend Herbert Scott Smith, rector of Mrs. Galt’s Episcopal church, and 

the Reverend James D. Taylor, of President Wilson’s church performed the 

ceremony. Mrs. Galt’s mother gave the bride away:

The President stood to the right of the clergymen and the bride stood on 

their left. At once, Dr. Smith began the words of the Episcopal marriage 

service, the President making his responses first, and then the bride 

making hers. After the bride promised to “love cherish and obey” the 

President placed the wedding ring, a plain band of gold, upon her finger, 

and then, after a prayer, and while the couple clasped their right hands 

together, Dr. Smith declared them man and wife. The brief and simple 

ceremony was over.

President Wilson was attired in conventional evening dress, while the bride wore 

“an afternoon gown of black velvet combined with embroidery of various shades 

of blue” along with “a large picture hat of black beaver.” President Wilson had 

given her “a magnificent diamond brooch,” which she wore at her throat: 

The entire party turned to the dining room, where a buffet supper was 

served. The decorations there were in pink and on the buffets were banked 

growing ferns and pink roses. The tables were decorated with Lady 

Stanhope rose blossoms. On a table in the centre was the wedding cake—

a fruit cake several layers high, ornamented with sprays of pink orchids in 

the centre. Mrs. Wilson cut the cake without formality, and no 
115 

arrangement was made for bestowing bits of it upon others than those in 

the wedding party. 

The President’s idea of not releasing the time of the wedding was effective in 

preventing a large crowd from forming; police officers were present but had few 

spectators to control. The unannounced second element of his plan for avoiding 

crowds was a surprise to reporters and the public gathered at Union Station:

Then at 9:45 o’clock the White House limousine drew up to the entrance 

with the curtains of the windows toward the crowd drawn. However, there 

was just one little opening where one could get a glimpse of the President 

and Mrs. Wilson, but the police deployed themselves in skirmisher fashion 

and shut off all view. There were two lines of defense, but not even the 

first was attacked.

The secret service men and the Washington detectives led by Maj. 

Pullman went to their cars. The President helped his bride into the 

machine, and the car started off like a catapult at about a thirty-mile gait, 

with two cars and a motor cycle policeman tailing behind. Several cars 

with newspaper men started in pursuit, but they were waved back. 

Reporters had received a tip that the Presidential limousine was not headed to 

Union Station, but to the station in Alexandria. The reporters’ cars caught up with 

the limousine just after it crossed the Long Bridge [at the site of today’s 14th Street 

bridges], but were turned back. “Motor cycle policemen had been stationed on 

one of the roads to hold up any but the official machines.” [“President’s Wedding 

To Mrs. Galt Marked By Great Simplicity,” The Baltimore Sun, December 19, 

1915; “President and Mrs. Galt Wed In Presence Of Their Families; Honeymoon 

At Hot Springs, VA.” and “Go To Alexandria To Get Their Train,” The Sunday 

Star, December 19, 1915; “President Wilson Weds Mrs. Galt In Her Home With 

Simple Ceremony; To Spend Honeymoon At Hot Springs,” The New York Times, 

December 19, 1915] 

As the Post pointed out, “The President’s ruse to escape the eyes of the curious 

worked well. Indeed, it worked only too well, according to the view of hundreds 

of citizens who went to Union Station last night to catch a glimpse of their chief 

magistrate and his bride.” 

Hopes were raised at about 9:15 when a White House car pulled up to Union 

Station: 

But the only person that got out was Martha Steptoe, Mrs. Galt’s colored 

maid. Martha immediately discovered that she had lost her purse and 
116 

would not proceed until the chauffeur had found it in the tonneau where 

she had dropped it. 

Martha had been coached in the rules of evasion. Asked where the 

President and his bride were, when they would arrive at the station, and 

where they were going she simply replied: “I don’t know.” 

She went through the gate and boarded one of three cars standing on track 

20. It afterward turned out that these cars composed the President’s 

special section.

The cars would soon leave the station, to meet the President, Mrs. Wilson, and 

their party in Alexandria.

The crowd at Union Station “did not hesitate to voice their disappointment and 

protest.” When a policeman broke the news to the crowd that the Presidential 

party had gone to Alexandria, he said, “fooled you this time.” One bystander 

replied, “Yes, but we will fool him when the election comes around.” 

[“President’s Ruse To Evade Crowd Brings Forth A Vigorous Protest,” The 

Washington Post, December 19, 1915] 

The train arrived in Alexandria late bearing the President’s Pullman car, the 

Superb, and its two companions. They were bound for Hot Springs, Virginia: 

Snow from the previous day’s fall was still on the ground and they thought 

it lovely in the clear moonlight. At Alexandria a private car was waiting 

filled with flowers, and some sandwiches and fruit stood on a table. 

Around midnight the train pulled out. 

The next morning at seven one of the Secret Service men, Edmund 

Starling, stepped into the car as the train came into Hot Springs. As 

Starling went into the narrow train corridor a figure came out of the car’s 

sitting room. It was the President, in top hat, tail coat, and grey morning 

trousers. He was facing away from the Secret Service man. As Starling 

watched in silence, the President’s hands went into the pockets of his 

trousers and his feet came flashing up in the air to click heels. He began to 

whistle a popular song. The heels came leaping up to click again and the 

whistling changed into outright singing: 

“Oh, you beautiful doll, you great big beautiful doll; oh, oh, oh, oh, 

OH, YOU BEAUTIFUL DOLL!” [Smith, pages 25-26] 
117 

The Honeymoon 

The Wilsons had reserved a wing of the Homestead Hotel for their honeymoon. 

Two White House automobiles had been sent to the hotel for their use during their 

planned 2-week stay.

Their train arrived at about 8:30 a.m. The Wilsons were the first out of the special 

cars, stepping into one of the White House automobiles for the ride to the hotel. 

In addition to Charles Swem, the stenographer, and Secret Service agents, the 

Wilsons were followed by “a score of newspaper men.” The President, the Times

pointed out, “has given strict orders that no photographs are to be taken of himself 

and Mrs. Wilson.” President Wilson intended to deal with “only the most 

important public business while here,” but a special telegraph line was established 

between the hotel and the White House for transmission of documents and 

messages, in addition to the telephone connection. [“Big Crowd Greets 

President’s Bride,” The New York Times, December 20, 1915] 

The Star informed readers:

Every arrangement had been made to allow the distinguished couple to 

spend their honeymoon quietly in the seclusion of the mountains of the 

state in which they were both born . . . . 

Mountains and hills, wild and romantic, entirely surround the green plains 

of the Warm Springs valley. Winding roads and steep trails lead up the 

slopes of these highlands, and Mrs. Wilson will have unlimited 

opportunity to indulge in her fondness for walking—with the President. 

Numerous motor trips also have been planned by the couple, two White 

House automobiles having been shipped here for their use. [“Abandon 

The Idea Of Playing Golf,” The Evening Star, December 20, 1915] 

The Wilsons had brought their golf clubs with them and, from their rooms, could 

see the golf course. On their first full day in Hot Springs, however, they 

abandoned plans for a round of golf to respond to many of the messages of 

congratulations they had received from friends, relatives, and officials. That 

afternoon, they finally left their seclusion for a long automobile ride that the Times

described as being “over the Warm Spring [sic] Road in the direction of 

McGuffin’s Mountain, then over the Healing Springs Road toward Oak Grove for 

about thirty miles, returning to the hotel again about 6 o’clock.” 

According to the Sun, 

They were absent a little more than two hours. It was the first time they 

had left the hotel since arriving here early yesterday morning. Mrs. 

Wilson appeared in one of the most beautiful costumes of her trousseau, a 

gown of black velvet, with a heavy fur-trimmed coat and a small toque.
118 

Her face was radiant with smiles and frequently along the route, as the 

White House limousine and its occupants were recognized, she joined the 

President in acknowledging the respectful greetings of the country 

folk . . . . 

After driving about five miles over a rough trail the chauffeur turned back 

and with better luck took his passengers over 50 miles of smooth roads 

through magnificent mountain scenery and past some famous springs. 

The frustrated “movie men” tried to negotiate a deal with the President. They sent 

him a round-robin letter suggesting that if he would let them photograph the new 

couple for 5 minutes, they would leave Hot Springs. They were skeptical he 

would comply. [“President Takes Bride On Auto Trip,” The New York Times, 

December 21, 1915; “Wilsons In Seclusion,” The Baltimore Sun, December 21, 

1915] 

The following day, December 21, the Wilsons went for a long walk, “about three 

miles [that] carried them past the golf links, with secret service men following. 

Mrs. Wilson wore a light walking suit, heavy tan walking shoes and small black 

hat.” They also went for a “50-mile automobile drive to neighboring springs.” 

During the drive, they stopped “at a famous old hotel to see registers signed by 

Thomas Jefferson and other notable figures in American history.” 

The frustrated movie men had stationed their cameras at strategic vantage points, 

but the Secret Service agents prevented them from filming the Wilsons. 

[“Wilsons On Long Walk,” The Washington Post, December 22, 1915; “President 

Takes Walk With Bride,” The Evening Star, December 21, 1915; “Wilson On 

Long Walk,” The Baltimore Sun, December 22, 1915] 

(The “famous hotel” was apparently The Homestead (now the Omni Homestead 

Resort), which former President Jefferson visited in 1818. An online history of 

the hotel states: “During his visit, on August 13, 1818, Jefferson enjoyed 

breakfast at The Homestead, soaked in the springs, and took his dinner. He 

recorded that the entire day’s activities cost him $2.12 and wrote to one of his 

daughters praising the springs as among the best in America.” The hotel still has 

the registry from his visit. [http://www.historichotels.org/hotels-resorts/the-omnihomestead-resort/history.php])

On December 22, the Wilsons left their hotel and motored 40 miles to White 

Sulphur Springs in West Virginia: 

The journey was without incident other than the fording of thirteen 

shallow streams unprovided with bridges, such as abound in the Virginia 

mountains. No accident occurred, notwithstanding a number of hairpin 

curves, and the steep woodside precipices of the mountain country. 
119 

At the Greenbrier resort, they dined for the first time in public: 

After luncheon the President and Mrs. Wilson took a stroll around the 

parklike grounds. Mrs. Wilson recalled with pleasure the different cottage 

rows in which she had lived. Later, they visited the golf links, where the 

President on a former visit turned in some excellent scores.

They left for Hot Springs at around 3 p.m. “Two movie picture men have given 

up in despair and returned to New York last night.” [“Visit White Sulphur,” The 

Washington Post, December 23, 1915; “President On Auto Trip,” The New York 

Times, December 23, 1915] 

Mrs. Galt’s memoir described fording one shallow stream:

We started one morning to drive to White Sulphur Springs to spend the 

day, but ran into heavy roads which made our progress slow, though it was 

possible, until we reached a stream so swollen that the chauffeur said he 

was afraid the water would overflow the car. We decided to get out and 

let him try it, and if he could make it we would cross on a tree which had 

fallen across the stream. If he could not, we would return in the Secret 

Service car and send him help. We stood in the road and watched the big 

Pierce Arrow lunge and plunge in the current but finally emerge 

triumphantly on the other side. Then came our turn, for the old tree which 

was to form a bridge for us was slippery and wet, and very rotten in places; 

but by forming a human chain—the five Secret Service men, the two 

chauffeurs and ourselves—we steadied one another and with a real thrill of 

adventure reached safety. [My Memoir, page 87] 

The Wilsons made their first appearance on the Hot Springs golf course on 

December 23 for 14 holes, chatting with other players. They did not keep scores 

“but Mrs. Wilson, although a novice, played nearly as well as her husband, and 

the President did his best.” As often was the case, the Secret Service agents did 

double duty as caddies. 

In the afternoon, “Mr. and Mrs. Wilson took an hour’s automobile ride to points 

of historic interest in the vicinity, returning after dark, and just in time for dinner.” 

 [“Mr. and Mrs. Wilson Make First Public Appearance On Golf Links,” The 

Washington Post, December 24, 1915; “President And Bride Appear On The 

Links,” The Evening Star, December 23, 1915] 

On Christmas Eve, the Wilsons played golf in the afternoon and went for an 

automobile ride. While they were on the course, another golfer, Barton French, 

accidentally drove two balls within a few feet of them. “At the President’s 

request, Mr. French then passed the President and his wife and finished the course 
120 

ahead of them.” French told reporters a hill had blocked his view of the 

Presidential party. 

That evening, the Wilsons attended the Homestead Hotel’s Christmas party, 

described as “an old-fashioned Virginia Christmas celebration held in the spacious 

lounge of their hotel.” It was their first visit to the public portion of the hotel. 

The Times reported: 

At 9 o’clock the President and Mrs. Wilson walked from their apartments 

in the east wing and took seats not far from the great tree which stood at 

the head of the foyer. The several hundred visitors who are spending 

Christmas here remained standing until they were seated.

Fifteen African-American employees of the hotel provided the musical 

entertainment. The entertainers were described in several accounts using terms 

common to the times, but the Times reported: 

The negro singers who provide entertainment nightly then appeared in 

fancy costumes in a procession led by a float on which one of their number 

posed as Santa Claus under a lighted fir tree. An hour’s entertainment of 

negro melodies followed. 

The Post characterized the Wilsons:

The President, happy as a schoolboy beside his bride, kept time to the 

raggy tunes with his foot. As for the rest of the audience, numbering about 

100 guests, seated before the huge, brilliant evergreen tree, that reached to 

the high ceiling, the performance had but passing interest. Everybody 

fixed his eyes on the President and the new first lady of the land. 

When the performers put on a vaudeville show, the Wilsons “did much laughing.” 

The Star stated, “the President and everybody else almost convulsed with 

laughter,” at their “antics.” [“At A Christmas Fete,” The Washington Post, 

December 25, 1915; “President And Bride Join In Festivities,” The Evening Star, 

December 25, 1915; “Wilson At Hotel Party,” The New York Times, December 

25, 1915] 

The Wilsons went to the golf course at about noon on Christmas Day, enjoying 

themselves through the 13th hole when the overcast sky “suddenly poured a deluge 

of rain”: 

They immediately turned back for the hotel, and as the storm became 

heavier the President removed his coat and threw it about Mrs. Wilson’s 

shoulders. Even this did not save her from a thorough drenching. 
121 

At the hotel other guests offered such first-aid preventives as were at hand, 

but the President laughingly refused to accept.

Another account reported: 

They started out at a walk to retrace their way to the hotel. And then they 

threw all dignity to the wind and ran, not at a dog-trot pace, but at a pace 

that set the hearts and lungs of the secret service men in the rear pumping 

like trip hammers.

The sweater failed to save Mrs. Wilson from a soaking. By the time the 

party reached the shelter of the hotel water was dripping from their hats 

and clothes as from the eaves of a house. Every foot in the party was as 

waterlogged as a long-abandoned derelict. At each step there was that 

squashy, oozy sound made when one steps into a bog. 

The rain caused them to cancel their planned motor ride for the afternoon. [“Rain 

Routs Wilsons,” The Baltimore Sun, December 26, 1915; “President’s 

Christmas,” The New York Times, December 26, 1915; “Wilsons Get Ducking,” 

The Washington Post, December 26, 1915] 

The rain turned to snow overnight, but as the Post reported, it “did not keep the 

President and his bride from having their daily automobile ride.” It was, however, 

“slow and difficult traveling, but for an hour and a half the White House car toiled 

winding roads, while its passengers enjoyed the wonderful winter scene and the 

sharp, invigorating air. [“Wilson Pushes Bills,” The Washington Post, 

December 27, 1915] 

On December 27, the Wilsons did not want to stay in their hotel suite: 

Roads hereabouts were in no shape for automobiling today, so President 

Wilson and his wife took a nine-mile tramp through the snow and slush. 

They walked about the white-covered mountain country for several hours, 

being recognized and heartily cheered in the villages through which they 

passed. [“Wilsons In Long Walk,” The Washington Post, December 28, 

1915] 

December 28 was the President’s 59th birthday. After reading and responding to 

the hundreds of telegrams of congratulation, they “took a long automobile drive 

over snow-covered mountains roads.” In the evening they enjoyed a cake the 

hotel had baked to Mrs. Wilson’s specifications. “It was an almond sponge cake, 

decorated with candy roses and tulips and bearing in white icing the inscription: 

“Many happy returns. W.W.” [“Cake For Mr. Wilson,” The Washington Post, 

December 29, 1915] 
122 

More telegrams arrived on December 29 that took up the Wilsons’ time in the 

morning: 

After a morning rain the sun shone in the afternoon and the President and 

his wife went out for a walk. Rain followed the sunshine, and they were 

caught in the sudden storm. A White House automobile took them, 

dripping, back to the hotel. [“Wilsons Caught In Storm,” The Baltimore 

Sun, December 30, 1915] 

The next day the Wilsons, accompanied as always by the Secret Service, “motored 

to a point 5 miles from here and to within half a mile” of Flag Rock. They 

proceeded on a “half-mile climb over a rough and precipitous mountain trail” to 

the top of the “lofty Appalachian peak, from which they saw the Blue Ridge in the 

hazy distance and counted 47 mountain tops within a range of 60 miles.” The 

Post told its readers:

Flat Rock, used almost continuously during the civil war as an army signal 

station, now is a mecca for tourists. 

The frustrated “movie men” provided the other highlight of the day: 

An enterprising “movie” man this afternoon almost “snapped” the 

President and Mrs. Wilson as they were playing golf, despite the efforts of 

the Secret Service guard . . . .

The operator had hidden himself under the floor of a cabin near the golf 

links. He had his camera in position as the President and his bride 

approached the fifteenth hole. A Secret Service man spied the camera just 

as the operator started cranking and he sped across the field to the cabin. 

He confiscated the roll of film in the machine and warned the operator that 

any more attempts to snap the President would cause him to lose his 

machine.

The President and Mrs. Wilson were startled when the Secret Service man 

suddenly bolted to the cabin and it was several minutes before they 

resumed playing. [“Movie Trap For Wilson,” The Baltimore Sun, 

December 31, 1915] 

On New Year’s Eve, the Wilsons golfed and “took an automobile ride over a new 

mountain road.” [“Wilson Receives Today,” The Baltimore Sun, January 1, 1916] 

One New Year’s Day, a rainstorm again drove the Wilsons from the golf course: 

Mr. and Mrs. Wilson took a long motor ride and a three-mile walk today 

after a rainstorm had driven them from the golf links. They motored to 

Warm Springs, Va., and returned by a circuitous route, alighting at 
123 

Healing Springs, three miles away, and walking the remainder of the 

distance. They walked leisurely, stopping several times to talk with 

children who trooped out to meet them 

In the afternoon, the Wilsons held a New Year’s reception for hotel guests and 

townspeople: 

[At] 4 o’clock the hotel was filled with a waiting throng when Mr. Wilson 

and his bride walked through the new lobby from their suite in the east 

wing of the hotel and stood near the lighted Christmas tree at the head of 

the corridor. 

Hundreds, including many children, went through the receiving line. One child 

particularly impressed the Wilsons:

Mrs. Wilson kissed one little tow-headed mountain girl, who courtsied so 

prettily that the President lifted her up and, turning to his bride, said: 

“Isn’t she a dear?” 

Another photography incident was on the minds of officials: 

Warning was given today that publication of snapshots secured of the 

President and Mrs. Wilson would be punished by abrogation of White 

House privileges to the offending concerns. 

The one picture taken was obtained by a “sacrifice hit.” One movie 

operator hid himself in such a way that he was bound to be caught. While 

he was being caught, his colleague snapped the President and Mrs. Wilson. 

[“President Greets New Year’s Throng,” The New York Times, January 2, 1916; 

“Wilsons Are Hosts,” The Baltimore Sun, January 2, 1916; “Reception By 

Wilsons,” The Washington Post, January 2, 1916] 

On January 2, the Wilsons took what turned out to be the final walk and 

automobile ride of their honeymoon. With the “stout sticks used by mountain 

climbers here,” they tramped the Delafield Trail:

The trail leads to the top of Warm Springs Mountain, where the view is 

out upon the Blue Ridge chain and into the Warm Springs Valley, where 

some of the skirmishes of the civil war were fought. After luncheon the 

President and Mrs. Wilson took a long motor ride. 

In recent days, the foreign crisis had grown with continuation of the German 

policy of sinking passenger liners without warning. The torpedoing of the British 

steamship Persia took place on December 15, 1915, with the loss of nearly 350 

lives, including the American Consul at Aden, not long after an attack on the 

Italian steamer Ancona with the loss of nine Americans. On January 3, reports 
124 

came in that two more steamships had been sunk in the Mediterranean, the British 

ship Glengyle and the Japanese steamer Yasaka Maru. 

President Wilson decided to end his honeymoon after 16 days and return to 

Washington to consult on the subject: 

Before his departure the President came to the office of the Homestead and 

registered for himself and Mrs. Wilson. The register and the new silver 

pen which he used have been put away in one of the safes of the hotel. 

Because he had intended to stay a couple more days, his special rail car was not in 

Hot Springs, but they were able to borrow a private rail car that had arrived with 

two New York vacationers. It was attached to the first through train and the 

Wilsons and their party left in the evening for Washington. [“President Starts 

Back,” The New York Times, January 4, 1916; “Wilson Hurries Back To Handle 

New Crisis,” The Baltimore Sun, January 4, 1916] 

Not long after their return, newspapers again were covering their automobile 

rides. On Sunday, January 16, the Wilsons motored through Alexandria, Virginia, 

as the Post reported: 

Yesterday afternoon the President and Mrs. Wilson, followed by the usual 

secret service guard, passed down Washington street in a White House 

automobile, turned west on King street to Alfred and then proceeded over 

Hunting Creek bridge into Fairfax county, where they spent an hour riding 

over the hills and through the dales of that historic section, passing again 

through this city by the same route on their way home. 

Passing motorists and pedestrian spotted the Wilsons and waved or doffed their 

cap, and he returned the greetings. “It was the first visit of the President and 

Mrs. Wilson since they motored here the night of their marriage to board their 

train for Hot Springs.” [“Wilsons In Alexandria,” The Washington Post, 

January 17, 1916] 

The Road Bill

Through the 1890s and early 1900s, Members of Congress had introduced good 

roads bills, with the number of bills increasing during the 1910s. The bills were 

referred to committee and never heard from again.

That changed in 1912. On March 29, Representative Dorsey W. Shackleford 

(D-Mo.) introduced a bill that authorized $25 million a year to “rent” roads for 

rural free delivery of U.S. mail as an incentive to upgrade the roads. Class A 

roads (macadam) would receive a payment of $30 a mile, while the rental fee for 

Class B roads (gravel) would be $20 a mile and for Class C roads (dirt) would be 

$10 a mile. The House of Representatives approved the Shackleford bill on 
125 

May 2 by a vote of 240 to 86, as an amendment to the Post Office Appropriation 

Act of 1913. 

The focus on roads used for mail delivery stemmed from the constitutional 

provision giving Congress the authority “To establish post offices and post roads” 

(Article 8). In the 19th century, Congress and Presidents had debated whether 

“establish” meant pay for construction or simply identify routes suitable for 

carrying the mail. Now, however, the link to post roads was seen as needed to 

counter Members of Congress who argued that the Federal Government did not 

have the constitutional authority to pay for road construction. 

The Senate removed the rental provision from the House appropriations bill, 

substituting authorization for a joint committee to report on Federal assistance for 

roads. The House-Senate conference committee to resolve differences between 

the House and Senate bills dropped the Shackleford provision, included the joint 

committee, and added $500,000 for an experimental program to improve post 

roads on which the delivery of mail “is or may hereafter be established.” 

President Taft signed the bill on August 24, 1912. 

Although the Shackleford bill had been defeated in the end, it had opened the door 

on Federal assistance for road improvement. 

On March 6-7, 1913, AAA sponsored a good roads convention in the Raleigh 

Hotel in Washington, just 2 days after the inauguration of President Wilson. In 

fact, on the first day of the convention, 300 or so delegates, including the 

President’s cousin John A. Wilson, met with President Wilson in the East Room 

at the White House at 2:30 p.m. American Motorist, AAA’s magazine, described 

the meeting:

One of the features of the convention was the call at the White House, 

President Wilson receiving the delegates in the East Room and expressing 

to them his great interest in highways [sic] improvement. John A. Wilson, 

first vice-president of the A. A. A., introduced the good roads advocates to 

the Nation’s Chief Executive, who paid a special compliment to Chairman 

George C. Diehl in reference to his extensive knowledge of the good roads 

question. [“Federal Aid Good Roads Convention,” American Motorist, 

April 1913, page 309] 

AAA’s leaders urged him to endorse interstate trunk highways. 

President Wilson experienced a busy day, but left the White House at 4 p.m. for 

an automobile ride with the First Lady.
126 

As was traditionally the case during the era, the 63rd Congress would not convene 

until December 1913, so good roads advocates in Congress could not pursue 

legislation for the year.

The Third American Road Congress, sponsored by AAA and the American 

Highway Association (AHA), took place in Detroit on September 29 through 

October 4, 1913. President Wilson sent a brief letter expressing disappointment 

that he could not attend but telling the delegates about “the very deep interest 

which I feel in the whole matter of adequate road building in the United States.” 

He added, “Every man who wishes to see this great country made the most of 

must sympathize with the efforts now being made to weave its parts together by 

good roads.” [Proceedings of the Third American Road Congress, Under 

Auspices of American Highway Association/American Automobile Association, 

Detroit, Michigan, September 29-October 4-1913, page 9] 

Secretary of Agriculture David F. Houston, whose department included the 

U.S. Office of Public Roads (OPR), was one of the most eagerly awaited speakers 

because he would, it was hoped, reveal the new President’s plans for good roads. 

He spoke on the opening day of the convention, telling the delegates he would not 

try to convince them of the need for good roads or the economic and social 

advantages they provided. “This would be ridiculous excess, and I shall assume 

that you are already thorough converts to this idea and that your mission in life is 

to bring the people generally to your thinking.” 

He summarized the Federal role dating to October 1893 when the Department of 

Agriculture opened the U.S. Office of Road Inquiry with a congressional 

appropriation of $10,000. The money was not for road building, but to pay for 

“inquiries in regard to the systems of road management throughout the United 

States, to make investigations in regard to the best method of road-making, to 

prepare publications on this subject suitable for distribution, and to enable him to 

assist the agricultural colleges and experiment stations in disseminating 

information on this subject, ten thousand dollars.” 

The agency had evolved since then, but Secretary Houston said, “Its function has 

been primarily educational, and as such it has been recognized to be of great 

value.” Now, however, Congress had taken “a step of great importance and 

significance” by appropriating $500,000 for use by the Secretary of Agriculture 

and Postmaster General in the experimental program to improve post roads. 

Counting the regular OPR appropriation of $300,000 for its educational programs, 

“it will be seen that the department of agriculture has been charged with the 

supervision of an expenditure for roads of about one and three-quarter million 

dollars.” 
127 

Even more impressive was the work of the States. Ten years ago, few States had 

an expert central road agency; now, twenty-four States had “reasonably efficient 

highway commissions, and thirty-three have central agencies of more or less 

importance”: 

Ten years ago the appropriation by states [sic] for good roads slightly 

exceeded two million dollars. In 1912, the appropriation was over fortythree millions, which was over 40 per cent of the total estimated 

expenditure by the States up to December 31, 1911. It is estimated that 

aside from these federal and State appropriations there was expended 

locally in 1912 over one hundred and seventy-five million dollars and 

quite significantly it is also estimated that from 20 to 40 per cent of this 

local expenditure was, relatively speaking, wasted.

The days were over when political theory stated “that government which governs 

least, governs best.” He continued, “One gratifying thing today is that people are 

demanding that their various governmental agencies devote themselves to the 

vital, essential, economic, and social problems,” a view that would divert funds 

from war “to the constructive and helpful expenditure for the development of 

society.” The growth in highway expenditures demonstrated this shift. 

Everyone agreed on the role of State and local governments in road improvement, 

but at this point, arguing for Federal encouragement and aid “would be merely 

academic.” The question was not whether the Federal Government should be 

involved but “the extent and character of such aid, and of methods and 

machinery—federal, State, or local.”

He said the suggestion of great national transcontinental roads and interstate roads 

connecting the country’s capitals “appeals to my imagination . . . and to the sense 

of pleasure that I experience in riding around the country in my friends’ 

automobiles.” However, he entertained “no sort of doubt” about the need to get 

products to market to make rural life more profitable, comfortable, and 

pleasurable, “and it is obvious that the representatives of the people in Congress 

are like minded.” The new experimental post-road program was evidence of the 

sentiment.

Many questions would have to be answered regarding Federal help. “That the 

suggestion of federal aid to road building raises grave questions and involves 

possible dangers, no thoughtful citizen doubts”: 

There are proposals before the public mind which would bankrupt the 

federal treasury and suggest possible abuses before which those of the 

worst pork-barrel bill of the past would pale into insignificance. 
128 

Any plan must “carry with it the assurance of safeguarding the treasury” or it does 

not “stand the ghost of a chance of favorable consideration.” He was concerned, 

too, about precedent. “This is not the only proposal before the American 

Congress involving the suggestion of huge appropriations.” He also warned that it 

would be “especially pernicious if such aid should result in stifling the spirit of 

self-help.” He wanted to avoid “the building up of a great and powerful bureau in 

Washington, with an ever-increasing control over the highways of the country.” 

With those cautions in mind, Secretary Houston outlined his ideas: 

The first practical essentials in the planning of road legislation would seem 

to be to recognize the States as the smallest unit with which the federal 

government might deal. This would give relief in a measure from the 

insistent demand that would come from every township and every district 

in the Union for its share of State or federal assistance, without reference 

to the merits of the case or the practicability of the undertaking . . . . It 

would seem that the basic feature would be such coöperation between the 

States and the federal government as would leave with the States the 

initiative in the selection of roads to receive aid, and as much of the 

immediate construction and maintenance as would be practicable. In the 

case of roads on which federal money is to be expended, it would seem 

essential and wise that the federal agency should have the requisite power 

of the approval of the selection, supervision of the construction and 

maintenance, and the right of inspection, for the plain and simple, ordinary 

purpose of seeing that the federal money is applied to the purpose for 

which it was voted and is efficiently expended. 

It is reasonably clear that for every reason there must be some automatic 

check upon the demands to be made upon Congress, and that this should 

be afforded through the requirement that the States and the localities 

should contribute an amount both for construction and maintenance at 

least equal to and possibly double that contributed by the federal 

government; and that, in the apportionment of any possible federal funds, a 

number of basic factors, such as population area, wealth, or minimum cost 

of construction, should control, I have not the least doubt. 

He realized that cries of “centralization” would be heard, but he thought nothing 

was more natural than cooperation for mutual assistance by “two jurisdictions 

serving the same people.” 

Those who complained of centralization did so when it would be of least value: 

They are not in the least timid in their approaches to the federal treasury, 

and their courage fails them only when it is suggested that the federal 
129 

government has a right to see that the money of the people of the nation is 

wisely and efficiently expended. If they are to take counsel of their 

alarms, let them do so before they determine to assault the treasury.

He concluded by saying that as a practical consideration, “I believe that this 

matter is one in which haste can best be slowly made.” The people will support a 

road program “when they are convinced that it is applied to a wise purpose and 

will yield the results anticipated.” The post-road program and the joint committee 

indicated “a wholesome desire to know the facts”:

Too short a time has elapsed to judge of the value of this undertaking, but 

that it is in the right direction, few will question. That it might be 

extended with ample funds if aid is to be furnished, more thoughtful men 

would concede; and the plan has the peculiar value of being susceptible of 

indefinite extension in case the result should be found to justify it. 

[Proceedings of the Third American Road Congress, pages 22-27] 

Representative Shackleford introduced a new version of his rental bill in 1914. 

Under the bill, each Governor could choose the ABC rental plan or a FederalState partnership in road improvement similar to what Secretary Houston had 

outlined. Once again, the House passed the bill. In the Senate the Committee on 

Post Offices and Post Roads substituted a plan based on the sale of bonds, 

selection of projects by a State highway agency, and establishment of a U.S. 

highway commission to oversee the work. The committee approved the bill, but it 

never reached the Senate floor for a vote before the Senate adjourned for the year 

on October 24, 1914. 

The AHA and AAA sponsored the Fourth American Road Congress in Atlanta, 

Georgia, on November 9-14, 1914. About 3,300 delegates registered for the 

congress at the Auditorium-Armory. OPR Director Logan W. Page, founder and 

president of the AHA, told delegates that the presence of people from around the 

country was “proof that this great question is of nation wide [sic] importance, and 

well it may be so considered, for it touches human welfare of every angle and is a 

material factor in the development of education, in our home life and in religion, 

the three great fundamentals of our civilization.” [Proceedings of the Fourth 

American Road Congress Under Auspices of American Highway 

Association/American Automobile Association, Atlanta, Georgia, November 9-14, 

1914, pages 11-15] 

On the third day, the presentation of technical papers was interrupted to read a 

letter that had just been received from President Wilson. He regretted he could 

not attend to convey his “deep interest” in the work of the Fourth American Road 

Congress: 
130 

I need scarcely emphasize the social and economic importance of good 

roads. They are prerequisite to the betterment of rural life in a number of 

directions. Improved roads, especially improved community roads from 

the farm to the nearest railway station, are an urgent necessity. They are 

essential for the economic marketing of farm products, and for the 

development of the educational and social institutions of the country. 

Providing additional funds for better roads was important, but “even more 

important are the matters of better road administration and the better maintenance 

of roads already constructed.” Despite the fact that State and local governments 

spent $205 million for roads, “it is clear that we are not getting the results we 

should have”: 

The proper planning for road systems in States, the development of better 

methods of administration, State and local, and the proper maintenance of 

roads, will, I am sure, receive peculiar attention from your body. When 

the people are convinced that they will receive full value for every dollar 

expended on roads they will be brought more easily to an appreciation of 

the need for future expenditure and will make the requisite provision. 

He concluded, “I believe that your body can furnish intelligent guidance in the 

solution of our problems in this field.” [Proceedings of the Fourth American 

Road Congress, page 155] 

On December 12, 1914, at the Raleigh Hotel in Washington, State highway 

officials founded the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO), 

with Logan Page and two of his top officials in attendance. Henry G. Shirley, 

Chief Engineer of the Maryland State Roads Commission, was elected president 

of AASHO, serving in that post in 1915 and 1916. Page joined AASHO’s 

founders in a visit to the White House where they met President Wilson. 

The Joint Committee on Federal Aid in the Construction of Post Roads released 

its conclusions on January 21, 1915. The report strongly endorsed the need for a 

Federal-aid program, and dismissed any constitutional objections to such a 

program:

Among those of legal training a technical discussion of the 

constitutionality of national highway appropriations would no doubt be 

interesting, but we believe the time has long since passed when 

controversy over this question could be deemed appropriate . . . . Federal 

aid to good roads will accomplish several of the objects indicated by the 

framers of the Constitution—establish post roads, regulate commerce, 

provide for the common defense, and promote the general welfare. Above 

all, it will promote the general welfare.
131 

The committee, with its membership spanning the spectrum of views on Federalaid, was able to agree on some points regarding the future Federal-aid program. 

The members rejected centralization of control in Washington. They also feared 

that spreading a small amount of funds over a large amount of mileage would 

create a "pork barrel" that would work against permanent upgrading of the roads. 

However, the committee was unable to agree on how the Federal-aid program 

should operate. [Federal Aid to Good Roads, Report of the Joint Committee on 

Federal Aid in the Construction of Post Roads, U.S. House of Representatives, 

63d Congress, 3d Session, Document No. 1510, January 21, 1915, page 14, 19, 

22-23] 

The AASHO Bill

AASHO’s members returned to the Raleigh Hotel where the new Executive 

Committee (not including Page) was instructed to prepare and present a bill to 

Congress representing AASHO's plan for Federal cooperation. The committee, 

dominated by members from heavily populated States with well-developed 

highway networks, collaborated with AAA's president, A. G. Batchelder, on the 

draft of a bill that called for a national system of highways. 

The draft was sent to Congress, but midwestern members of AASHO, many from 

States with less developed networks, objected to the plan and the fact that they 

had not been consulted before it was submitted to Congress. [Seely, Bruce E., 

Building the American Highway System: Engineers as Policy Makers, Temple 

University Press, 1987, page 42] 

To settle the dispute, a meeting of a committee of AASHO's Executive Committee 

was arranged for September 11, 1915, in Oakland, just before the Pan-American 

Road Congress. The committee consisted of: 

George P. Coleman, Chairman, Virginia 

Henry G. Shirley, Maryland (AASHO president) 

W. D. Sohier, Massachusetts 

Thomas H. MacDonald, Iowa 

Edwin A. Stevens, New Jersey 

Lamar Cobb, Arizona 

Joseph Hyde Pratt, North Carolina 

According to AASHO’s Golden anniversary history, MacDonald was instrumental 

in shifting the focus from using Federal funds to build a relatively small mileage 

of long-distance Federal highways to a Federal-aid concept of assistance to the 

States:
132 

It was his contention that such a program would encourage development of 

highway technology and the creation of a great network of highways 

throughout the Nation, instead of a few Federal routes and some spiderweb 

highway systems within the individual States . . . . He felt that without the 

encouragement and stabilizing influence of Federal-aid, some of the States 

would have a difficult time developing adequate and competent Highway 

Departments and effective highway programs. [The First Fifty Years, 

1914-1964, American Association of State Highway Officials, 1964, pages 

52-53] 

The resulting bill provided for authorization of $25 million a year to "promote the 

improvement of Rural Post Roads, Military Roads, and Roads used for interstate 

commerce," again referring to powers that the Constitution granted to Congress. 

The funds were primarily for rural roads, but could be used on the streets of cities, 

towns, or boroughs having a population in excess of 2,000 if the houses averaged 

more than 200 feet apart. A "Rural Post Road" was defined as any public road 

"over which the United States' mails are or may be transported." 

Three factors would be used to apportion the funds among the States: total area of 

each State compared with the total area of all States (one-third); the population of 

each State compared with the population of all States (one-third); and the mileage 

of rural post roads in each State compared with the total mileage nationally. The 

Secretary of Agriculture could use up to 5 percent of the funds to administer the 

program. In addition: 

. . . the Secretary of Agriculture is authorized to employ such assistants, 

clerks and other persons, in the city of Washington and elsewhere, to rent 

such buildings in the city of Washington and elsewhere, to purchase such 

supplies, material, equipment, office fixtures and apparatus, and to incur 

such travel and other expenses as he may deem necessary . . . .

The Secretary would be authorized to make rules and regulations for carrying out 

the Act's provisions. 

The State highway departments would initiate projects within the limits of 

apportioned funding by petitioning the Secretary of Agriculture for aid in the 

"improvement or maintenance" of eligible roads. If the Secretary approved, the 

State would conduct surveys and develop plans, specifications, and estimates for 

the project. The work would be done under the direct supervision of the State 

highway department, which would advertise for bids for all work according to the 

laws of the State or do the work as otherwise provided for by the laws of the State. 

 
133 

The Federal share of project costs should not exceed 50 percent. The cost of 

engineering, inspection, and unforeseen contingencies could be included in the 

estimated cost of the project, provided the cost did not exceed 10 percent of the 

total. However, no payments would be made until the work was done to the 

satisfaction of the Secretary. 

The Secretary would be authorized to withhold funds and reapportion them to 

other States if, in his judgment, a State highway department has not "properly 

maintained" the Federal-aid projects. First, the Secretary would notify the State in 

writing. Then, he would take action if the State authorities failed to maintain or 

repair the projects within 6 months. [Proposed Federal Aid Road Bill, American 

Association of State Highway Officials]

On December 6, 1915, at AASHO's annual meeting in Chicago, the executive 

committee discussed the draft bill section-by-section before approving the new 

version. AASHO made only one change. In Oakland, the committee had 

proposed authorizations of $25 million a year, with the number of years left blank 

(“19__”). The executive committee decided to let the House and Senate decide on 

the amount and number of years. A summary of the meeting stated: 

This will avoid any misconceptions regarding the motives of the members 

of the association who, like practically all citizens familiar with the road 

situation, are agreed that federal aid is a vital necessity, but are willing to 

leave the matter of how much aid, to those responsible for all government 

finance. 

AASHO adopted several resolutions during its first annual convention. One 

endorsed the Federal-aid bill, which they believed “will prove to be of great 

benefit not only from the standpoint of financial assistance, but also in 

standardizing the work of the different States.” [“State Highway Officials 

Demand One Convention,” Better Roads and Streets, January 1916, pages 6, 

57-58, italics in original]

AASHO submitted the bill to Senator John H. Bankhead (D-Al.), who had 

become chairman of the Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads in 1914, and 

Chairman Shackleford. 

Despite President Wilson’s enjoyment of road trips, he played only a limited role 

in securing highway legislation in 1916. He did not mention the subject during 

his third annual message, delivered in person on December 7, 1915, although he 

did discuss problems involving the country’s railroad network. (“The 

transportation problem is an exceedingly serious and pressing one in this 

country.”) 
134 

One indication of his interest, however, was contained in an article in the January 

1916 issue of Southern Good Roads regarding the AASHO draft bill:

Although President Woodrow Wilson has made no expression upon the 

subject there is a conviction, based on substantial evidence, that he has 

seen the plan of the association and that it meets with his approval. On the 

committee which drafted the measure is E. A. Stevens, state highway 

commissioner of New Jersey, who was named while Wilson was Governor 

of New Jersey, and who is a close friend of the President. Colonel Stevens 

was unwilling to pass upon the proposed bill finally until the President's 

views had been obtained. [“$25,000,000 in Federal Aid,” Southern Good 

Roads, January 1916, page 20] 

The Final Push

Representative Shackleford, chairman of the new House Committee on Roads, 

introduced a new bill in 1916. It dropped the controversial rental plan, providing 

instead for a Federal-aid plan along the lines of the AASHO bill. The House 

approved the bill on January 25 by a vote of 281 to 81. 

Upon receipt of the Shackleford bill from the House, Senator Bankhead’s 

Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads substituted its version of the AASHO 

bill, modified, in part, on the advice of Senator Bankhead’s friend, Logan Page. 

The Senate approved the bill without a recorded vote on May 8. It now included 

an amendment that Senator Thomas J. Walsh (D-Mt.) had introduced authorizing 

$1 million a year for forest roads and trails over 10 years. 

A House-Senate conference committee resolved differences between the 

bill on June 27, with the House and Senate approving the bill the same 

day. The approved bill mainly followed the Bankhead bill, with AASHO 

estimating that it had included 90 percent of the AASHO bill. The First 

Fifty Years, page 53] 

President Wilson, the one-time bicyclist and now avid motorist, signed the bill in 

a White House ceremony that was attended by members of Congress and 

representatives of AAA, AASHO, and farm organizations. He told them: 

I take a great deal of pleasure in signing this bill and having a part in the 

good work that has been done, particularly because it tends to thread the 

various parts of the country together and assists the farmer in his 

intercourse with others. 

Thirty-four states have now outlined in some form a system of main trunk 

lines, which is now an augury for the success of the Federal Aid plan just 

inaugurated. In this connection it is worthy to note that California was the 
135 

first State to apply for apportionment of the money, and California is 

expending $18,000,000 on two main highways extending from the Oregon 

to the Mexican line. It should be kept in mind that an application for 

Federal Aid in the improvement of any road must be made by the highway 

department of the State. Consequently if anybody in the State desires to 

have a road improved at the aid of Federal funds, it is necessary that the 

matter be taken up with the State Highway Department and not with the 

Federal Government, which will have the final say through the Secretary 

of Agriculture. [“A Big Program Covering Five Years,” The Highway 

Magazine, December 1916, page 1] 

President Wilson handed the pen he used to sign the bill to A. G. Batchelder of 

AAA. The President cousin, John Wilson, the former AAA president, said: 

Ultimately, we received credit for this broad interpretation of the situation, 

and this recognition is made apparent by the fact that the pen used in the 

signing of the bill now reposes in the A.A.A. headquarters in Washington. 

We are just plain American citizens and we have sought general good in 

our insistence that the time had come for the national government to 

accept a percentage of the multiplying highway burdens. [“Vast Sums For 

Roads,” The Washington Post, July 23, 1916] 

AASHO officials were offended that the pen went to AAA, a slight that it recalled 

in its Golden Anniversary publication: 

The pen used by President Wilson, in signing the Bill, now reposes in the 

offices of the American Automobile Association, in Washington, D.C., 

although it was the American Association of State Highway Officials that 

was the major factor in drafting the legislation. [The First Fifty Years, 

page 53] 

Recognizing that AASHO was offended, the editor of American Motorist

explained in a fall 1916 issue why President Wilson gave the pen to AAA: 

When President Wilson gave to A. G. Batchelder as the custodian of the 

A.A.A., the single pen with which he had just signed the Federal good 

roads bill he not only did a graceful thing, but a most fitting one, since for 

more years than the automobile has been in existence, away back in the 

League of American Wheelman era, to wit, A. G. B. has fought for, talked 

for, and planned for good roads and better ones. So when in the end Uncle 

Sam finally saw the logic of it all, and set himself to the task of building 

these improved highways, it was a particularly happy circumstance that 

our Uncle Sam’s representative, President Wilson, should hand to “Batch” 

for “Cousin John Wilson” (who willed it to the A.A.A.) the pen with 
136 

which he had signed the law which henceforth makes Uncle Sam the 

greatest road builder in the world. Take it from me, Uncle Sam, along 

with you and me, owes a whole lot to A. G. B. for this happy termination 

of a fight A. G. B. has helped wage for more than thirty years without ever 

faltering or doubting the eventual victory which now has been won. 

[“Commentaries,” American Motorist, October 1916, page 35] 

Getting to Shadow Lawn 

Although President Wilson would sign the landmark good roads bill on July 11, 

1916, his focus during the year was on other matters. The country’s relationship 

with Mexico remained a concern even as he tried to find a solution to the problem 

posed by German submarine attacks on passenger ships. Throughout the year, 

other issues would rise to the forefront, including a threatened strike by railroad 

workers. And then, too, he was going to run for reelection. 

As President Wilson sought to keep the country out of the European war and to 

deal with the many issues that came before him, he and his new wife were not 

willing to give up their regular motor rides. Throughout President Wilson’s first 

term, he had gone for rides in the White House automobiles during the afternoons 

and on weekends. During his courtship of Mrs. Galt, those rides had taken on 

special significance. By 1916, the rides were so routine, they barely constituted 

news.

On Sunday, April 30, the Times carried an article about negotiations with 

Germany that began:

The feeling of optimism that has prevailed here over the indications that 

Germany would meet the American demands for the abandonment of 

present methods of German submarine warfare began to wane today on 

account of the view that appeared to prevail in Berlin that the issue would 

be discussed between the two Governments before the German answer 

was transmitted. This Government wants no discussion. It holds that the 

time for discussion has passed. There is every reason to believe that 

President Wilson has determined to break relations with Germany if his 

demand is not complied with literally.

The long article went on to discuss the latest developments in the bitter diplomatic 

situation, adding near the end: 

President Wilson followed his usual practice on Saturday of not 

transacting official business and went for a motor ride in the afternoon. 

[“President Will Not Parley,” The New York Times, April 30, 1916] 
137 

On May 21, the Wilsons returned in a Pullman sleeping car from a celebration of 

the 141st anniversary of the declaration of independence approved by residents of 

Mecklenburg, North Carolina, on May 20, 1775, the first such declaration of 

independence from Great Britain (its authenticity has been in dispute almost from 

the time it was published in 1819). President Wilson addressed the crowd about, 

in part, the difference between that era, when the United States had 3 million 

residents, and the present, with a population of 100 million: 

It was a very big world into which this nation came when it was born, but 

it is a very little world now. It used to take as many days to go from 

Washington to Charlotte in those days as it now takes hours. I heard an 

Irishman say, if the power of steam continued to increase in the next fifty 

years as it had in the last, we would get to Charlotte two hours before we 

left Washington. 

And as these processes of intercommunication have been developed and 

quickened, men of the same nation not only have grown closer neighbors, 

but men of different nations have grown closer neighbors with each other; 

and now that we have these invisible tongues that speak by the wireless 

through the trackless air to the ends of the world, every man can make 

every other man in the world and his neighbor speak to him upon the 

moment.

Having spoken earlier about the “singular fact about this great nation . . . is that it 

is made up out of all the nations of the world,” he now added: 

While these processes of fermentation and travail were going on, men 

were learning about each other, nations were becoming more and more 

acquainted with each other, nations were more and more becoming 

interrelated, and intercommunication was being quickened in every 

possible way, so that now the melting pot is bigger than America. It is as 

big as the world. 

After the speech, President and Mrs. Wilson reviewed a parade: 

Afterward he was the guest at a luncheon, motoring later to Davidson 

College, where he once was a student. At the college he visited the room 

in which he lived as a student. [“President Would Raise Emblem of Peace 

to World,” The New York Times, May 21, 1916] 

Arriving in Washington on Sunday, the Wilsons attended morning services at 

St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church: 

In the afternoon the President and Mrs. Wilson took a long motor ride 

through the parks. [“Wilsons Back For Church,” The Washington Post, 

May 22, 1916] 
138 

The new Mrs. Wilson reintroduced a social side to the White House that had been 

absent for some time. As a result, the Post’s Society column covered the White 

House’s activities with greater interest. On July 30, 1916, the column reported: 

The President, so long as he remains in town, is a frequent visitor at one or 

another of the country clubs, where, at the end of a busy day, he and 

Mrs. Wilson find a congenial diversion in making a tour of the golf links. 

This, with motor trips and an occasional week-end outing on the 

Mayflower, are outdoor relaxations which vary their summer in 

Washington. Occasionally also the President and Mrs. Wilson may be met 

sauntering through the shady avenues of the northwest section of the city, 

the ubiquitous secret service man in discreet attendance. [Society, The 

Washington Post, July 30, 1916] 

In August, when many officials leave the usually steamy Washington, the column 

observed: 

Country clubs and automobiles have solved the summer problem for 

scores of women who in former years have helped to form the rocking 

chair fleets on the verandas of summer hotels. The automobile has 

restored the nerves of many a hysterical, worn-to-a-frazzle mother, and the 

country club, with its enticing, shaded lawns, cooled apartments and 

ready-to-eat meals, is a boon to the housekeeper and hostess when the 

thermometer hugs the 100 mark . . . . 

The President and Mrs. Wilson and Miss Bones and Dr. and Mrs. Grayson 

find many comforts and delights in town, and have suffered no actual 

hardship in remaining here even through excessive heat. The historic old 

mansion has been made as comfortable as possible for the President’s 

family with electric fans, screens, awning, summer verandas and terraces, 

where tea is served, and where dining and even breakfasting al fresco are a 

delight. [Society, The Washington Post, August 20, 1916] 

On August 28, the column reported on the family’s activities on Sunday: 

President and Mrs. Wilson, accompanied by Miss Bones and the Misses 

Smith, of New Orleans, who are guests at the White House, attended the 

morning service in the Central Presbyterian Church. They all went in one 

of the limousines of the White House stables. In the afternoon President 

and Mrs. Wilson, accompanies by Miss Bones, went for a long motor ride 

in the country, returning after the storm. [Society, The Washington Post, 

August 28, 1916] 

In 1915, President Wilson had begun thinking about the Presidential election of 

1916. Like many candidates in years past, especially sitting Presidents, he 
139 

decided on a “front porch” campaign. In his view, traveling around the country 

giving campaign speeches, essentially begging for votes, was not dignified for a 

sitting President. By tradition, he would stay home, greet delegations that came to 

see him, and occasionally give campaign speeches from the front porch to 

supporters assembled outside the house. 

That was the type of campaign President Wilson wanted to run, but as President 

he had a responsibility to give speeches on the issues before him. Therefore, he 

decided that he would confine political speeches to his “front porch,” and give 

nonpolitical speeches as appropriate in other locations. 

The first step was to decide where his front porch would be. It could not be the 

White House, a public building owned by the people of the United States. In 

October 1915, he selected Shadow Lawn, an estate near Long Branch, New 

Jersey, for what was described as his summer home, just as Harlakenden House 

had been his summer residence in the past. He consulted his recently revealed 

fiancée, Mrs. Galt, before accepting his New Jersey friends’ offer. The friends 

offered the estate without charge; when he insisted on paying rent, they suggested 

he contribute the amount to charity. 

The friends also presented a letter from Governor James F. Fielder urging the 

President to spend the summer in New Jersey to receive “the glad tidings” that the 

Democratic Party had nominated him to be its candidate in 1916. “The President 

only smiled when that was mentioned,” according to the Post. 

The Times described the estate:

Shadow Lawn was built by James Carly of Long Branch in 1902 for John 

A. McCall, the insurance company President, at a cost of more than 

$500,000. The house stands on a knoll about fifty feet above the level of 

the ocean, which is less than a mile away. About it are fifty-two acres of 

rolling and wooded land of rare beauty. 

The house is three stories high and contains thirty-two rooms, which are 

richly furnished . . . . A porch about 250 feet in length runs about the 

north, east and south sides of the house, commanding a view of the ocean 

and of beautiful country. [“President Takes New Jersey Estate,” The New 

York Times, October 16, 1915; “Summer ‘White House,’” The Washington 

Post, October 16, 1915] 

Neither President Wilson nor his fiancée had seen Shadow Lawn. They intended 

to visit it while the President was in New York City for a speech to the Manhattan 

Club. They were expected to travel to Long Branch by automobile. However, the 

Times reported: 
140 

Owing to the necessity of his returning to Washington, the President and 

Mrs. Galt have abandoned the plan to visit Shadow Lawn, the new 

Summer White House near Long Branch, N.J. [“Mrs. Galt Shops Here,” 

The New York Times, November 2, 1915] 

Following tradition, President Wilson did not attend the Democratic National 

Convention in St. Louis, Missouri, on June 14 through 16. He remained in 

Washington, with the intention of going to Shadow Lawn after the convention, 

where he would be notified formally of his selection.

During the convention, the Democratic Party adopted a platform that endorsed 

President Wilson’s actions. A section on what the Wilson Administration had 

done for the farmer, listed many actions and noted that both Houses of Congress 

had “passed a good-roads measure, which will be of far reaching benefit to all 

agricultural communities,” although a single measure had not yet emerged for the 

President’s signature. A separate section, XII, addressed:

XII. Good Roads 

The happiness, comfort and prosperity of rural life, and the development 

of the city, are alike conserved by the construction of public highways. 

We, therefore, favor national aid in the construction of post roads and 

roads for like purposes. 

Reports at the time indicated that President Wilson wrote Section XII. 

The Republican Party, which had met in Chicago on June 7 through 10, selected 

Charles Evans Hughes as their nominee. Hughes, a former New York Governor 

(January 1, 1907 – October 6, 1910), was an associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme 

Court (1910-1916), having been nominated by President Taft. Justice Hughes 

resigned from the Supreme Court on June 10 to take on the political task of 

running for the presidency. 

The convention selected Charles W. Fairbanks of Indiana to be the nominee for 

Vice President. Fairbanks had represented the State in the United States Senate 

from 1897 to 1905. In 1898, he served on a commission that resolved a boundary 

dispute between Canada and the territory of Alaska – the Alaskan city of 

Fairbanks is named about him. He left the Senate to become Vice President under 

President Roosevelt during his full term as President (1905-1909). After leaving 

office, he returned to the practice of law in Indianapolis. 

The party’s platform did not address good roads, but included the following:
141 

Transportation 

Interstate and intrastate transportation have become so interwoven that the 

attempt to apply two and often several sets of laws to its regulation has 

produced conflicts of authority, embarrassment in operation and 

inconvenience and expense to the public. 

The entire transportation system of the country has become essentially 

national. We, therefore, favor such action by legislation, or, if necessary, 

through an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, as will 

result in placing it under complete Federal control. 

The sentiment addressed the growing desire for increased regulation of 

transportation, particularly railroads. 

By July, Shadow Lawn was ready for the President’s family. The Post reported

that Mrs. Wilson was likely to arrive even though the President had to stay in 

Washington while Congress was in session: 

It is said that Mrs. Wilson is anxious to escape the torrid climate of 

Washington. Her automobile is now here, and the housekeeper from the 

White House has been in charge of Shadow Lawn for the last ten days. 

[“Summer White House Ready,” The Washington Post, July 8, 1916] 

Departure, however, was delayed by Congress, which remained in session until 

September 8. President Wilson asked the Democratic Party to delay formal 

notification of his selection as the nominee, originally scheduled for August 5, 

while Congress remained in session. Vance C. McCormick, chairman of the 

Democratic National Committee and head of the reelection campaign, explained, 

“I found the President embarrassed by the thought that he ought not to turn to 

politics until the business of this congressional session was over.” [“Delays 

Wilson Notice,” The Washington Post, July 18, 1916] 

The Wilsons were still in Washington in mid-August when they held a luncheon 

for members of the Democratic National Committee. The Post’s Society column 

reported, “After the company left[,] the President and Mrs. Wilson went for a long 

motor ride in the country.” [Society, The Washington Post, August 16, 1916] 

On August 20, the column reported observing progress on the move to Shadow 

Lawn:

The removal of the President’s family to the summer White House began 

on Saturday, when the first wagonload of furniture left for Shadow Lawn. 

The President and Mrs. Wilson will go on September 1, unless Congress 

should adjourn earlier, when they will go immediately after adjournment. 

[Society, The Washington Post, August 21, 1916] 
142 

The plans became more certain when President Wilson and the Democratic 

National Committee agreed that the party would notify him of his nomination on 

the afternoon of Saturday, September 2, at Shadow Lawn. 

Congress remained in session, but the Presidential party departed Washington for 

Long Branch on Friday, September 1. The train arrived around 9 p.m. A crowd 

of about 500 greeted the train, while Mayor Marshall Woolley of Long Branch 

greeted the President and Mrs. Wilson. The party motored to Shadow Lawn, 

trailed by an automobile parade. After a brief welcoming ceremony, President 

Wilson told the crowd, “I have been trying to get here for a long time, but have 

been kept busy.” He and the First Lady remained on the porch for about 30 

minutes to greet the crowd. [“Wilson At Long Branch,” The Baltimore Sun, 

September 2, 1916; “President Arrives At Shadow Lawn,” The New York Times, 

September 2, 1916] 

A crowd estimated at 15,000 to 20,000 people attended the ceremony at Shadow 

Lawn during which the Democratic Party formally advised President Wilson that 

he was the party’s nominee for President. His acceptance speech, which he had 

been working on for weeks, lasted about an hour. He received the first applause 

early in the speech when he said:

I shall seek, as I have always sought, to justify the extraordinary 

confidence thus reposed in me by striving to purge my heart and purpose 

of every personal and of every misleading party motive and devoting every 

energy I have to the service of the nation as a whole, praying that I may 

continue to have the counsel and support of all forward-looking men at 

every turn of the difficult business. 

He discussed his foreign policy, his efforts to keep the country neutral in the 

European war, the progressive steps the Democratic Party had taken, and the 

deficiencies of the Republic Party, among other topics. Among the Republican 

Party’s deficiencies was that during its long control of the White House, “The 

country had no national system of road construction and development.” By 

contrast, the Democrats had embarked on a progressive program that included: 

We have instituted a system of national aid in the building of highroads 

[sic] such as the country has been feeling after for a century.

President Wilson’s stay in Shadow Lawn would be brief. The following day, the 

Wilsons left for a brief stay in Washington before leaving for a speech on 

September 4 in Hodgenville, Kentucky, where he would deliver a speech 

accepting the Lincoln Farm Association’s deed of gift giving the Lincoln 

Birthplace home to the Nation. While still in his private car at Union Station in 

Washington, President Wilson signed legislation intended to end the prospect of a 
143 

railroad strike by imposing an 8-hour work day on railroad companies. While in 

his car, he signed several commissions and other papers: 

Later the President and Mrs. Wilson took an automobile ride about the 

city.

When they returned to Union Station, their private car had been attached to the 

special train bound for Hodgenville. [“8-Hour Bill Is Signed,” The Washington 

Post, September 4, 1916] 

On September 4, the Wilsons arrived for the Lincoln ceremony: 

What was said to be one of the largest crowds ever gathered in this part of 

Kentucky came to Lincoln farm in special trains, automobiles and on foot. 

The President and his party were taken from the station to the farm in 

automobiles, accompanied by a troop of Louisville police. On the way the 

President stopped and laid a wreath on a statue of Lincoln. 

At the farm he walked up a long flight of broad granite stairs lined with 

thousands of cheering people to the Lincoln memorial building at the top. 

Inside he examined silently the one-room cabin made of rough logs and 

mud and then wrote his name in the register. 

His speech began:

No more significant memorial could have been presented to the nation 

than this. It expresses so much of what is singular and noteworthy in the 

history of the country; it suggests so many of the things that we prize most 

highly in our life and in our system of government. How eloquent this 

little house within this shrine is of the vigor of democracy! There is 

nowhere in the land any home so remote, so humble, that it may not 

contain the power of mind and heart and conscience to which nations yield 

and history submits its processes . . . . 

This little hut was the cradle of one of the great sons of men, a man of 

singular, delightful, vital genius who presently emerged upon the great 

stage of the nation’s history, gaunt, shy, ungainly, but dominant and 

majestic, a natural ruler of men, himself inevitably the central figure of the 

great plot. No man can explain this, but every man can see how it 

demonstrates the vigor of democracy, where every door is open, in every 

hamlet and countryside, in city and wilderness alike, for the ruler to 

emerge when he will and claim his leadership in the free life. Such are the 

authentic proofs of the validity and vitality of democracy. 

He concluded: 
144 

I have come here to-day, not to utter a eulogy on Lincoln; he stands in 

need of none, but to endeavor to interpret the meaning of this gift to the 

nation of the place of his birth and origin. Is not this an altar upon which 

we may forever keep alive the vestal fire of democracy as upon a shrine at 

which some of the deepest and most sacred hopes of mankind may from 

age to age be rekindled? For these hopes must constantly be rekindled, 

and only those who live can rekindle them. The only stuff that can retain 

the life-giving heat is the stuff of living hearts. And the hopes of mankind 

cannot be kept alive by words merely, by constitutions and doctrines of 

right and codes of liberty. The object of democracy is to transmute these 

into the life and action of society, the self-denial and self-sacrifice of 

heroic men and women willing to make their lives an embodiment of right 

and service and enlightened purpose. The commands of democracy are as 

imperative as its privileges and opportunities are wide and generous. Its 

compulsion is upon us. It will be great and lift a great light for the 

guidance of the nations only if we are great and carry that light high for the 

guidance of our own feet. We are not worthy to stand here unless we 

ourselves be in deed and in truth real democrats and servants of mankind, 

ready to give our very lives for the freedom and justice and spiritual 

exaltation of the great nation which shelters and nurtures us. 

They returned to the White House on September 5 for the remaining few days of 

the congressional session. In the meantime, President Wilson arranged to have a 

complete executive staff available in Asbury Park, New Jersey, as the Times

reported: 

For the first time since Mr. Wilson became President a complete staff of 

secretaries, clerks, telegraphers, and other attachés will accompany him on 

his vacation . . . . Although President Wilson intends to spend most of his 

time at Shadow Lawn, the estate at Long Branch, he will go to Asbury 

Park as often as necessary to visit the executive offices and attend to 

public business. A suite of rooms has been engaged in a modern office 

building there, and office furniture has been sent from the White House. 

[“Wilson’s Office Staff Going to Asbury Park,” The New York Times, 

September 8, 1916] 

Congress adjourned on September 8, and the Wilsons and their party boarded a 

train for Atlantic City, New Jersey, where the President was to address the 

National American Woman Suffrage Association. First, they checked into the 

Hotel Traymore. Before the suffrage meeting, the President and Mrs. Wilson 

attended a charity musicale in the hotel for Atlantic City charities. When they 

entered, “they were greeted with enthusiastic applause.” The President did not 

expect to speak, but the moderator asked him to stand up so the crowd could see 
145 

his face. The audience broke “into a roar of laughter” when he said the request 

that he show his face reminded him of a limerick: 

For Beauty I am not a star;

There are others more handsome by far.

My face I don’t mind it, 

Because I’m behind it;

It’s the people in front that I jar. 

Addressing the suffrage association, President Wilson assured them, “I have come 

here to fight with you,” he said. After his 15-minute speech, he returned to the 

Hotel Traymore. [“Wilson Pledges His Aid To Women In Fight For Vote,” The 

New York Times, September 9, 1916; “Limerick by Wilson on ‘Beauty’ of His 

Face Gives Audience Laugh,” The Washington Post, September 9, 1916] 

In the morning, the Presidential party motored to Shadow lawn “in four 

automobiles, two of them filled with secret service men and reporters.” The 

vehicles moved at an average speed of 40 miles an hour. The crowd in Asbury 

Park recognized the Wilsons “and cheered” as their vehicles “drove rapidly down 

the main street” and from Spring Lake to Long Branch, thousands of bathers “left 

the surf to shout and wave a greeting of welcome to the President’s party.” 

According to the Sun, the Wilsons, moved by “the unexpected reception . . . 

returned the salutes, and Mrs. Wilson’s face beamed with smiles.” 

In the afternoon, President Wilson motored to Spring Lake to visit his daughter 

Nell who was suffering from typhoid fever. Later he attended a performance of 

“John W. Blake,” a new play by Roy Cooper Magrue and Irving S. Cobb at the 

Broadway Theatre in Long Branch. “He was enthusiastically greeted.” 

In addition, “The staff of secretaries arrived at Asbury Park at 6 o’clock tonight to 

occupy their offices on the top floor of the Asbury Park Trust Company Building. 

[“President At Shore For Real Vacation,” The New York Times, September 10, 

1916; “Wilson In Jersey Home,” The Baltimore Sun, September 10, 1916] 

Supporting the President

Unlike President Wilson, Charles Evans Hughes was on a transcontinental tour 

seeking support in the 1916 election. Despite calls from party leaders, supporters, 

and his campaign officials, President Wilson resisted the pressure to campaign 

around the country. Any speeches outside Shadow Lawn, he said, would be 

nonpolitical. 

At the same time, he and his supporters were not hesitant about discussing the 

Wilson Administration’s accomplishments, including the Federal-aid bill. On 

August 11, President Wilson wrote to Representative Asbury F. Lever (D-SC), 

Chairman of the Committee on Agriculture, after signing the Department of 

Agriculture's appropriations act for FY 1917: 
146 

As the passage of this bill marks the practical completion of an important 

part of the program for the betterment of rural life, which was mapped out 

at the beginning of the Administration, I feel that I cannot let the occasion 

pass without conveying to you and to your associates in both houses my 

appreciation of the service rendered to the nation in strengthening its great 

agricultural foundations. 

In support of that thought, President Wilson listed the positive legislative and 

administrative record on agriculture. One of the longest sections of the letter 

covered the Federal-aid highway program: 

Of no less importance for agriculture and for national development is the 

Federal Aid road act. This measure will conduce to the establishment of 

more effective highway machinery in each State, strongly influence the 

development of good road building along right lines, stimulate larger 

production and better marketing, promote a fuller and more attractive rural 

life, add greatly to the convenience and economic welfare of all the people, 

and strengthen the national foundations. The act embodies sound 

principles of road legislation and will safeguard the expenditure of the 

funds arising under the act not only, but will also result in the more 

efficient use of the large additional sums made available by States and 

localities. [“Wilson Takes Pride In Helping Farmers,” The New York 

Times, August 21, 1916; Commager, Henry Steele, editor, Letter of 

President Wilson to A. F. Lever, Agricultural Legislation in the First 

Wilson Administration, Documents of American History, 3rd edition, 1947, 

pages 295-296] 

The Baltimore Sun published a series of articles by its Washington correspondent 

about the successes and failures of the Wilson Administration by department. The 

seventh in the series covered the Department of Agriculture, which had not yet 

fully implemented the Federal Aid Road Act. Under the subhead “Roads Policy 

Yet To Be Justified,” the correspondent wrote: 

A policy of federal aid in highway building has yet to justify itself. In 

many quarters it is viewed with grave doubt. It might too easily 

degenerate into a new system of “pork barrel” distribution of government 

money. The theory upon which government participation in road building 

is based may be sound. It may be altogether defensible for the federal 

treasury to yield largess to those states which are willing to spend their 

own money for better roads. But if the beginning which has been made is 

to vindicate itself, it will be necessary for Congress to jealously guard 

against the odium which attaches to some other systems of appropriation. 
147 

When viewed from the sole standard of the farmer, good roads legislation 

by Congress is not only defensible, but a measure of the highest merit. 

There has been very little money spent directly for the farmer by the 

Government. Rural free delivery is the most important boon which he 

enjoys. Parcel post comes next and educational work of the Agricultural 

Department. But the farmer has no harbors and but few rivers to be 

improved. He has no fine postoffice [sic] buildings to "view with pride." 

He has been the beneficiary directly of but few appropriations for public 

works generally. For this reason he feels that Federal subsidies to the 

states for road building cannot be consistently assailed by the urban 

population. [J. F. E., “Wilson Regime Most Helpful To farmers,” The 

Baltimore Sun, September 8, 1916] 

The Sun, in an editorial, pointed out that the first Congress of President Wilson’s 

term, the 63rd Congress, had a “remarkable record of legislation” that many 

observers thought the 64th Congress could not match. Now, with the 64th

Congress adjourned, the Sun declared that “its record in some respects is even 

more remarkable than that of the preceding one. It listed many laws, the first 

being legislation providing for “the national defense on a larger scale than ever 

before in the history of the country.” The second item was a rural credits act, 

while the third was: “It has provided for Federal aid to the states in construction 

of rural post roads.” 

Based on this record, the editorial concluded: 

[It] must inevitably bring the voters of the country face to face with the 

question whether they desire to continue in office an administration that 

can produce such results as these. [“An Amazing Record,” The Baltimore 

Sun, September 10, 1916] 

Professor Charles W. Eliot, President Wilson’s friend from the Bar Harbor days, 

published a lengthy article in the October 1916 issue of The Atlantic Monthly

about the achievements of the President and his party. The Times reprinted the 

article, which discussed achievements in many areas, including agriculture:

An important achievement of the Democratic Congress has been the 

passage of a good roads law giving Federal aid in the construction of 

roads, provided that the States invest dollar for dollar in their construction, 

and make satisfactory arrangement for their maintenance. Good roads not 

only facilitate the marketing of all sorts of products, but promote profitable 

and pleasant school life in rural districts, and contribute to make 

comfortable and attractive the wholesome country life which produces a 

healthy and vigorous population. [Eliot, Charles W., “What Wilson Has 

Done,” The New York Times, October 1, 1916] 
148 

Secretary Houston issued a statement in mid-September that was picked up by 

many newspapers, including the Sun, which printed it in whole, and the Times, 

which excerpted it. The Federal Aid Road Act and the Cooperative Agricultural 

Extension Act (The Smith-Lever Act, approved by President Wilson on May 8, 

1914, PL 63-95) had, Secretary Houston wrote, established “a new principle in 

American Government, the principle of co-operation between Federal and State 

officers”:

They are the only laws I recall which recognize and insist upon this 

principle. They are, therefore, very significant. Heretofore, Federal and 

State officers have too frequently looked at one another across the line, 

sometimes with apprehension as to what the other was going to do or 

think; sometimes with jealousy, not infrequently with friction.

The Federal Aid Road Act provided for the appropriation of $75 million for 

Federal-aid projects, with the States responsible for providing an additional 

$75 million, on a 50-50 basis ($10 million, as noted, was for forest roads). That 

was important, but what really appealed to Secretary Houston was that this 

amount was “relatively insignificant in comparison with amounts the states now 

are annually expending and will spend during the period covered by the act.” He 

added, “the majority of people do not realize that the nation is expending 

approximately $250,000,000 a year for roads”:

The main question that I am immediately concern with, that the people of 

the nation are immediately concerned with, is whether we shall get a 

dollar’s result for every dollar we expend for roads. I am quite sure that if 

we do so, and we can convince the people that we have done so, they will 

be willing to put much more money into good roads where they are 

needed. Therefore, the matter of administering this law, of devising good 

road systems, of careful selection of roads, of formulating projects, or 

developing plans and specifications, of having all matters considered on 

their merit by competent men, seems to me to lie at the root of this 

business. 

If, as the result of this act, the people are induced fully to realize the 

necessity of placing skillful and experienced men in charge of road 

building and road maintenance, a great advance will have been made and

the efforts of those who labored to secure the legislation will have been 

rewarded.

To participate in the program, each State would have to have a State highway 

agency capable of meeting the program’s requirements. The expert engineers the 

State highway agencies employed for the work would also work on highway 
149 

projects funded solely by the State. In short, Secretary Houston wrote, for the 

expenditure of such large amounts of Federal and State funds, the 1916 Act 

required “the employment in every state of experts, of real experts” to prepare the 

plans at the State level and to review them at the Federal level:

I am hopeful that great benefit will accrue to the nation from the wise and 

efficient administration of this act. It is one of a series of measures 

recently conceived and enacted for the development of rural life. All these 

lie in the field of distribution as does this road act, which lies at the 

foundation of satisfactory and orderly marketing. [Houston, David F., 

“Federal Aid For Roads Means Expert Building,” The Baltimore Sun, 

September 21, 1916; “Seek Wilson Votes On Good Roads Laws,” The 

New York Times, October 29, 1916. Secretary Houston’s statement about 

the Federal-aid highway program is based on his August 17 speech to State 

highway officials who had come to Washington to review and comment on 

draft regulations implementing the Federal Aid Road Act.] 

The Washington Post cited the Federal Aid Road Act in its editorial on the two 

candidates for President:

The system inaugurated in the Federal aid to road building will bring the 

States closer to the national government and at the same time bring about 

greater uniformity. Expedients of this kind could be adopted with 

reference to other disbursements of the government not purely national in 

character, and if accompanied by a budget system, which would let the 

people know where their money goes, there would be a noticeable 

improvement in the administration of public affairs. [“Government 

Economy,” The Washington Post, November 3, 1916] 

Chairman McCormick of the Democratic National Committee issued a statement 

on November 2 listing the reasons why Progressives, the party that had nominated 

former President Roosevelt in 1912, should vote for President Wilson. Reason 

number four: “The good roads law, which extends Federal aid to road building, 

thereby insuring the extension of the rural free delivery service.” [“Asks Moose 

Votes On Wilson Record,” The New York Times, November 3, 1916] 

President Wilson’s Front Porch Campaign 

While touring the country in August, Hughes gave a speech in Butte, Montana, 

accusing the Democratic Party of sectionalism, citing the many Democratic 

Representatives from the South who chair committees and retain their 

chairmanships through seniority rules. He did not criticize the chairmen 

personally, “but I say that an administration under which too many of the 

committees of the House of Representatives are represented in one section in that 
150 

manner is a sectional administration. It is not an American administration in the 

broad and proper sense given to that word.” In particular, the southern chairmen 

controlled the committees with oversight of the government’s purse strings, by 

which he meant “pork.” [“Sees Sectional Rule,” The Washington Post, August 

13, 1916] 

Sectionalism was one of many issues Hughes would raise during the campaign, of 

course, but President Wilson, who had no control over the selection of committee 

chairmen in Congress, wanted to address the point. While Congress was in 

session, he held back and let commentators debate the issue.

By mid-September, President Wilson’s sister, Mrs. Anne W. Howe, was critically 

ill from peritonitis. On September 11, he and Mrs. Wilson went on the 

Mayflower to New London, Connecticut, to see her. Her physician advised him to 

return to Shadow Lawn, because she might live for days. Back at Shadow Lawn, 

President Wilson kept in touch with New London by telegram while resuming

discussions with his political team, deciding to delay his front porch campaign 

until the following weekend. 

On September 14: 

He did several hours work at Shadow Lawn today before motoring over to 

the executive offices, and succeeded in clearing up most of the tasks which 

have been accumulating here since he left for New London on Monday. 

A telegram from Mrs. Howe’s physician indicated she was steadily sinking. “The 

Presidential yacht, Mayflower, is being kept off Sandy Hook, forty minutes by 

automobile from here [Long Branch], so that the President can hurry to New 

London if necessary. [“Wilson To Accept Hughes Challenge,” The New York 

Times, September 15, 1916] 

On Saturday, September 16, President Wilson received a telegram advising that 

his sister had passed away earlier in the day. After a day in seclusion, President 

and Mrs. Wilson, along with others, boarded a train for Columbia, South Carolina, 

where Mrs. Howe was to be buried. [“President Starts On Funeral Trip,” The New 

York Times, September 18, 1916] 

The train carrying the Presidential party and Mrs. Howe’s body arrived in 

Columbia on September 18 shortly before noon. At the President’s request, city 

and State officials treated the visit as personal, without official welcomes. Upon 

arrival, the party went by automobile to the First Presbyterian Church. People 

lined the streets, but did not cheer as the Presidential party’s vehicles passed by: 

After the funeral the President took an automobile ride around Columbia, 

visiting relatives and places he had known in his boyhood days . . . . 
151 

On the ride the President visited Mrs. James Woodrow, an aunt, who 

welcomed him as “Tommy” and remarked to Mrs. Wilson: “Since he took 

to writing books he calls himself Woodrow.” 

Mr. Wilson also called at the Columbia Theological Seminary, and was 

shown the chair and room used by his father as an instructor there . . . . 

Afterward he walked to the house planned and built by his parents and in 

which he lived for several years. There he talked with four boys who now 

live in the house. Dr. Grayson asked one of them if he expected to be 

President.

“I would not wish anything like that on you,” said Mr. Wilson. 

The Presidential party boarded the train in the evening, scheduled to arrive in 

Long Branch at 2 p.m., then travel to Shadow Lawn by automobile. [“President’s 

Sister Buried,” The New York Times, September 19, 1916] 

President Wilson made his first campaign speech on the front porch of Shadow 

Lawn on Saturday, September 23, before a crowd of nearly 2,000 people. He 

devoted much of the speech to defending the 8-hour work day for the railroad 

industry that he had signed into law as part of his effort to prevent a strike, a 

measure that Evans had criticized. [“8-Hour Workday Not Arbitrable, Wilson 

Asserts,” The New York Times, September 24, 1916] 

Although President Wilson’s intervention to secure the Lincoln Highway for 

Baltimore and Washington had not been successful, he did not hold the rejection 

against the Lincoln Highway Association. On September 26, 1916, with his own 

reelection in doubt, he motored from Shadow Lawn to Princeton to cast his vote 

in New Jersey’s Democratic primary. According to the Lincoln Highway 

Association’s official history:

In 1916, while Woodrow Wilson was President of the United States, he 

spoke at exercises held to stimulate interest in the highway at Princeton, 

New Jersey, and planted a tree at the roadside to aid in its beautification. 

[The Lincoln Highway, page 106] 

On September 30, before 3,000 people gathered at Shadow Lawn, he delivered his 

first fiercely partisan speech. The Times reported that he spoke for 55 minutes: 

The President has been renowned for the intellectual quality of his 

speeches. Today he took his place beside other great leaders of his party 

who have won fame for their ability to play on the emotions of their 

hearers.
152 

More than 3,000 persons followed his every word, laughed when he 

wanted them to laugh, cheered when he wanted them to cheer, and 

frowned with anger when it suited the President that they should frown 

over the iniquities of Republicans. [“Wilson Thrills Crowd; Bitterly Flays 

Opponents,” The New York Times, October 1, 1916] 

Over the next 2 weeks, President Wilson spent most of his time at Shadow Lawn, 

with occasional trips to major cities for nonpolitical speeches. He resisted his 

aides’ efforts to convince him to address the criticisms from Hughes and go on a 

campaign tour. 

Instead, he began writing letters to groups as part of his reelection campaign. For 

example, his first letter went to Miss Leona L. Larrabee, president of the 

Women’s Democratic Club of Portland, Oregon. He regretted, he wrote, that 

“extension of the suffrage to women,” which he was “a very sincere advocate of,” 

should become a partisan issue “at a time so critical as this, when the question is 

about to be determined whether we shall keep the nation upon its present terms of 

peace and good will with the world or turn to radical changes of policy which may 

alter the whole aspect of the nation’s life.” [“Wilson Thanks Women,” The 

Baltimore Sun, September 29, 1916] 

In his September 30 speech at Shadow Lawn to 3,000 people, he warned: 

If they are going to change our foreign policy, in what direction are they 

going to change it? There is only one choice as against peace, and that is 

war! The certain prospect of the success of the Republic Party is that we 

shall be drawn in one form or another into the embroilments of the 

European war, and that to the south of us the force of the United States 

will be used to produce in Mexico the kind of law and order which some 

American investors in Mexico consider most to their advantage. [“Wilson 

Thrills Crowd; Bitterly Flays Opponents,” The New York Times, 

October 1, 1916] 

On October 8, President Wilson and his staff were debating what action to take, if 

any, after German submarines had sunk four British ships and two neutral 

steamships off the coast of New England. His previously planned meeting on 

October 9 with the German ambassador, Count Johann Von Bernstorff, at Shadow 

Lawn took on new significance. 

During this period, news reports occasionally mentioned that President and 

Mrs. Wilson had been golfing, but carried few references to automobile trip. 

Reports on October 8 were an exception: 
153 

Mr. Wilson spent most of today quietly at Shadow Lawn, but this 

afternoon he took an automobile ride. [“President Silent on U-Boat Raids 

Pending Receipt of Navy Reports,” The New York Times, October 9, 1916] 

The meeting with the German ambassador lasted only 15 minutes and he “was 

smiling when he left.” He claimed to have no knowledge of the recent attacks off 

Nantucket, but told reporters, “Germany has promised to conduct her submarine 

warfare in accordance with the rules of cruiser warfare and Germany always keeps 

her promises. I am convinced that the operations of the submarines off Nantucket 

yesterday were conducted entirely within the bounds provided by Germany’s 

assurances.”

President Wilson had intended to leave Shadow Lawn to attend game 3 of the 

World Series in Brooklyn, between the Boston Red Sox and the Brooklyn 

Dodgers (also called the Robins). However, he changed plans to remain at 

Shadow Lawn for further discussions of the submarine situation. (The Red Sox, 

with help from pitcher Babe Ruth, won the series, four games to one.) 

[“Conference at Shadow Lawn Today on U-Boat Raid,” The Washington Post, 

October 10, 1916] 

The Good Roads Speech in Indianapolis

On October 11, President Wilson, his wife, Secretary Tumulty, and Dr. Grayson, 

along with Secret Service agents and reporters, boarded a train for Indianapolis, 

where he would deliver two nonpolitical speeches. He had considered canceling 

the trip in favor of continued discussions of the German situation, but he decided 

to keep his speech commitments. 

When the train stopped in cities along the way, President Wilson appeared on the 

rear platform where he waved to the crowds, but refused to make any speeches. In 

Philadelphia, for example, “He remained on the platform for fifteen minutes 

shaking hands with men and women. The cheering was renewed as the train 

pulled out.” By telegram, Indiana officials urged him to take a political stance in 

his speech, but he declined. While on the train, according to news reports, “Mr. 

Wilson worked until late tonight on the two speeches he will deliver tomorrow.” 

[“Wilson Speeding To Indianapolis,” The New York Times, October 12, 1916] 

The occasion for the visit was the centennial of Indiana statehood, dating to 

December 11, 1816. In a week during which each day was dedicated to a special 

purpose, October 12 was designated “Historical Highway Day.” A history of the 

centennial quoted Dr. I. S. Harold, the State chairman:

Adopting the slogan “Let us dedicate with newer meaning our highways to 

the memory of the brave pioneers, and so wisely plan for their rebuilding 
154 

that they shall become a real heritage to all future generations,” October 

twelfth was set aside for the celebration of “historical highway day” in 

connection with the State Centennial. The date seemed unusually 

appropriate since it was a national holiday—Discovery [Columbus] Day, a 

State centennial day, and a state highway day over the old historic National 

Road . . . . 

As President Wilson had always been a good roads enthusiast and had 

encouraged road legislation in Congress and finally a bill as passed 

appropriating $85,000,000, to assist States in building state and national 

roads, to be known as post roads, it was determined if possible to secure 

him for the day. A letter was written to him by the Chairman and the

Governor of the State. His first answer was rather discouraging, but after 

almost continuous negotiations and considerable pressure being brought to 

bear, word was received that he would be in Indianapolis that day for two 

addresses. [Lindley, Harlow, editor, The Indiana Centennial 1916 – A 

Record of the Celebration of the One Hundredth Anniversary of Indiana’s 

Admission to Statehood, The Indiana Historical Commission, 1919, pages 

300-301] 

President Wilson was going to address two groups. His first speech would be to 

5,000 good roads advocates at the auditorium of the Indiana Fair Grounds. He 

then would speak to farmers gathered at Tomlinson Hall. 

His train arrived at Union Station in Indianapolis around 11:30 a.m. The 

thousands surrounding the station cheered as the Pennsylvania Railroad train 

pulled into the station. Governor and Mrs. Samuel M. Ralston, Mr. Carl G. Fisher 

of the Lincoln Highway Association and his wife, and others boarded the train to 

greet the President and escort him to the Claypool Hotel for a luncheon in his 

honor. 

The Indianapolis News reported: 

Mr. Fisher, marshal of the parade, led the escort, and the mounted police, 

the police band and the police marching squad were close to the President. 

Senator and Mrs. Taggart and other members of the reception committee 

followed in a long line of automobile. 

The route was lined with cheering citizens. The News account of the day added: 

A warm welcome was given to Mrs. Wilson, wife of the President, by the 

women of Indianapolis and Indiana . . . . From the minute she stepped 

from the train until she left the city she was the cynosure of all eyes – men 

and women. Gowned in a smart tailored gown of black satin, with white 
155 

Georgette cuffs and collar, and a small tight fitting black hat and sable fur, 

Mrs. Wilson was a beautiful picture as she stood in the receiving line at 

the Claypool hotel with the President, Governor and Mrs. Ralston, and Mr. 

and Mrs. Carl Fisher. Her dark eyes and beautiful complexion are 

youthful. She greeted each person with a charming smile and strong 

handclasp. 

During the luncheon, President Wilson spoke only briefly: 

Now, when the people give the sort of greetings they have given me today, 

I cannot help having the hope that they approve the spirit that I have tried 

to express with regard to national affairs. I do not take these greetings as 

personal, because I think no man in the country has a more distinct 

impression that he is merely administering a great office and does not 

himself constitute the Presidency than I have; and that the President of this 

country is intended to be something more than an administrator. It is his 

duty to try to express the spirit of the nation. 

So when I see the friendly looking faces all along the street, there creeps 

into my heart the hope that I have expressed the spirit of the nation. 

After the luncheon, the Presidential party and other officials returned to their 

automobiles for a trip to the reviewing stand for the centennial highway parade, 

organized by the Hoosier Motor Club, the Marion County Good Roads 

Association, and the Marion County Centennial Highway Committee: 

The President continually bowed and stood up, removing his hat, during 

the progress of the ride from the Claypool to the reviewing stand. Secret 

Service men, walking, guarded the car on the trip. People in the windows 

of the buildings downtown clapped and shouted to the President. 

It was quiet from Washington and Pennsylvania Streets to the first alley 

north of that corner. Then the President, in response to a call, lifted his 

hat, and another demonstration took place, which lasted as the head of the 

parade swung into Market street.

The balcony at English’s hotel was crowded until another person could not 

have found standing room. A great demonstration swept the crowd 

gathered there as the President’s car passed. The demonstration swept on 

around the circle among the thousands and came to its climax when the 

President descended from the car at the reviewing stand.

The boom of a cannon signaled the start of the parade shortly after 1 p.m. Good 

roads advocates from eastern Indiana came from one direction, while the western 

Indiana advocates came from another. With the Presidential party and State and 
156 

local dignitaries on the reviewing stand, Fisher, the chief marshal, waited at 

Meridian and Washington Streets (Washington Street was the old National Road). 

Fisher directed the two lines of automobiles into a two-abreast formation and led 

them into North Meridian Street toward the Indiana State Soldiers and Sailors 

Monument installed in the circle in 1902: 

There the parties of the President and the Governor waited to review the 

parade. As the two lines approached the reviewing stand they parted, one 

line moving east of the Monument, the other to the west, joining again at 

Meridian street, north of the Monument. The way then led northward in 

Meridian street to Sixteenth street, west to Capitol avenue, north to Maple 

road, east to the east entrance to the fair ground. 

There never was so many automobiles in Indianapolis before. When 

Carl G. Fisher, leading the parade, drew his car up at Meridian and 

Washington streets, he did not know what a parade he was handling. 

Behind him in Meridian street a crowd of suffragists waited with banners 

flying. To the west a long line of automobiles could be seen and some 

confusion was caused when visiting motorists got tangled with the 

President’s party, but this soon was adjusted. 

Then from the east came another long line of good roads boosters. From 

practically every county east of Michigan road there were automobiles 

flying their county and town banners. Drum corps and bands were 

intermingled with the cars. The two lines of cars drew up behind Fisher, 

the suffragists got right in behind the chief marshal and the parade began. 

The police succeeded in separating the two lines and sent them toward the 

reviewing stand two abreast. The National good roads boosters, interested 

in the resurfacing of the National road between Richmond and Terre Haute 

came several hundred strong. The ocean-to-ocean highway boosters were 

out in equally strong numbers, and the Dixie highway and the HoosierDixie highway had strong representation. Practically every main highway 

in Indiana had delegations here to let President Wilson know that they 

support good roads . . . . 

The reviewing parties remained in the stand until, on signal from 

Mr. Fisher, they entered automobiles and were driven north on Meridian 

street, the cars of the President’s party passing between the long lines of 

automobiles in the parade.
157 

The party left the reviewing stand around 2:15 p.m. Throughout the parade, the 

President “bowed and smiled at frequent intervals.” [All quotes not otherwise 

cited are from coverage of the visit in The Indianapolis News, October 12, 1916] 

American Motorist summarized:

Far in excess of a hundred thousand people saw the parade, did honor to 

the Chief Executive of the Nation, and helped in one way and another to 

swell the good roads shout. In double columns it required over an hour 

and a half for the self-propelled parade to pass the reviewing stand, where 

President Wilson had as his reviewing companions, Governor Ralston, 

Mayor [Joseph E.] Bell, and former Mayor [Charles A.] Bookwalker, 

flanked by other Indiana notables. 

The First Lady of the Land was an interested observer of the exhilarating 

proceedings, accompanied by the wife of the Governor and other Hoosier 

social leaders. 

The magazine also reported that at one point, Judge J. M. Lowe, president of the 

National Old Trails Highway Association, had approached the reviewing stand: 

At the reviewing stand the President had received from Judge Lowe the 

“Van Buren gavel,” made from a plank dug up from the old plank road 

that formerly was a part of the National Road, which is now the main 

thoroughfare through Indianapolis. According to the Judge, Van Buren 

was not favorable to extending Federal aid to roads, so it was contrived to 

dump him out in a famous mudhole on the Old Trails Road in Indiana. 

His harrowing experience in that well planned accident changed his mind. 

He signed a bill which permitted paving the particular mudhole with heavy 

oak planks. Recently, in grading this road to rebuild it, one of the planks 

was dug up and the gavel presented to President Wilson was made from it. 

 [“Network of Roads Will Release Locked-Up Riches of the Nation, Says 

the President,” American Motorist, November 1916, pages 12-13, 54; the 

plank incident is on page 13] 

(Judge Lowe referred to this incident on other occasions, but had several details 

wrong. President Martin Van Buren had left office when he took the stage along 

the National Road to Indianapolis to deliver a speech in June 1842 as part of an 

effort to build support for another Presidential run. As President, he had opposed 

a bill funding improvement of the road in Indiana. Versions of the incident vary, 

but the stagecoach in which the former President went out of control on a 

mudhole along the road approaching Plainfield and ended up against an elm tree. 

Climbing out of the overturned vehicle, Van Buren walked through mud to 

Fisher’s Tavern in Plainfield in Hendricks County. The site of the “Van Buren 
158 

Elm” is noted by a roadside marker on a boulder in front of the Friends 

Meetinghouse in Plainfield. 

(As for the plank road Judge Lowe mentioned, the plank road craze began in the 

mid-1840s, imported from Russia, and lasted only about a decade, at which point 

railroads had taken travelers away from the roads while the wooden planks had 

rotted at a time when toll revenue was not enough to pay for their replacement. 

As Thomas J. Schlereth reported in his book about U.S. 40 in Indiana, the State 

granted “control of the National Road through Hancock, Marion, Hendricks, and 

Putnam counties . . . in 1949 to the Central Plank Road Company, which 

proceeded to cover the road with oak planks and put up a series of tollgates and 

tollhouses.” [Schlereth, Thomas J., U.S. 40: A Roadscape of the American 

Experience, Indiana Historical Society, 1985, page 76]) 

The newspaper set the stage for the speech at the Coliseum on the fairgrounds 

before an estimated 5,000 people: 

President Wilson faced a nonpartisan crowd at the Coliseum when he 

arrived to make his address. The building was handsomely decorated with 

flags, and on the front of the railing around the balcony was a line of 

ninety-two banners, each bearing the name of an Indiana county. 

The doors of the coliseum were opened an hour before the arrival of the 

President and his party in order that there be no jam at the doors when he 

arrived. There was nothing about the coliseum or the crowd to indicate 

any politics. The subject of better roads and highways is a non-political 

proposition in Indiana. 

Governor Ralston introduced President Wilson, who delivered the following 

address:

Governor Ralston, My Fellow Citizens: 

I am here because I am interested in the cause of good roads, and because I 

am interested in the State of Indiana. I was very much interested that this 

day, devoted to the cause of good roads, should fall in your Centennial 

Year. It made me think of many of the processes of our national history. 

Roads have so knit communities together, and communities into counties, 

and counties into States, and States into the nation, that we must learn how 

to think, and act, and do things together. 

This country was built up without any roads; these prairies, these hillsides 

and valleys were filled with population in advance of which went no 

roadmaker, but only the pioneer, making his way over the trackless 

wilderness, with only his gun, only a little to eat, only a few companions. 
159 

And now that you are 100 years old, after these unassisted processes 

created the State of Indiana, you are turning your thoughts to the necessary 

means by which you are going to knit the State of Indiana into a unit, and 

knit her with the rest of the nation, and set afoot processes which will 

make a new spirit, because of the new intercourse throughout the great 

continent which we have conquered by our enterprise. 

The arguments for good roads from the material point of view, are very 

obvious. It is true, I dare say, that we had to wait for the rapidly moving 

automobile to create a large enough number of persons interested in good 

roads, which would run beyond mere neighborhoods; and I am very 

grateful to the owners of automobiles, and to the members of automobile 

associations that they should have insisted with such success, upon the 

creation of highways. 

I note, incidentally, that they use them up almost as fast as we make them, 

but I will forgive them for that, if they stimulate us to the effort to make 

them, and to keep them in usable condition. 

But, after all, the highway is not intended, first of all, and chief of all, for 

the pleasure vehicle. It is not intended for the mere traveler. It is not 

intended for the mere tourist. It is not made in order that some company 

of leisurely people may travel from coast to coast of this great continent. It 

is made because we need it in all the material uses of our lives. We need it 

first of all, and chief of all, in order that our resources may be made use of, 

for they can not be made use of until they are got to market and you can 

not get them to market unless you can get them from the mine and the 

farm, to the nearest railway station.

You can not know what the resources of the country are unless the country 

is covered over with a network of roads which will release all the locked 

up riches of all our country sides. Why, there are little pockets in the 

mountains in some places in America, where there are the richest sort of 

crops, where nature has made largest of her gifts of fertile soil and genial 

climate and abundant rainfall, but where they can never get their crops to 

market, where they burn their corn, so much of it as they can not feed to 

their cattle, where they raise what they do raise for the consumption of 

their families, merely, and contribute nothing to the markets of the nation. 

For a great many years this country was covered over with segregated, 

separated, isolated neighborhoods, to which in the winter you could not 

get, because if you tried it your wheels would go to the hub in the mud, 

and where, consequently, communities were shut into their own life and to 

their own separated thought. It is perfectly obvious that you have got to 
160 

have an intricate and perfect network of roads throughout the length and 

breadth of this great continent before you will have released the energies 

of America.

Good roads are necessary for every practical aspect of our lives—to draw 

neighbors together, to create a community of feeling, to create those 

arteries which may be compared to the arteries of the human body. The 

blood of the nation will not flow in harmonious concord unless it can flow 

in intimate sympathy. And so the argument, the material argument, the 

argument about markets and crops and the products of the mines, sinks 

into comparative unimportance when you consider the spiritual things that 

you are doing in making roads. You know there is an old saying that the 

lines between sections are obliterated only by the feet that cross them.

There is a very genial saying of a great English writer, that he never could 

hate a man he knew; and I dare say that every man and woman here knows 

the truth of that. I want to tell you, now, that I have loved some great 

rascals. I have tried to get them into jail, but I have been very fond of 

them, and it is very difficult indeed to get close to a man and not find some 

contact of sympathy and community of thought. 

We are all human beings; we all touch each other at the heart; we are all 

alike down at the bottom. We may have had different environments; we 

may have been brought up differently; we may have been trained 

differently; but when you strip these things off, there, at the core, we are 

the same kind of people. Sectionalism is based upon the radical danger of 

every nation, namely, ignorance. The only thing that breeds darkness in 

the world is ignorance. The only thing that really blinds us is not knowing 

what we are talking about. The only thing that binds a nation together is 

the knowledge of its several parts of each other.

My fellow-citizens, I need not tell you that I did not come here to talk 

politics, but there is one thing that is pertinent in this connection, which I 

can not deny myself the privilege of saying. Any man who revives the 

issue of sectionalism in this country is unworthy of the confidence of the 

nation. He shows himself a provincial; he shows that he himself does not 

know the various sections of his own country; he shows that he has shut 

his own heart up in a little province, and that those who do not seek the 

special interests of that province are, to him, sectional, while he alone is 

national. That is the depth of anti-patriotic feeling.

And so one of my interests in roads is that I want to see that thing carried 

on which I have seen worked to the benefit of this nation in so many parts 

of it. Take my own State of New Jersey. We have built a great many fine 
161 

roads in New Jersey. Now, most people know New Jersey only between 

New York and Trenton. If you look at New Jersey on the map, it is shaped 

like a bag with a string in the middle and the Pennsylvania railway from 

New York to Trenton is the string. New Jersey does not lie along that 

shortest line. It lies among beautiful hills and lakes and streams in the 

north and interesting stretches of level and watered country in the south, 

where the characteristic populations of the State are. Now, good roads 

have discovered the people of New Jersey to the people who live in other 

States. By building good roads in New Jersey we have made it possible 

that people everywhere should know the people of the State of New 

Jersey.

Wherever you have not got a good road you have created a provincial and 

sectional population. Wherever you have a good road, you have tied a 

thong between that community and the nation to which it belongs. And 

that is my interest in good roads, for, my fellow citizens, my present 

interest is chiefly in the nationalization of America. 

We have created a great people. At least, if I may put it so, we have 

brought together all the elements, all the component parts, all the 

necessary characters and industries and material resources of a great 

nation. And we suddenly find that we are face to face with the problem of 

assembling these elements, in the sense in which the mechanic assembles 

the parts of a machine, and, having assembled those elements, to put them 

together for the creation of one incomparable force, to which the world 

shall hereafter look for most of its forward impulse, for most of its ideal 

principles, for most of its example in the practice of liberty. And, 

therefore, the thing that I am more interested in than anything else in these 

days is the forces that make for drawing America together into a great 

spiritual unity.

You will notice all sorts of eddies in our life. Here the stream seems to be 

turning about; there the stream seems to be running forward; here there is 

an obstacle; there a free channel, and it sometimes looks as if this turning, 

whirling movement of our life merely made of us a whirlpool in which 

every conceivable element out of every population of the world constituted 

a part. Men look upon it with confusion. They say: "What is the pattern 

of this life? Whither does it tend? Where are we going?" 

Now, my fellow-citizens, we have had time and opportunity until the 

present to do pretty much what we wanted in America, and to do different 

things in different parts of America, but just so soon as this great European 

war is over America has got to stand for one thing, and only one thing in 

the world, and she must be ready with united forces. 
162 

We can not play with the elements of our life any more. We can not first 

combine them this way and then combine them that way. We have got to 

combine them in one way, with one definite purpose, and then we can go 

full steam ahead under expert leadership along the new line of a new age; 

but so long as we are playing with the elements, so long as we have 

contrary sympathies, so long as one body of us is pulling in one direction 

and another body in another direction, we can not do anything either for 

ourselves or for the world. 

America came into existence, my fellow-citizens, not in order to show the 

world the most notable example it had ever had of the accumulation and 

use of material wealth, but in order to show the way to mankind in every 

part of the world to justice, to freedom and liberty. So that the words I 

want you to carry in your mind in connection with this good roads cause 

are these:

First, Nationalization—Getting all the fibers of this great vital 

people united in a single organism. 

Second, Mobilization—Getting them so related to each other, so 

co-ordinated, so organized, so led, so united, that when they move 

they move as a single great, irresistible conquering force; and the 

third word that I want you to consider is the word that I suppose 

affords the key to doing these things; that word is the word 

"cooperation." 

I wish that every one of us could fix in his mind the difference between the 

way we have been trying to do things and the way we ought to do things. 

We have been trying to do things by combining, by setting off one 

powerful group against another, by setting up groups in particular 

industries or spheres of our life, which try to exclude all other groups by 

the power or by the method of their destroying competition. That is not 

the way to build a nation together; that is the way to build it into warring 

elements. Instead of exclusive combination, I want to see universal 

cooperation. 

There are good signs in the air. Have you not noticed how almost every 

great industry, every great profession every year holds a congress of some 

sort. Why, even the advertising men, whom we thought were the sharpest 

competitors in America, have a national association in which they 

cooperate. For what purpose? For the purpose of getting ahead of each 

other? No. For the purpose of guiding one another and setting up 

standards; and the chief standard they have adopted is the word "truth," 
163 

that they won't fool the people to whom they address advertisements; that 

they will tell the truth and prosper on the truth. 

Then you will find men in highly competitive engineering industries who 

hold their annual conventions to tell each other the secrets of their success, 

to make a great profession which is united in the use of the most efficient 

and intelligent means of achievement. And so, in profession after 

profession—the most reticent, so far as I can see, being the legal 

profession—in profession after profession, men are getting together by 

way of cooperation instead of by way of mutual destruction. 

I hold this to be a happy omen. I see the growth in America of this 

conception of solidarity, of the interest of each being the interest of all, and 

the interest of each growing out of the interest of all. 

There is one field in which we are particularly sluggards, in respect to this. 

I mean the relations between capital and labor. Nothing can be for the 

interest of capital that is not for the interest of labor, and nothing can be in 

the interest of labor which is not in the interest of capital. If men want to 

get rich, they must have human relationships with those who help them to 

get rich. That is a lesson that men have been exceedingly slow to learn—

slower than any other lesson of cooperation in America. I pray God that 

their eyes may be opened and that they may see that the future of this 

country lies in their cooperation, open, candid and cordial, and not in their 

antagonism, and that if they will once get together and plan in the same 

spirit the same thing, the industry of America will go forward by leaps and 

bounds such as we have never yet conceived. 

Sometimes it is necessary, in order to arrest attention, to pull men up with 

a round turn and say, "Stop, look, listen," because presently, if you don't, 

the great forces of society will correct the things that have gone wrong. 

Society is the jury. The parties are not going to settle; the nation is going 

to settle, and I am counsel for the nation. 

So, my fellow-citizens, you see how this little plant of the cause of the 

good roads spreads into a great tree, bearing upon its boughs the fruits of 

the savor of life. We have got to know each other; we have got to 

cooperate with each other; we have got to stand together; we have got to 

have the same conception of our life and destiny; we have got to think the 

same thoughts and purpose the same purposes. That is all that politics is 

for. As a contest for office, it is contemptible, but as a combination of 

thoughtful men to accomplish something for the nation, it is honorable. If 

I could not be associated with a congress that did something, I would quit. 

If I did not think that making speeches contributed a little bit to the 
164 

common thought, that had nothing to do with selfish purpose, but had 

everything to do with combined purpose, I would not make any speeches. 

Speeches are not interesting because of the man who makes them or the 

words he uses. They are interesting in proportion as the people who hear 

believe what he says.

I remember once, after a meeting in which a good many men who were 

more or less insurgent against society were gathered, a great, hard-fisted 

fellow came up to me and took my hand and said: "Well, sir, I didn't agree 

with a word you said, but I thought you meant it." 

I said: "What do you mean? Do you mean that most of the men that come 

here do not mean what they say?" 

"Yes, sir," he said, "I mean just that; they talk through their hats." 

Now talking through the hat ought to be a dead industry. It ought to be 

discouraged by silence and empty halls and every man ought to have as a 

motto over the stage from which he speaks these simple and familiar 

words, "Put up or shut up." 

I am ready to take my own medicine. If I don't put up, I am ready to shut 

up. (Calls of "go ahead, you are all right!”) 

You know, we were talking about good roads and you are getting off the 

road. I want to leave a very solemn thought in your minds. America is 

about to experience her rebirth. We have been making America in pieces 

for the sake of the pieces. Now we have got to construct her entire for the 

sake of the whole and for the sake of the world; because, ladies and 

gentlemen, there is a task ahead of us for which we must be very soberly 

prepared. I have said and shall say again, that when the great present war 

is over, it will be the duty of America to join with the other nations of the 

world in some kind of a league for the maintenance of peace. 

Now America was not a party to this war, and the only terms upon which 

we will be admitted to a league, almost all the other powerful members of 

which are engaged in the war and made infinite sacrifices when we 

apparently made none, are the only terms which we desire, namely, that 

America shall not stand for national aggression, but shall stand for the just 

conditions and bases of peace, for the competitions of merit alone and for 

the generous rivalry of liberty. 

It is now up to us to say whether we are going to play in the world at large 

the role which the makers of this great nation boasted and predicted we 
165 

should always play among the nations of the world. Are we ready always 

to be the friends of justice, of fairness, of liberty, of peace and of those 

accommodations which rest upon justice and peace? In these two trying 

years that have just gone by we have foreborne; we have not allowed 

provocation to disturb our judgment. We have seen to it that America kept 

her poise when all the rest of the world seemed to have lost its poise. Only 

upon the terms of retaining that poise and using the splendid force which 

always comes with poise, can we hope to play the beneficent part in the 

history of the world which I have just now intimated. 

So, my fellow countrymen, build up these new roads in the construction of 

which the federal government is now to play so large a part, in the spirit of 

nationality, the spirit of cooperation, the spirit of liberty, the power which 

only a free people know how to exercise. 

As President Wilson left the podium, the “crowd swarmed up to try to shake 

hands with the President, and it was only with difficulty he was able to get to the 

car waiting to carry him to Tomlinson Hall, where he made an address before a 

gathering of farmers.” [“Wilson Urges Unity of Nation,” The New York Times, 

October 13, 1916] 

The meeting in Tomlinson Hall had begun before President Wilson’s arrival. 

American Motorist pointed out that the meeting “could not escape from the good 

roads atmosphere, for the meeting had been opened with a talk by Luke W. Duffy, 

a well known Indiana highways advocate, and Judge J. M. Lowe.” Judge Lowe 

was speaking about the history of the National Road when President Wilson 

arrived. President Wilson’s speech discussed the role of the Federal Government 

in aiding farming, activities of the Department of Agriculture, including 

institution of parcel post “whereby the more perishable kind of farm products can 

be rapidly shipped and distributed in moderately small quantities. He also 

discussed the Federal Reserve and the Farmers’ Loan and Credit Bank.

After his speech, the President and his party returned to Union Station for the 

train, which left at 5:45 p.m. for the return to Shadow Lawn. 

[In addition to The Indianapolis News and American Motorist, the account of the 

visit to Indianapolis includes material from: “Wilson Urges Unity of Nation,” The 

New York Times, October 13, 1916; “Wilson Urges Need of Unity,” The 

Baltimore Sun, October 13, 1916; “Condemns Revival of Sectional Talk,” The 

Evening Star, October 12, 1916; “Scores Sectionalism,” The Washington Post, 

October 13, 1916. Many of these newspaper articles included excerpts from both 

speeches. The complete good roads speech can be found on pages 302-310 of The 

Indiana Centennial 1916.] 
166 

In the election, Indiana was considered a toss-up State, with Democrats and 

Republicans having reason to think their candidate would win – or lose. In the 

end, Indiana gave its 15 electoral votes to the Republican, Charles Evans Hughes, 

and favorite son Fairbanks. [“Indiana Leaders Unable To Predict,” The Sunday 

Star, October 15, 1916] 

The Second Term

At around 7 a.m. on November 7, President and Mrs. Wilson left Shadow Lawn 

for the automobile ride to Princeton. Arriving a little after 9, he cast his vote in 

the old fire engine house where he had cast all his votes since moving to the city. 

He needed several minutes to complete his ballot because of the other votes on it. 

A newspaper report described the scene:

At the entrance of the Princeton campus a drummer stood awaiting the President’s 

coming, and as his automobile drove up the drummer beat a tattoo. Almost 

instantly students appeared from every direction. They swarmed over the campus 

and rushed toward the voting place. As 

Mr. Wilson alighted from his automobile, the Princeton yell went up with 

a resounding “Wilson, Wilson, Wilson!” at the end. 

While the President was inside voting the students continued to arrive and 

massed in the street outside. They cheered almost continuously while a 

large corps of moving picture operators and photographers took up 

strategic positions. A small opening in a window enabled some of the 

students to peer inside the engine house, and they pushed and jostled for a 

glimpse of the President. Mrs. Wilson sat in the automobile and laughed 

at the crowd.

When the President emerged the students again cheered him and called 

“Speech! Speech!” But the president only shook his head and smiled. He 

greeted several in the crowd by name. [“Wilson Votes At Princeton,” The 

Baltimore Sun, November 8, 1916] 

The President and Mrs. Wilson motored back to Shadow Lawn where they spent 

the rest of the day. Wilson’s representatives in the States telephoned the results to 

Tumulty, who forwarded the important results to Wilson. 

As the evening evolved, newspapers reported that early results gave the election to 

Hughes and Fairbanks. Even New Jersey went for Hughes. Tumulty issued a 

statement indicating that President Wilson would not concede the election until 

results in several battleground States were certain, and the results from the 
167 

western States were in. Tumulty said the President was confident the western 

States would give him the victory. Berg wrote: 

Wilson laughed over the phone and said, “Well, Tumulty, it begins to look 

as if we have been badly licked.” Tumulty heard no sadness in his boss’s 

voice and offered more positive signs from the West. “Tumulty, you are 

an optimist,” Wilson replied. “It begins to look as if the defeat might be 

overwhelming. The only thing I am sorry for, and that cuts me to the 

quick, is that the people apparently misunderstood us. But I have no 

regrets. We have tried to do our duty.” 

Shadow Lawn darkened. At last, Wilson said, “Well, I will not send 

Mr. Hughes a telegram of congratulation tonight, for things are not 

settled.” And then his face turned grave as he acknowledged the 

inevitability of Hughes’s bringing the country into the war. Hughes 

himself remained properly silent that night.

President Wilson went to bed, falling asleep promptly, despite his belief that he 

had lost. 

His wife could not sleep. When news arrived in the night that the western results 

looked promising, she opted to let her husband sleep. [Berg, 414-415] 

The results were so close that in the morning, some newspapers declared Hughes 

the winner. 

President and Mrs. Wilson went golfing in Spring Lake. 

On November 10, 2 days after the day of the election, resolution of the California 

vote totals tipped the election to President Wilson, who won the State by 3,806 

votes. As Berg explained, California women, who were eligible to vote in the 

State, carried the vote based on the idea that President Wilson would keep the 

country out of the European war, while Hughes would almost certainly add the 

United States to the war. “Despite their small numbers, women had become an 

electoral constituency in the United States.” 

With 266 electoral votes needed for victory, President Wilson won 277 while 

Hughes picked up 254. The popular vote was: 

Wilson: 9,126,868 (49.2 percent) 

Hughes: 8,548,728 (46.1 percent) 

Berg wrote:
168 

Wilson became the first Democratic President elected to a second 

consecutive term since Andrew Jackson in 1832. He also was the first 

man since James K. Polk in 1844 to get elected without carrying his home 

state. There were other signs of erosion of public support: in 

Congressional races, the Democrats lost two seats in the Senate; leaving 

them with a comfortable but decreasing margin of 54 to 42; and they 

suggested another bad hit in the House of Representatives, dropping to 

214 members against 215 Republicans. Because three Progressives chose 

to caucus with the Democrats, the President’s party could cobble together 

a coalition and maintain control of both houses. The South remained 

Wilson’s igneous base, where he carried some states with more than 

90 percent of the vote . . . . 

Charles Evans Hughes did not concede by telegram until November 22, 

1916, claiming he had waited for the official count in California to end. 

Wilson replied graciously, though he commented to his brother, Josie, that 

Hughes’s wire “was a little moth-eaten when it got here but quite legible.” 

[Berg, pages 416-417] 

Recalling what might have been, Mrs. Wilson wrote: 

So often we talked of what we would do when he should be emancipated 

from the burdens of official life. A bicycle tour of Europe was mentioned. 

My husband loved cycling. When at Princeton he used to go abroad 

during the summers and wheel alone over the roads of Scotland, England 

and the Continent, stopping at little wayside taverns and striking up 

acquaintance with farmers, townsmen and all manner of folk . . . . He 

yearned for experiences of that kind. 

She had never learned to ride a bicycle, but was willing to give it a try, as she had 

golf, to keep up with her husband: 

Bicycles were luxuries in southwestern Virginia when I was a girl, and so I 

had never learned to ride. My husband said the deficiency was easily 

remedied, and one day there arrived at the White House a brand-new 

Columbia wheel. Where to take my lessons was a problem. Obviously 

not in the White House grounds whose paths are clearly visible from the 

surrounding streets. At length Mr. Wilson had it: the White House 

basement. It is commodious, and with some clearing away a space sixty 

feet long was provided. My husband and a couple of the Secret Service 

men used to go down with me at night. I fell off several times and nicked 

the enamel on the new wheel. Though I did not master the cycling art we 
169 

made up for that in laughter and had such hilarious good times that it was 

genuine recreation for all concerned. Being a country girl at heart, what I 

needed was more room, and so the cycling lessons were deferred until we 

should be free to resume them out of doors, a day, which, alas, never 

came. [My Memoir, page 146] 

The day of the inauguration, March 4, was a Sunday; celebration of the event 

would have to be delayed to Monday. President Wilson took the oath of office at 

the White House on Sunday, the event witnessed by only about 30 people. [Berg, 

page 426] 

The public inaugural event on March 5 was clouded by events related to the 

European war. At the end of January, Germany had announced that it had 

authorized unrestricted submarine warfare. All ships in the war zone would be 

sunk; well-marked American ships would be allowed in the zone only in a 

specified route. Germany believed the new policy would bring the stalemated war 

to a quick end. It was no longer interested in the peace talks initiated in 1916. 

Wilson told Tumulty, “This means war. The break that we have tried so hard to 

prevent now seems inevitable.” On February 3, 1917, President Wilson went 

before a joint session of Congress to announce that the country’s diplomatic 

relations with German had been halted. He asked Congress to give him authority 

“to use any means that may be necessary for the protection of our seamen and our 

people in the prosecution of their peaceful and legitimate errands on the high 

seas.” He was not ruling out diplomacy, saying, “We shall not believe that they 

are hostile to us unless and until we are obliged to believe it.” 

By the end of February, newspapers were reporting that Germany had secretly 

reached out to Mexico to aid in the war. Upon victory, Mexico’s reward would be 

the return of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas to within its new borders. 

Germany also invited Japan to join in the war. 

President Wilson returned to Congress on February 26 seeking additional 

authority to arm merchant ships to protect them from submarine attacks. The 

House of Representatives approved the bill overwhelmingly, but in the Senate, 

11 Senators launched a filibuster to block the legislation, blocking approval by the 

66 Senators who said they would have voted for it. With the 64th Congress to end 

at noon on March 4, they had to delay the vote only a few days to kill the bill. 

Their success prompted President Wilson to issue a statement after his private 

inauguration. Berg summarized it: 

“In the immediate presence of a crisis fraught with more subtle and farreaching possibility of national danger than any other Government has 
170 

known within the whole history of its international relations,” the 

President raged, “the Congress has been unable to act either to safeguard 

the country or to vindicate the elementary rights of its citizens.” He felt 

the United States, especially in times of crisis, could not proceed in this 

manner. “A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their 

own,” he said, “have rendered the great Government of the United States 

helpless and contemptible,” making it “the only legislative body in the 

world which cannot act when its majority is ready for action.” 

He called for revising the Senate rules to allow cloture of a filibuster by a twothirds majority vote of the Senate. [Berg, page 426] 

The next day, President Wilson, accompanied by the First Lady, traveled to 

Capitol Hill for his second inaugural event. Unlike his first Inauguration on 

March 4, 1913, the event was overshadowed by the growing prospect of American 

entry into the European war. “Only 50,000 people gathered for the ceremonies; 

the inaugural parade was half the length of the first; and, again, there would be no 

Inaugural Ball.” 

His brief address stated, “The shadows that now lie dark upon our path will soon 

be dispelled and we shall walk with the light all about us if we be but true to 

ourselves.” He advised, “United alike in the conception of our duty and in the 

high resolve to perform it in the face of all men, let us dedicate ourselves to the 

great task to which we must now set our hand.” 

He did not define the task, but 50,000 or so people observing the speech had little 

doubt about the prospects. [Berg, pages 426-427] 

(The Senate approved a cloture procedure on March 8, the first limitation on the 

filibuster, a delaying tactic that had been used only rarely in the previous century.) 

On April 20, 1917, President Wilson, who had won reelection by promising to 

keep the country out of the European war, and the First Lady drove through the 

rain along Pennsylvania Avenue to Capitol Hill to address Congress. Smith sets 

the scene:

His fingers trembled as he turned the pages, and in the silences between 

his sentences the sound of drops could be heard hitting upon the roof. He 

said, "It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into 

the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be 

in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace . . . . To such a 

task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and 

everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has 

come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the 
171 

principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has 

treasured. God helping her, she can do no other.” 

There was a moment of silence. Then a great roar of applause rolled up to 

him. Mixed in it were the high rebel yells of Southerners. The troops of 

cavalry formed up, and with Cary Grayson, Joe Tumulty and the First 

Lady he drove in silence back to the White House past the crowds of 

cheering people. “My message today was a message of death for our 

young men,” he said. “How strange it seems to applaud that.” [Smith, 

pages 32-34] 

Early Years of the Federal-Aid Highway Program 

The war, now known as World War I, would affect every aspect of life in the 

United States, including the Federal-aid highway program that President had 

launched on July 11, 1916. 

On September 1, 1916, construction had begun on California Federal Aid Road 

Project No. 3, which would be the first project completed under the Federal Aid 

Road Act. The road extended 2.55-miles from Albany at the Alameda County 

line to Richmond in Contra Costa County. Highway historian Albert C. Rose 

described the project:

The work consisted of grading the roadbed, draining and installing culverts 

flanked with concrete headwalls, and laying a Portland cement concrete 

base, in the proportions of 1:3:6, with a width of 20 feet and a thickness of 

5 inches, surfaced with a bituminous concrete top (Topeka mix) 11⁄2 inches 

in thickness . . . . [The] certificate of completion was issued by the 

District Engineer of the [U.S. Office of Public Roads and Rural 

Engineering] . . . on January 30, 1918. The total cost of the project, 

including the money allotted by the State, was $53,938.85. [Rose, Albert 

C., Historic American Roads: From Frontier Trails to Superhighways, 

Crown Publishers, Inc., 1976, page 91]

The program, however, faltered, partly because of defects in its conception but 

especially because of America's entry into World War I. From engineers to 

construction workers, those who were to implement the Federal-aid highway 

program went instead to the war in Europe or to support it. At the Bureau of 

Public Roads (BPR), as the Federal road agency had been renamed on July 1, 

1918, 79 of 189 men and one woman had entered the military by war's end. 

Many of BPR's staff who did not volunteer or were not called to military service 

became involved in stateside military activities. Some were detailed for road 

building activities in the 16 National Army cantonments and National Guard 
172 

mobilization camps. One was detailed to the U.S. Housing Corporation, another 

to the Emergency Fleet Corporation. BPR prepared detailed highway maps for the 

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and conducted tests in cooperation with the 

Shipping Board on safe design of reinforced concrete ships. At the request of the 

Frankford Arsenal in Philadelphia, BPR worked on a device for testing the power 

of explosives and it loaned one of its impact machines to American University for 

research in connection with high explosives. 

Across the country, personnel shortages were compounded by shortages of road 

building material. Further, a shortage of railroad cars made shipment of the 

available materials difficult. Meanwhile, rail shortages gave the fledgling 

trucking industry an opportunity to secure interstate shipments. The roads that the 

States did not have the resources to improve deteriorated under the weight of the 

new loads they were carrying. Even the higher type pavements, cement concrete 

and brick on concrete, failed. 

Auto racing was another casualty of the war. In December 1917, AAA’s contest 

board decided to cease issuing sanctions for motor contests while the war was 

underway. The Sun explained why: 

Need of skilled operators of motor-trucks and passenger vehicles, as well 

as mechanics, brought about the action taken, which will release over a 

thousand capable men for motoring war work . . . . 

Practically all of the big speedways in the country are in accord with the 

action taken, several of them leaving the matter of continuance entirely to 

the judgment of Chairman Richard Kennerdell and his fellow-members of 

the American Automobile Association contest board. 

President Wilson appreciated the action, as he stated in a communication to his 

cousin, John A. Wilson, chairman of AAA’s Military Preparedness Committee: 

I am very glad indeed to learn that it is the purpose of the American 

Automobile Association to stop automobile racing until after the close of 

the war. It is so destructive of materials and involves so great a 

consumption of gasoline that I think every man who cares for the proper 

fulfillment of our duties during the war and the necessary conservation of 

resources which the performance of those duties involves must applaud the 

action of the association in this matter.

 Faithfully yours, 

 Woodrow Wilson 

[“Ban On Auto Racing,” The Baltimore Sun, December 9, 1917] 
173 

By the time the war ended November 11, 1918, the Federal-aid highway program, 

which had begun with such high hopes, had little to show for the effort that went 

into its creation. The Federal Highway Administration’s Bicentennial book, 

America's Highways 1776-1976, summarized the war's impact on the new 

program:

By July 1918, the OPRRE had approved 572 projects, totaling 6,249 miles 

in length, estimated to cost $42.28 million, of which $16.05 million was 

Federal aid. However, only five projects, totaling 17.6 miles, had actually 

been completed.

President Wilson would have little impact on the evolution of the program, other 

than signing the Post Office Appropriation Act for 1920 on February 28, 1919. It 

redefined “rural post roads” to include “any public road a major portion of which 

is now used, or can be used, or forms a connecting link not to exceed ten miles in 

length of any road or roads now or hereafter used for the transportation of the 

United States mails . . . .” As America’s Highways 1776-1976 explained:

Senator James W. Wadsworth, Jr., of New York said, “I am convinced that 

any road that can be made suitable for carrying mail includes any and 

every road in the United States.” This, of course, was exactly the effect 

desired by the Administration when it proposed the amendment. The new 

post road definition ended the pretense that Federal aid for highways 

rested even in part on Congress’ constitutional power to establish a postal 

system. [America’s Highways, page 102] 

After the war, the forces that had proposed a national building program of longdistance highways resumed their agitation. By limiting Federal-aid funds to post 

roads, the 1916 law had excluded the long-distance roads because mail was 

carried over long distances on railroad cars, not motor vehicles. The issues would 

not be resolved until President Warren G. Harding signed the Federal Highway 

Act of 1921. For further information on resolution of the long-running debate, see 

“‘Clearly Vicious as a Matter of Policy’: The Fight Against Federal-Aid” on this 

Web site at https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/hwyhist01.cfm. 

The Post War Period

While in Paris for post-war peace talks, President Wilson had been hailed in 

public as a savior of Europe. In private, he suffered a stroke as well as heart 

problems and paranoia. Back in the United States, he turned his attention to 

seeking congressional support for creation of a League of Nations, one of the key 

provisions of the Paris peace agreement, to provide a forum for resolving 

international disputes and preventing wars. 
174 

When the Senate balked, he launched a nationwide speaking campaign to gather 

support for the League. He did so against the advice of Dr. Grayson, who was 

concerned about the effect of the heat, discomfort, and stress on the President’s 

health. President Wilson understood the risks, but told Dr. Grayson: 

If the treaty is not ratified by the Senate, the War will have been fought in 

vain, and the world will be thrown into chaos. I promised our soldiers, 

when I asked them to take up arms, that it was a war to end wars; and if I 

do not do all in my power to put the treaty in effect, I will be a slacker and 

never able to look those boys in the eye. I must go.” [My Memoir, page 

274] 

He departed from Union Station on September 3, 1919. As Mrs. Wilson recalled:

The tour had not progressed far when serious headaches began to afflict 

my husband. He paid little attention to them, though I could see that each 

day, each meeting, each appearance, was calling more and more on his 

depleted reserve of nervous energy . . . . I could see how closely 

Dr. Grayson watched his patient. The Doctor’s disregarded warnings 

against attempting the tour haunted my sleep, and I do not think that I am 

one to borrow trouble or look without reason on the dark side. [My 

Memoir, page 276] 

On this important tour, the President was followed by a large group of 

newspapermen, as the Post described:

In every town where the President has spoken local committees have 

arranged an automobile procession in advance for his party and all persons 

on the special train are assigned to a certain number car in each town.

In Oregon, officials arranged a special treat for President Wilson and his party, a 

tour of the Columbia River Highway, one of the construction wonders of the good 

roads era. The Presidential party arrived in Portland on September 15 at around 

9 a.m. A party consisting of Governor Ben W. Olcott and Mayor George L. Baker 

escorted the President, Mrs. Wilson, and the rest of the group to the Portland 

Hotel along streets lined with enthusiastic crowds. The Times reported: 

Later the President and his party were taken on a fifty-mile drive along the 

Columbia Highway, one of the prides of the people of Oregon, who insist 

that it has not its equal in the country, if in the world. 

The party proceeded along the highway to Crown Point, from which spot, 

hundreds of feet above the river, a magnificent view of the country is 
175 

obtained. The President and Mrs. Wilson remained about fifteen minutes 

here; then the parade of automobiles started on the return trip, stopping on 

the way at the Gresham Fair Grounds, where thousands of persons were 

gathered to give welcome.

All along the President’s route large numbers of people were gathered, 

many in automobiles and many on foot, to greet the party. 

Mrs. Wilson described the road as a “beautiful drive,” adding, “There were the 

usual mass of people and thousands of cars.” 

As the Post added: 

The pilot car which guided the party . . . from here [Portland] to Crown 

Point . . . hit up a pace that approximated 40 miles an hour at times and 

members of the President’s party were fearful for his safety. 

The road in spots is very narrow and over steep hills and inclines and for 

this reason the drivers were cautioned to preserve a slow rate of speed.

Ben F. Allen of The Cleveland Plain-Dealer, Robert T. Small of the Post and The 

Philadelphia Public Ledger, and Stanley M. Reynolds of the Sun, were assigned 

to car no. 7. As the group left the hotel for the Columbia River Highway, they 

found that no. 7 was occupied by townspeople. Instead, they found places in car 

no. 18 in the procession, driven by a 73-year old area businessman, James R. 

Patterson, who had volunteered to help the Presidential party. The Post described 

the result:

On the return from Crown Point Patterson’s car had some engine trouble 

and was slightly delayed. When repairs were made he attempted to regain 

his place in the line and speeded up. 

The motor, a large, seven-passenger car, had a clear roadway for a time, 

but other motorists anxious to slide out from crossroads to trail the 

President edged in. One of these was C. H. Barnett and his car stalled in 

the middle of the highway. 

Patterson tried to avoid a collision, but his car was traveling at such a high 

rate of speed that it left the road. Mr. Allen was in the front seat as was 

Patterson. The three other men were in the rear seat and were thrown clear 

of the car, which after turning turtle, righted itself on the road. 

“Turning turtle” was a common term at the time for a vehicle that turned over on 

its top. According to an account in the Star, no. 18 rolled over and over down the 

embankment, with the windshield breaking and cutting Allen and Patterson. 
176 

Allen and Patterson were killed. Small, Reynolds, and Arthur D. Sullivan of The 

Portland News were injured. 

Mrs. Wilson wrote: 

We knew nothing of the accident at the time and upon our return to 

Portland went immediately to a lunch given by the press. Noticing several 

vacant tables I inquired the reason and was told of the collision and asked 

to say nothing to the President, as they wanted him to enjoy the lunch. 

The empty places were those of special friends of the victims. 

President Wilson learned of the incident before the luncheon was over, but while 

all that was known of Allen was that he was being treated at the hospital. When 

he rose to speak, his first words were: 

I suppose you all have learned of the accident, the result of which I fear 

will be rather tragic. It naturally makes me feel depressed. These men 

have been traveling with me since I started on this trip, and I have learned 

to know them as good friends. If we must go and leave them behind 

seriously wounded, I realize that I am parting from very estimable men. 

After learning of Allen’s death, he sent a telegram to Mrs. Allen:

Our hearts go out to you in deepest sympathy in the tragical death of your 

husband, whom we all esteemed and trusted. He will be missed as a true 

friend and a man who always intelligently sought to do his duty. 

The evening of the crash, reporter David Lawrence of the Star reported: 

Tonight grief grips everybody in the presidential party, from President 

Wilson to the correspondents and the attaches on the journey, who had 

come to know Ben Allen as the most jovial and the most unselfish of their 

number . . . . 

The accident has depressed the whole party. It was with difficulty that the 

President made his speeches at Portland, for he knew Ben Allen and liked 

him. Only today he was joking with Mr. Allen before the party left the 

train.

Lawrence had been assigned to no. 7, but finding it occupied, decided not to go on 

the excursion, “having previously viewed the historic Columbia highway.” 

[“Warm Greeting Given to Wilson By Oregonians,” The New York Times, 

September 16, 1919; “2 Die On Wilson Trip,” The Washington Post, September 

16, 1919; “Newspaper Man With President Killed-The Sun Correspondent 
177 

Among Injured,” The Baltimore Sun, September 16, 1919; Lawrence, David, “Ben 

Allen Killed On Trip In West With President,” The Evening Star, September 16, 

1919; My Memoir, page 278]

President Wilson managed to overcome his own increasing illness on the tour 

until he reached Pueblo, Colorado, on the return trip. By then, he was so ill that 

he tried to avoid the planned speech on September 25. When the reception 

committee urged him to address the 10,000 people waiting for him, he reluctantly 

agreed, as Smith described. At the fairground he “he drove around in front of the 

crowd, waving his hat”: 

When they went to the auditorium for his speech he seemed to stumble at 

the single step of the hall’s entrance. The Secret Service man Edmund 

Starling caught him and almost lifted him up over the step . . . . He went 

onto the platform. It was a little after three in the afternoon, 

September 25, 1919. Passing the newspapermen, he said, “This will have 

to be a short speech. Aren’t you fellows getting pretty sick of this?” 

He went up to the cheering and yells and began to speak. His voice was 

not strong, but he did well enough until suddenly he stumbled over a 

sentence. “Germany must never by allowed—” He stopped and was 

silent. “A lesson must be taught to Germany—” He stopped again and 

stood still. “The world will not allow Germany—” Reporter Joseph 

Jefferson O’Neill looked up from his notes. This had never happened 

before in any of the speeches. O’Neill looked at the First Lady and saw 

terror on her face. Edmund Starling thought to himself the President was 

about to collapse and tensed to step forward and catch him. But the 

President gathered himself together, although his voice was very weak, 

and went on. He spoke of Memorial Day at Suresnes, of the soldiers alive 

and dead at the cemetery, and of how he wished that some of the Senators 

opposing the League might have been there on that day. As he spoke of 

the dead boys in the graves at Suresnes, Joe Tumulty, standing in the 

wings of the auditorium, saw down in the audience men and women alike 

reaching for handkerchiefs to wipe their eyes. “There seems to me to 

stand between us and the rejection of the treaty the serried ranks of those 

boys in khaki, not only those boys who came home, but those dear ghosts 

who still deploy upon the fields of France.” 

He halted. The people looked at him and he at them. 

The President of the United States, standing before an audience of some 

several thousands of his fellow citizens, was crying. 
178 

He had come to the last words of his speech. He said: 

“I believe that men will see the truth, eye to eye and face to face. There is 

one thing that the American people always rise to and extend their hand to, 

and that is the truth of justice and of liberty and of peace. We have 

accepted that truth and we are going to be led by it, and it is going to lead 

us, and through us the world, out into the pastures of quietness and peace 

such as the world never dreamed of before.” 

He turned away and the First Lady came to him. Their tears mixed.

As their train moved east, Dr. Grayson asked the President if he thought a walk in 

the open air might help revive him. The train was brought to a halt, as Smith 

described: 

The engine stood panting with steam up and the reporters were told that 

the President and the First Lady and Dr. Grayson were going for a little 

walk. They had come down out of the mountain country and were on 

beautiful prairie land with no houses in sight and evening coming on. It 

was very pleasant. The reporters got out and lay down on the grass to 

relax and watch the long, lovely September twilight.

The trio walked slowly down a dusty road with Starling idling behind at a 

little distance. They came to a bridge and paused on it, looking down at 

the thin Arkansas River, hardly more than a stream at that point. They 

went on in the comfortably warm Colorado air and saw a farmer in a small 

auto driving down the road. He came to a stop when he recognized the 

walkers and took out a head of cabbage and some applies, saying he hoped 

they would eat them “for dinner tonight.” They thanked him and he drove 

off, raising a little cloud of dust as he went. 

A man and his wife and their friend, they strolled down a silent country 

road. They came to a field cut off from the road by a fence. Some 

distance back from the road was a frame house with a soldier in uniform 

sitting on the porch. The President said, “That fellow looks sick to me.” 

Grayson said, “Yes, he certainly is.” They climbed over the low fence, 

Starling following, and went across to the boy and said hello. The 

soldier’s mother and father and brothers came out and for a few minutes 

the visitors talked with the farm people. Then they said good-by and, 

carrying the cabbage and apples, strolled toward the setting sun. 

They’d been gone an hour before reporters on the grass spotted them returning to 

the train. About a hundred yards away, “Grayson and the President broke into a 
179 

dog trot and ran by the men on the grass . . . . The President was smiling as he 

went up on the rear platform.” [Smith, pages 81-83] 

On September 26, the special train stopped a mile outside Wichita, Kansas. The 

reporters and Secret Service agents were preparing for an automobile tour of the 

city before the President’s speech in the city, but Secretary Tumulty came out to 

address them about the delay in getting started. In a shaky voice, he said, “The 

tour’s off.”

Illness had again overtaken the President that night and, despite his desire to 

continue his speaking tour, his wife and doctor insisted they return to Washington 

and he reluctantly agreed. “I suppose you are right,” he said. [Smith, page 85] 

The Times told readers about the stress of the President’s cross-country tour. He 

had given 40 speeches, without amplification, many of them an hour long: 

Many of them have been delivered in halls so large that it was necessary 

for him to use all his energy to make himself heard and so warm that he 

always has had a rub down and a change of clothing afterward to prevent 

his taking cold. The texts of his addresses on the trip total about 175,000 

words . . . . 

Aside from the speaking itself, one of the hardest trials for both President 

and Mrs. Wilson during the trip has been the necessity of riding through 

many blocks of crowded streets at the slow pace of the military escorts, 

which have been almost everywhere.

In some cities the rides have been ten miles long and nearly all the way the 

President has been on his feet in his car with the white-gloved hand of his 

wife supporting him, waving his hat in response to the cheers of the 

crowds. 

He had not really had a rest since his vacation at Harlakenden House in New 

Hampshire. His mental strain throughout the war, the peace talks in Paris, and the 

fight for the peace accord were thought by his friends “to be responsible for his 

present illness.” [“Grayson’s Order Ends Tour,” The New York Times, September 

27, 1919] 

They returned to the White House as fast as the special train could receive track 

clearance. 

Reaching Union Station the morning of September 28, President Wilson stepped 

out of his car, the Mayflower, looking drawn. His daughter Margaret, who had 

come running down the trainshed when the special train pulled in, greeted him. 

The President, accompanied by his wife and daughter, Dr. Grayson, and the Secret 
180 

Service agents, walked through the station to his White House automobile. He 

periodically raised his hand to acknowledge the cheers of the thousand or so 

people who had come to the station to welcome him home. 

Dr. Grayson prescribed total rest. “The President was able to take his short 

automobile ride this afternoon, but vigorous exercise of any kind was forbidden.” 

. [“Wilson Returns To Washington Worn and Shaken,” The New York Times, 

September 29, 1919] 

On September 29, the President took another automobile ride in the afternoon. 

The President was accompanied by his wife and daughter on the hour-and-a-half 

ride in an open car. He wore a steamer cap and was bundled in an overcoat. 

[“Report President ‘Slightly Better,’” The New York Times, September 30, 1919] 

After another rough night, President Wilson managed another afternoon 

automobile ride on October 1. The White House’s daily bulletin reported that the 

President was “feeling somewhat jaded today.” [“President Is Again Jaded After 

Another Restless Night,” The New York Times, October 2, 1919] 

Despite the precaution, the worst was yet to come, as Berg described: 

Edith had been having troubles of her own getting through the night, as 

she awakened frequently in order to monitor her husband’s rest. At dawn 

on October 2, she found him sleeping soundly, but then around 8:30, he 

was sitting on the side of his bed, reaching for a water bottle. As she 

handed it to him, she noticed his left hand had gone limp. “I have no 

feeling in that hand,” he said. He asked her to rub it. But first, he wanted 

help in getting to the bathroom. She supported him as he staggered those 

few yards, but it required a huge effort on his part. More terrifying to her 

were his spasms of pain with every step. Edith asked if she could leave 

him alone long enough for her to telephone Dr. Grayson. He said yes; and 

in that split second, Edith made a curious decision. 

Instead of going to the nearby bedroom phone, which connected to 

operators at the White House switchboard, she hastened down the hall to a 

private phone wired directly to the desk in the Usher’s Room. Ike Hoover 

answered the call, and Mrs. Wilson said, “Please get Doctor Grayson, the 

President is very sick.” 

While still on the phone, Edith heard a noise from the President’s 

apartment. Rushing back, she found her husband lying on the bathroom 

floor, unconscious. [Berg, pages 639-640] 

He had experienced a stroke that paralyzed his left side, diminished his vision, 

restricted his speech, and impaired his judgment. Although the White House 
181 

informed the press that President Wilson was sick and needed complete rest, 

officials never made clear his level of incapacitation. The lack of clarity and the 

failure of the President to make public appearances prompted speculation about 

whether he was capable of performing his Presidential duties. 

On November 17, President Wilson was rolled in a wheel chair onto the lawn near 

the south Portico to enjoy the fresh air and sunshine for an hour or so. This 

became a daily event, with the White House not being fully honest about his 

condition. On November 22, newspapers reported: 

President Wilson has “materially improved,” but is still very weak, Dr. 

Francis X. Dercum, the Philadelphia specialist, found today when he paid 

his regular weekly visit to the White House.

Rear Admiral Grayson, the President’s physician, said that it would be 

some time before his patient could take an automobile ride. Every 

sunshiny day, however, the President is wheeled out on the south lawn of 

the White House to enjoy the air. 

The President attended to much routine executive business today. 

[“Wilson ‘Materially Improved, But Still Very Weak,’” The New York 

Times, November 23, 1919] 

In truth, President Wilson would improve slowly, but never recover fully. The 

White House would put updates implying gradual recovery, but President Wilson 

remained out a sight as rumors swirled about his true condition. The optimistic 

updates were in part a response to demands that Vice President Marshall assume 

the duties of the President.

For the remainder of the Wilson presidency, the First Lady often served as a link 

between her husband and the outside world, determining what papers he would 

see and decisions he would consider. One of history’s mysteries, probably never 

to be answered, is whether in reporting his decisions she was carrying out his 

instructions or deciding for him. 

By March 1920, President Wilson was well enough to become restless with his 

forced idleness. He wanted to go on a golf outing, but Dr. Grayson was not ready 

to approve such a trip. On March 2, plans for an auto ride were underway, with 

one of the White House cars waiting outside the South Portico, but the ride was 

abandoned at the last minute. 

However, on March 3, President Wilson left the White House for the first time 

since his stroke in October for an automobile drive. The Star, in a front page 

story, reported: 
182 

Yesterday the President, anticipating a good day today, suggested that he 

would like to go riding, and when he renewed the suggestion today, 

Dr. Grayson acquiesced. The President’s closed car and a secret service 

machine drew up to the south entrance of the White House at about 

11 o’clock. A few moments later the President, accompanied by 

Mrs. Wilson and Dr. Grayson, came out from under the colonnade. 

The President walked to the car with the aid of his cane. Dr. Grayson was 

at his side and held lightly to the President’s arm. The President was 

assisted into the car by Dr. Grayson and Mrs. Wilson. He wore his old 

gray sweater under a medium weight overcoat. 

The President and Mrs. Wilson sat on the rear seat, with Dr. Grayson on the seat 

facing them.

As the car moved into the streets outside the White House, police prevented 

photographers from taking pictures of the President. 

They drove on the Speedway along the Potomac River south of the White House, 

along Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol grounds before returning to the White 

House: 

Going through the Capitol grounds the President passed Senator [William 

E.] Borah of Idaho, and recognition was simultaneous, both waving their 

hands and smiling. Throughout the trip, Dr. Grayson said, the President 

was delighted and remarked that he felt like he had been away from 

Washington for a long time. 

Passing the vicinity of a market here, the President, who delights always in 

reading signs when he is motoring, saw a sign quoting pork at 35 cents a 

pound. Although he has given much serious consideration to the high cost 

of living, the President remarked to Mrs. Wilson: “This brings it home to 

you when you see a big sign like that.”

During the drive the President passed many groups of people who 

recognized him and he smiled his acknowledgment of their greetings. 

Quite often women who recognized him waved to him. 

The ride lasted about an hour. 

Back at the White House, Dr. Grayson took President Wilson’s blood pressure, 

which was normal. That was a good sign because the ride was seen as preliminary 
183 

to a plan for the President to leave town for a period of convalescence. The 

Mayflower was ready if such a trip would proceed by water. [“President Wilson 

Takes Auto Ride Through The City,” The Evening Star, March 3, 1920; “Wilson 

Has a Ride; First in 5 Months,” The New York Times, March 4, 1920] 

(The Road Drivers and Riders’ Association, formed by horse lovers in 1903, 

established the Speedway “where drivers may speed their horses,” as the Star 

explained. [“The Proposed Speedway,” The Evening Star, October 5, 1903] The 

Speedway, sometimes called the Centennial Speedway, opened in West Potomac 

Park on May 11, 1904, with thousands of spectators observing the festivities. It 

extended from the Tidal Basin to 26th Street, SW. It would be reconstructed and 

extended through East Potomac Park as Riverside Drive, but the old nickname 

was still in common use in 1920. In 1949, Riverside Drive was renamed Ohio 

Drive.) 

Smith described the first automobile ride since October differently than 

contemporary news reports: 

A platform was put up at the south entrance of the White House so that the 

wheel chair could be rolled to a position level with the waiting car, and 

three or four Secret Service men lifted the President to his feet and held 

him in their arms and put him into the car’s rear right-hand corner—the 

right side in order that the paralyzed left side of his face would not show to 

the people in the street—and braced him up so that he might not topple to 

the floor when the car started, and adjusted his cape (he could not wear a 

coat; it was too difficult to get the inert left arm into a sleeve) and set his 

hat square on his head. And so he was driven through Washington, his 

face devoid of all color, grayish white, thin, waxlike, a bright-eyed old 

man trying to smile, the lips revealing the teeth only on the right side, the 

eyes protuberant, a thin face on a thin neck ducked down so as to hide the 

paralyzed side.

There was to him something cruel and terrifying in the faces of the people 

who looked at him as the car went by; they did not cheer, but stared as if to 

see if it was all true what they had heard: that the car held a madman. 

When they came back to the White House policemen were waiting, and 

when the car pulled up to a remote rear gate all traffic was halted and they 

drove quickly into the grounds. As they went in, a small group of people 

by the gate threw into the thin March sunshine a faint cheer. They were 

backstairs White House workers whose faces the President would not 

know, and friends and relatives of Secret Service men, and they had been 

recruited just for this reason: so that on his ride there might be for him 

one bit of applause. When the car stopped and the men went to lift him 

out and carry him to the wheel chair there were tears in his eyes and he 
184 

was saying, “You see, they still love me.” The First Lady left him for a 

moment and went to stand by herself so that he would not see that she 

wept. [Smith, pages 145-146] 

For now, Dr. Grayson decided against a convalescence trip outside Washington, 

but additional automobile rides were likely. The White House implied that in a 

few weeks, President Wilson might be permitted a round of golf at his favorite 

course in Virginia; but this type of claim was part of an effort to mislead the 

public about his condition. His paralysis ruled out golf or any other athletic 

activity. [“Wilson Impatient; Wants to Play Golf,” The New York Times, 

March 5, 1920] 

After a snow storm hit Washington, President Wilson, Mrs. Wilson, and 

Dr. Grayson were not able to go on a second motor trip until March 8. “A bright 

sun was shining, but some of the snow from last week’s blizzard was still on the 

ground and a sharp wind was blowing,” according to the Times: 

The President wore a heavy cloth overcoat and a golf hat. He looked the 

picture of health. 

For the first time since the previous October, he was riding in one of the White 

House’s open cars. The ride through Rock Creek Park lasted about an hour. The 

police again blocked photographers. [“President Out Driving in Open 

Automobile,” The New York Times, March 9, 1920] 

Newspapers carried brief stories about his third automobile ride on March 10, this 

one again through Rock Creek Park on the warmest day of the season. His 

daughter Margaret accompanied Mrs. Wilson, Dr. Grayson, and the President. 

[“President Takes Third Outdoor Ride,” The New York Times, March 11, 1920] 

On March 14, the Presidential party took a fourth ride, this one lasting 2 hours and 

covering park roads. Reporters thought that he seemed refreshed after the long 

ride. [“President Has Two-Hour Auto Ride,” The New York Times, March 15, 

1920; “President Rides Two Hours,” The Washington Post, March 15, 1920] 

On March 17, the photographers who had been blocked from taking shots of the 

President were rewarded for their patience. As the White House limousine 

entered West Executive Avenue, the chauffeur drove slowly, and the 

photographers and movie camera men were allowed to film the President and 

Mrs. Wilson. The White House had advised the police not to block them. 

The Times reported: 
185 

Four men representing moving picture firms obtained about 100 feet of 

film each and a dozen still camera men snapped perhaps a total of three 

dozen views. The films will be shown in motion picture theatres 

throughout the nation within a day or two. 

The President looked pretty fit. He was seated in the tonneau with Mrs. 

Wilson at his side, and he smiled and raised his cap—an old gray golf 

cap—in acknowledgment of the persistency of the photographers who 

dashed about his automobile in a frenzy of activity. Turning to Mrs. 

Wilson he said: “This reminds me of old times.” 

Photographer Clarence Jackson “unwittingly added to the success of the 

occasion.” After taking his first shot, he “made a mad dash to get in front of the 

automobile and obtain a second and better view. His movements caused the 

President to laugh heartily.” As for Jackson, he “got his picture and was happy.” 

The President noticed people were wearing green caps. “The President remarked 

with a show of some vexation that he had forgotten to wear a green necktie in 

honor of the day—St. Patrick’s Day.” [“President Gives Camera Free Rein,” The 

New York Times, March 18, 1920] 

Although President Wilson appeared to be enjoying the renewed auto rides, Smith 

reported a disturbing trend that reporters may not have been aware of: 

He got it into his mind that any car that passed his own was going 

dangerously fast, although at his orders the chauffeur rarely went faster 

than fifteen or twenty miles an hour. Whenever a car went by he would 

order that the Secret Service vehicle overtake and bring back the driver for 

questioning. Miserably trying to give him the impression that his 

instructions were perfectly logical, the Secret Service car would chase 

after the offending auto, always to return with the excuse that the speeder 

was going too fast to be overhauled. He brooked over this and wrote to 

Attorney General [A. Mitchell] Palmer asking if the Presidency carried 

with it the powers of a justice of peace; if it did, he told his people, he was 

going to make sure the speeders were caught and himself try their cases 

there by the roadside. (The Secret Service men desperately killed the plan 

by telling him that the idea was beneath his dignity.) [Smith, pages 146-

147] 

Mrs. Wilson discussed the motor trips: 

Usually we would go for a motor ride in the afternoon, taking Gordon 

Grayson [Dr. Grayson’s 2-year old son] with us. These rides gave my 

husband the pleasure of seeing some of our “road acquaintances” again. 
186 

One of these was the watchman who lived in a small frame house on the 

District side of the Chain Bridge. This old fellow was fat and most inert, 

and sat all day long on the tiny porch of his house. He occupied an 

armchair and rested his arms on his fat knees with hands hanging limply 

down, palms inward. As we approached he would make a tremendous 

effort, pull the hands up to rest on his knees, and when we passed he 

would slowly turn his wrists so the palm of the hand was exposed for a 

brief instant and then relax into his former and permanent position. This 

unique salute afforded us great amusement, and it never varied until the 

winter cold drove the old fellow into the house. 

On the Conduit Road [today’s MacArthur Boulevard] towards Great Falls, 

two little brothers kept a flag ready to raise to the top of a pole. These 

children knew about the time we would pass, should we drive that way. 

They must have kept watch day by day, for often it was weeks between our 

coming. But as the car approached, one or both were always there to pull 

the cord and send the colours flying to the breeze, while they stood at 

salute. The President always removed his hat and saluted the flag and the 

children. 

 

One day, after he had been ill for months, my husband said: “Let’s go and 

see if our two little soldiers are still waiting.” So we drove out and, to my 

great disappointment, there was no one visible. Even the flagpole was 

gone. I got out and rang the bell to ask about our little friends. A gentle 

lady answered, and said the little boys no longer lived there, but she knew 

them and would tell them of our inquiry. I hope some day, now that they 

must be grown, I will learn that they are still letting their colours fly . . . .

Another friend in Maryland, barely more than a baby, with a halo of curls 

around his head, would pause in his play, stand erect and, putting a tiny 

hand up in salute, say: “Hi, Wilson!” He was a real charmer, and we 

loved him. Another road acquaintance, Mrs. W. H. Green, lived near the 

reservoir on the Conduit Road. This old lady was a real character. She 

always saluted as we passed, and after Mr. Wilson’s illness she came to 

the White House to bring him an afghan she had knitted “to go over his 

knees,” she said. [My Memoir, pages 304-305] 

On March 19, 1920, the Senate voted 49 to 35 against the Paris peace treaty, thus 

blocking entrance into the League of Nations – 7 votes short of the two-thirds 

needed for approval. Secretary Tumulty gave President Wilson the bad news. 

That night, President Wilson had difficulty sleeping. 
187 

Dr. Grayson slept in the White House that night, periodically stepping into the 

President’s bedroom to check on him. At about 3 a.m., the President told 

Grayson, “Doctor, the devil is a busy man.” He asked Dr. Grayson to read a Bible 

verse from Corinthians: 

We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but 

not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed . 

. . . [Chapter 4, Verses 8 and 9] 

The President said, “If I were not a Christian, I think I should go mad, but my 

faith in God holds me to the belief that He is in some way working out His own 

plans through human perversities and mistakes.” [Berg, pages 677-678] 

A few days later, George Creel of the wartime Committee on Public Information 

visited President Wilson. Creel was shocked by the President’s appearance: 

I sat with him, miserably fumbling for words of comfort, but it was as 

though I had not been in the room. All the while his bloodless lips moved 

continuously, as if framing the arguments and forming new appeals. Only 

as I was leaving did he look at me seemingly, his eyes filled with an 

anguish, such as I trust never to see again. “If only I were not helpless,” he 

whispered. [Smith, pages 150-151] 

The President went for an auto ride on March 21, even posing for the 

photographers for about 5 minutes. He then motored through parks in the city and 

Maryland. [“President Poses Five Minutes For Cameras,” The Evening Star, 

March 22, 1920] 

President Wilson took another ride, a 2-hour jaunt into Virginia through 

Alexandria. 

However, it would be his last ride for a while. Smith concluded that President 

Wilson “could not stand the staring eyes—so the auto rides were discontinued.” 

[Smith, page 151] 

(The League of Nations, President Wilson’s hope for future peace, had gone into 

operation in January 1920 without the United States. After the March 19 vote on 

the Paris peace treaty, the Senate would never consider the treaty again, leaving 

the United States technically at war with Austria, Germany, and Hungary. 

President Wilson’s successor would negotiate separate peace treaties with the 

three nations, formally ending the United States’ war with them.) 

 
188 

The rides resumed on April 11. President and Mrs. Wilson were driven on the 

Speedway along the Potomac River, then through Rock Creek Park. They were 

out for about an hour. [“Wilson Goes For Ride,” The Baltimore Sun, April 12, 

1920] 

On April 28, the President had motored through Rock Creek Park again. The next 

day, the ride was the longest since he resumed his automobile rides on March 3. 

With Mrs. Wilson and members of her family in the rear seats, the President sat in 

the front passenger seat. They motored in Maryland as far as La Plata “following 

generally the route that J. Wilkes Booth took on his ride out of Washington in 

April, 1865,” as the Times put it. This was the first time since March 3 that the 

President had gone for a ride 2 days in a row. [“President Enjoys Longest Motor 

Ride,” The New York Times, April 30, 1920] 

(On June 29, the President’s cousin, John A. Wilson, visited the White House 

while in town on business. “He spent a half hour with President Wilson and 

found him much improved in health since a former visit last March.” [“President 

Sees Cousin,” The Evening Star, June 29, 1920]) 

President Wilson continued his rides through the year on a routine basis. 

An exception occurred on August 14. President and Mrs. Wilson were motoring 

through Rock Creek in the afternoon when a shower began. The chauffeur put up 

the car’s curtains. When the shower ended, the chauffeur again stopped again, 

this time to remove the curtains. The car was parked near a swimming hole. The 

Sun reported: 

Three boys, their hair still wet and their bathing suits still dripping, 

recognizing the official party, emerged from the bushes, and grinning 

broadly, chorused: 

“Howdy do, Mr. President.” 

“Howdy do,” came the smiling response from the Chief Executive. 

With boyish frankness, one youth then said: 

“Have you gotten well, Mr. President?” 

“At least I am improving,” said Mr. Wilson.

The boys moved on, but the President ordered the chauffeur to catch up with 

them:
189 

“Would you like to go for a ride?” said the President as he came up with 

the barefooted trio. 

“You bet!” they exclaimed, with hearts that beat as one.

Whereupon the elated youngsters climbed into the automobile, and for 

nearly an hour they were driven through the park and finally to their 

homes. 

Although the conversation in the car was not reported, “it is known that the 

President felt himself highly entertained and well repaid for the hospitality 

extended.” [“Wilson Gives Three Youngsters Long Ride In White House Car,” 

The Baltimore Sun, August 15, 1920] 

On August 28, the Star reported an improvement in the President’s condition: 

President Wilson stepped into his automobile in the rear of the White 

House yesterday for the first time since his serious illness without 

assistance and in sight of a large number of persons. He was accompanied 

in the drive by Mrs. Wilson and his daughter, Mrs. William H. McAdoo 

[Eleanor]. They all got into the rear seat of the big car.

It was apparent to the onlookers—at some distance, outside of the fence 

and hedge—that an inclined runway had been constructed to a level with 

the door of the car, up which the President walked when entering the 

automobile. [“President Walks To Car,” The Evening Star, August 28, 

1920] 

The Star reported another first that occurred on September 7: 

With only the assistance afforded by a stout cane President Wilson walked 

from the White House yesterday afternoon, through the front entrance and 

stepped into his automobile, while an interested throng in Pennsylvania 

avenue looked on. 

It was the first time since his illness that the President had started on a 

motor trip by that route, all trips heretofore having started from the rear 

grounds. 

The crowd rushed to the gate as the car approached Pennsylvania Avenue. The 

President “lifted his hat and smiled.” The Star described the ride:

The President drove around town for an hour, and then went to the Union 

station to meet his son-in-law and daughter [Jessie], Mr. and Mrs. Francis 

H. Sayre, and returned with them to the White House. The car took its 
190 

place in a procession of taxicabs, and despite the bustle and rush around 

the station, the crowds recognized the President and stopped to give him a 

respectful greeting. [“President Walks With Aid Of Heavy Cane Only,” 

The Evening Star, September 8, 1920] 

The Post’s Society column described an unusual ride on Sunday, November 19: 

President and Mrs. Wilson did not attend church yesterday morning, but 

enjoyed the perfect weather in the afternoon, when they went for a motor 

ride. They went uptown for Mrs. Wilson’s mother, Mrs. Bolling, and then 

for a spin about the Speedway on Potomac park. They had a pronounced 

demonstration of their popularity and were enthusiastically greeted on 

almost every street they turned into. As they whirled around the corner of 

the Army and Navy Club [at the intersection of Connecticut Avenue and 

I Street, NW., overlooking Farragut Square] a sightseeing automobile 

slowed up to permit them to pass, and as quickly as the guide recognized 

the President he announced it to the passengers, who rose in a body and 

cheered long and loudly. The President doffed his hat and Mrs. Wilson 

rewarded the sightseers with her bright smile. When the White House 

turned into the Speedway it attracted a long procession of cars, which 

dropped into line, driving as close to the side of the President’s car as they 

dared and keeping as closely behind it as they could. At frequent intervals 

the President lifted his hat and smiled to the enthusiasts and Mrs. Wilson 

smiled brightly and bowed graciously. [“President and Mrs. Wilson Out 

on Motor Spin Cheered by Throngs,” Society, The Washington Post, 

November 20, 1920] 

The 1920 Election 

The rides would continue virtually every day, although less newsworthy during 

the 1920 election. Behind the scenes, President Wilson thought that a third term 

might be possible. Berg described the idea: 

No President of the United States had ever defied George Washington’s 

tradition of leaving office after two terms. But along with other talk that 

sounded slightly deranged, Wilson told his physician that he was 

considering it. Even though he said, “Everyone seems to be opposed to 

my running,” Wilson had conjured a plot in which the Democratic 

Convention would find itself in a “hopeless tie-up,” and, with the world in 

so much turmoil, the Peace Treaty with its League of Nations would 

become the dominant issue. Then, Wilson said, “there may be practically 

a universal demand for the selection of someone to lead them out of the 
191 

wilderness. The only person he could envision, of course, was himself. 

He roughed out a new Cabinet. 

Dr. Grayson was skeptical in view of the President’s physical and psychological 

problems: 

Wilson believed that the man elected that fall would determine “whether 

the United States will be the leader of the world or back among the 

stragglers.” He had no intention of backing any Democrat for the 

nomination. Like a broken-down fire horse, he waited for the sound of the 

bell. [Berg, pages 684-685] 

Meeting in Chicago in early June, the Republicans initially were deadlocked 

between General Leonard Wood and Governor Frank O. Lowden of Illinois. 

Finally, Senator Warren G. Harding of Ohio emerged with the nomination on the 

10th ballot. Senator Harding, a newspaper publisher, had served as a State senator 

and Lieutenant Governor, but had lost his bid for election as Governor in 1910. In 

1914, he won election to the U.S. Senate, and now had the nomination for 

President. Governor Calvin Coolidge of Massachusetts was his running mate. 

President Wilson had a low opinion of Senator Harding. On August 19, 1919, 

Senator Harding had joined his colleagues on the Committee on Foreign Relations 

when they went to the White House to discuss the Paris treaty with the President. 

After the President read a long statement in support of the treaty, the Senators 

“grilled him for the next three hours”: 

Only once did Wilson seem agitated—when first-term Ohio Senator 

Warren G. Harding raised a series of questions about America’s moral 

obligations as opposed to the legal, which suggested he had not listened to 

the answer Wilson had just provided. He struck the President as having “a 

disturbingly dull mind, and . . . it seemed impossible to get any 

explanation to lodge in it.” [Berg, pages 617-618] 

In San Francisco, 10,000 Democrats were deadlocked between Ohio Governor 

William O. Cox and President Wilson’s son-in-law, former Secretary of the 

Treasury McAdoo. At the White House, President Wilson briefly saw the 

possibility emerging that a deadlocked convention would turn to him for a third 

term, but on the 43rd ballot, Governor Cox finally took the nomination, with the 

44th making it unanimous. The Vice Presidential nominee would be Assistant 

Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt, a cousin of former President 

Roosevelt. 
192 

Presidential stenographer Swem believed that President Wilson was “a bitter 

man” after Cox secured the nomination, “not because he disliked Cox but because 

he didn’t get it himself.” [Berg, page 691] 

On July 18, the Democratic nominees visited the White House to meet with the 

President. Initially, the President appeared weak and frail. “But Wilson revived 

when he spoke of the campaign ahead, as he briefed the two hopefuls with 

substantial details and humorous anecdotes.” Governor Cox stated that he was a 

million percent with the President in support of the League of Nations, earning 

Wilson’s appreciation. In a barely audible voice, he replied, “I am very grateful. I 

am very grateful.” [Berg, pages 691-692] 

Former President Taft had said of the 1920 election that, “The issue which the 

American people are going to vote upon, no matter what Mr. Cox wishes, Mr. 

Wilson wishes, Mr. Lodge wishes, or Mr. Harding wishes, is whether they 

approve the Administration of Mr. Wilson.” Harding encapsulated that idea with 

his theme of “Return to Normalcy.” (Smith noted that, “The First Lady took the 

word as a personal insult to herself, saying that she had done her best to keep 

things normal.”) [Smith, page 166] 

The election was held on November 3, 1920. Senator Harding voted in his 

hometown of Marion. According to biographer Francis Russell, he then changed 

into his golf clothes and went to play at the Scioto County Club: 

By the time they left Columbus in the late afternoon it had begun to rain 

and Harding urged the chauffeur to “step on it.” Ten miles outside Marion 

the car skidded, veered off the road, and almost hit a telegraph pole. 

Somewhat shaken, chilled, and hungry, Harding arrived home to find 

himself the center of a surprise birthday party, arranged by the Dutchess 

[nickname for his wife Florence]. [Russell, Francis, The Shadow of 

Blooming Grove: Warren G. Harding in His Times, McGraw-Hill Book 

Company, 1968, page 416] 

Although President Wilson considered Senator Harding shallow, voluble, and 

“nothing,” he could do little during the campaign: 

The President spent part of Election Day engaged in physical therapy—

struggling with a cane to mount a few low steps. When he paused for 

news, he learned that Cox was trailing badly. [Berg, page 693] 

He voted by absentee ballot in Princeton on November 2 as a technical resident at 

10 Nassau Street across from the university. Mrs. Wilson, whose name had been 

placed on the list of eligible voters on the last day open for registration, voted by 

mail as well. Women secured the right to vote when the New Jersey legislature 
193 

ratified the 19th Amendment to the Constitution earlier in the year (“The right of 

citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United 

States or by any State on account of sex.”). Mrs. Wilson would not have been 

allowed to vote in the District of Columbia, whose residents, males and female,

did not have the right to vote in presidential elections until 1964. [“Mr. and 

Mrs. Wilson Vote,” The New York Times, November 3, 1920] 

According to the Times, “During the afternoon the President and Mrs. Wilson 

took their daily automobile ride.” [“President Wilson Stoical In Defeat,” The New 

York Times, November 4, 1920] 

In the morning, President Wilson learned that Senator Harding had won 37 States, 

with Governor Cox securing only 11, leaving the electoral college vote at 404 to 

127. The popular vote was 16.1 million for Senator Harding and 9.1 million for 

Governor Cox. The congressional elections also favored the Republicans. The 

Senate would have 59 Republicans and 37 Democrats, while the Republican 

majority in the House was even more lopsided, 302 to 131. 

It was, in short, a slap in the face to President Wilson. “The victors,” Berg 

summarized, “were only too happy to embrace Wilson’s premise that the election 

had been a referendum on his League.” 

President Wilson worried about America’s role in the world. He told Tumulty, “It 

is the country and its future that I am thinking about. We had a chance to gain the 

leadership of the world. We have lost it, and soon we will be witnessing the 

tragedy of it all.” After all, he said of President-elect Harding, “How can he lead 

when he does not know where he is going.” 

As Berg also noted, “The day after the election, the Wilsons took their automobile 

ride through Washington, as though nothing had happened.” 

On November 8, the Sun reported that many observers believed that President 

Wilson had decided to stay in Washington after he left office, although he had not 

issued an official statement about his intentions:

The belief is based on the fact that it is the home of Mrs. Wilson and also 

because of the often expressed statement by the President that Washington 

approached his ideal city.

Those in close touch with the White House say the President for the last 

few weeks has taken a keen interest in real estate on his daily automobile 

ride. He has displayed special interest in two particular sections, 

Georgetown and the modern fashionable residential section of Chevy 

Chase.
194 

The president [sic] often has his car stopped near the old colonial mansion 

recently purchased by Rear Admiral Cary T. Grayson, and this has given 

rise to the belief that while Dr. Grayson has insisted that the home was 

purchased for his own use it ultimately will be turned over to Mr. Wilson. 

[“Wilson To Make Home In Washington, Is Belief,” The Baltimore Sun, 

November 8, 1920] 

Around Christmas, Mrs. Wilson was looking for a new home, as Smith described: 

At Christmas they held a little family dinner party and got together small 

gifts for the children along the country roads. They at first considered 

building a home, and the President spent much time looking through 

architectural magazines, but as time grew short they gave up the idea and 

sought an already-constructed one. They looked very seriously at a house 

near Alexandria and at one in Massachusetts Avenue park, and at one 

situated upon twenty-six wooded acres through which a quiet stream ran, 

but the plans for purchase did not work out. One morning she went to see 

two possible places in S Street—one of them would shortly be purchased 

by Herbert Hoover [the incoming Secretary of Commerce and future 

President] but neither met their needs. She was about to leave S Street, 

which in Washington in 1920 was the point at which country began to take 

over from city, when the agent with her asked if she would not look at a 

third house on the block, Number 2340. She did so and decided the house 

was perfect. She returned to the White House and told the President that 

she thought this was the place. That afternoon she went to a concert by the 

touring New York Philharmonic and when she returned he was in the Oval 

Room with the deed to the house in hand. The President had not seen the 

house at all, but the next day they went to it together . . . . 

The house at 2340 S Street, NW., completed in 1915, cost the Wilsons about 

$150,000, “an extremely large sum by 1920 standards. The President was aided in 

the purchase by ten friends who contributed $10,000 each to assure him a proper 

residence.” [Smith, page 174] 

The White House announced the purchase of the home, in the Kalorama-Embassy 

Row area, on December 17, 1920. The Sun told readers:

The home is regarded as one of the finest examples of Colonial 

architecture in Washington. It is built of Colonial brick and Indiana 

Limestone and is fireproof throughout. 

The entrance is through a large hall. A wide Colonial stairway leads to the 

second floor, and from the first landing a beautiful view is obtained of the 

floral garden in the rear of the building. 
195 

The second floor contains a large library, a formal reception room and a 

dining room. An unusual feature is an oval sun parlor which affords a 

commanding view of the city looking south toward the river. 

Six master’s [sic] bedrooms and four baths comprise the third floor. 

Servants’ quarters are located on the fourth floor. [“Home In Washington 

Bought By President,” The Baltimore Sun, December 18, 1920] 

Before the Wilsons would move in, they undertook about $4,000 in 

improvements, including installation of an elevator. 

The Hardings, during the President-elect’s Senate years in Washington, lived a 

few blocks away in a new brick duplex at 2314 Wyoming Avenue. 

President and Mrs. Wilson spent their last New Year’s Day in the White House: 

President Wilson looked at the new year today with a smile. He was 

feeling better than for some time. He received members of the family and 

a few intimate friends in the morning and saw a moving picture in the East 

Room, laughing at the presentation. In the afternoon he took an 

automobile ride through Rock Creek Park and exchanged messages with 

the Rotary Club of Baltimore. [“President Greets New Year Smilingly,” 

The New York Times, January 2, 1921] 

Inauguration day on March 4, 1921, involved many tasks that President Wilson’s 

condition rendered questionable. At 10:30, the Hardings and the Congressional 

Inauguration Committee arrived at the White House. As Harding biographer 

Russell observed, the contrast between the President and the President-elect was 

great. The President who had danced a jig after his wedding “had become an old 

man, with the querulous twitching look of age, his gray hair wisping unkemptly 

about his ears, the inherited strength of his eroded features only dimly apparent.” 

As for President-elect Harding, Russell wrote:

The President-elect . . . was an impressive sight. His lusty black eyebrows 

contrasted with his steel-gray hair to give the effect of health. Although 

fifty-five years old, he looked older, but with an unimpaired statesmanlike 

virility. If he had been wearing a toga instead of a double-breasted 

chesterfield he could have stepped on stage in a production of Julius 

Caesar. Of all the members of the United States Senate in the years that 

he had served there, he most resembled the classical model. [Russell, 

pages 4-5] 

Their mental outlook was equally different. President Wilson had been a scholar, 

author, professor, and college administrator who loved to read, enjoyed reading 

poetry and prose to his family at night, and embodied the idea of an intellectual. 
196 

President-elect Harding enjoyed cards, drinking, gambling, golf, and spending 

time with his friends. 

The cars were waiting, with 50 police officers to prevent any photographs from 

being taken until the President was seated. The inaugural committee had supplied 

a Packard Twin 6 for the trip. The contemporary account in the Times reported: 

President Wilson walked out of the front door on the arm of Mr. Harding. 

On the porch Mr. Wilson used his cane and Mr. Harding dropped his arm. 

Mr. Wilson walked unaided a distance of about forty feet to the waiting 

automobiles . . . . This little forty-foot trip for Mr. Wilson was a very 

trying ordeal.

The President smiled faintly at the onlookers surrounding the portico. It 

had been arranged that no moving picture should be taken until after the 

Presidential party had entered the automobiles. Mr. Harding stood at the 

edge of the platform, while “Colonel” Arthur Brooks, the colored valet of 

the President, took tender hold of the President’s right arm, at the same 

time handing the President’s cane to a Secret Service man standing in the 

automobile. James Sloan, another Government Secret Service man who 

had been serving with Mr. Harding since the election, aided Mr. Wilson to 

enter the car. Care had to be taken because it was quite a long stride for 

the President from the top of the steps to the running board of the 

automobile. Mr. Wilson was guided by the Secret Service man as the 

President stepped forward . . . . 

The expression on the face of Mr. Harding as he gazed upon the tragic 

figure of his predecessor slowly getting into the automobile was a very 

interesting study. There was something brotherly about Mr. Harding’s 

look and an apparent realization of the real weight of the load that 

American Presidents cannot evade.

The battery of the motion-picture men literally “went over the top” the 

moment Mr. Wilson and Mr. Harding were seated . . . . 

As soon as he himself had entered the automobile President Wilson turned 

his head and looked up at Mr. Harding, who was still standing until certain 

that Mr. Wilson was comfortable. Mr. Wilson then lifted his hat to 

Mr. Harding, who responded with a bow. 

The Presidential procession moved onto Pennsylvania Avenue for the ride to the 

Capitol, accompanied by cavalry, swords drawn. 
197 

At the Capitol, President-elect Harding and Vice President-elect Coolidge, along 

with members of the party, went up the steps to the President’s Room. President 

Wilson was driven to a ground floor entrance where he could avoid the steps. He 

entered by wheelchair, walked to an elevator, and finally reached the President’s 

Room. 

“Mr. Wilson divided his time in the President’s Room between the signing of bills 

and receiving visitors”: 

Later it was learned that this [entrance] was a reply to an inquiry whether 

Mr. Wilson thought he would be able to go into the Senate Chamber or to 

the Senate portico. It was also learned that during their automobile ride 

from the White House to the Capitol Mr. Harding told Mr. Wilson that he 

would quite understand if he should find it impossible go through with all 

of the inaugural ceremonies. Mr. Wilson did not care to go to the portico, 

if he felt he could not remain until after Mr. Harding had been inaugurated, 

as he thought it would be ungracious to leave during the ceremonies. 

After he had become fatigued at the Capitol Mr. Wilson came to 

appreciate also that if he attempted to walk all the way to the portico the 

slowness of his stride might delay the movement of the rest of the 

program.

In the President’s Room, President Wilson signed the final bills of his second 

term:

PL66-377 - New Mexico Enabling Act Amendment, 1921 

PL66-379 - Federal Farm Loan Act Amendments, 1921 

PL66-380 - Alaska Coal Land Leasing Act of 1914 Amendment 

PL66-381 - Missouri 100th Anniversary 50-Cent Piece 

PL66-382 - Carson National Forest Land Consolidation Act 

PL66-383 - Chickasaw and Seminole Tribes of Indians in Oklahoma 

 Memorial Monument 

PL66-387 - Rainier National Forest Land Exchange Act 

PL66-390 - Homestead Entries Validation, 1921 

PL66-391 - Army Personnel Property Claims Settlement 

PL66-394 - Army Equipment Transfer to Nation Museum 

PL66-395 - Bridge Across the Detroit River near Detroit, Michigan 

PL66-397 - Memorials and Tombs at the Arlington Memorial

 Amphitheater

As others moved to the Senate for administration of the oath of office to Governor 

Coolidge, President and Mrs. Wilson returned to their automobile: 
198 

Outside waited one of the White House automobiles. This was not the 

hired inaugural committee’s car in which Mr. Wilson had ridden to the 

Capitol, and which was standing at the same door to convey Mr. Harding, 

once inaugurated, back to the White House. The White House car which 

was available to Mr. Wilson for the last time was one in which he has 

made many of his suburban journeys around Washington. Mrs. Wilson, 

Secretary Tumulty, Admiral Grayson, Brooks, the valet and secret service 

men accompanied Mr. Wilson on his ride as a private citizen . . . . 

Instead of taking the direct short cut across the city two motorcycle 

policemen led the way for Mr. Wilson along Pennsylvania Avenue to the 

White House around Madison Place to Seventeenth Street, to 

Massachusetts Avenue, to Sheridan Circle and to the broad-fronted threestory [sic] residence for which Mr. Wilson recently paid $150,000. 

As the automobile moved along Pennsylvania Avenue, “there were flurries of 

applause.” Before the ceremonies inaugurating Vice President Coolidge were 

finished, the Wilsons had reached their new home at 2340 S Street, NW. 

[“Wilson’s Exit Is Tragic,” The New York Times, March 5, 1921] 

Conclusion 

President Harding, who had been so considerate to his predecessor before the 

inauguration despite their political and policy differences, acted without public 

notice to help the former President through his remaining years. The Times

reported in August 1923: 

Without a request or suggestion from anybody, and without any one 

knowing of it, President Harding personally gave an order to the Navy 

Department that Dr. Grayson was to be assigned to duty in Washington, 

where his services would be available to Mr. Wilson and that in no 

circumstances was he to be ordered elsewhere without the President’s 

consent. 

Woodrow Wilson probably will get his first knowledge of Mr. Harding’s 

action if he read this dispatch. [“Harding Kept Grayson Within Wilson’s 

Call,” The New York Times, August 4, 1923] 

The Wilsons had favored the White House’s 1916 Pierce-Arrow, a right-hand 

drive vestibule sedan, that they had used on many of their rides around the area. 

Now, just before leaving office, he purchased the automobile and would use it for 

the rest of his life. The Presidential seal was painted over for his private use. 

(Mrs. Wilson would eventually donate the automobile to the Woodrow Wilson 

Birthplace Foundation at Staunton, Virginia.) [Collins, page 138] 
199 

He began using the automobile immediately, with a new chauffeur. On March 5, 

former President Wilson and his wife went for an afternoon ride through Rock 

Creek Park. The plan was to rest from the exertions of his final days in office. 

[“Wilson Begins Rest At His New Home,” The Washington Post, March 6, 1921; 

“Citizen Wilson Enjoys First Day of Freedom,” The Baltimore Sun, March 6, 

1921] 

(At the White House, the Hardings were settling into their new routines. On 

March 6, “they went for an hour’s automobile ride, trailed by a Secret Service 

machine.” Automobile rides would become part of their regular relaxation. For 

the new President, however, golf would be a regular feature for recreation. 

President Wilson had taken up golf at his doctor’s recommendation, but for 

President Harding it was a long-time passion:

At least two afternoons a week Harding played golf, and nothing but a 

downpour could keep him from the course. Yet, though his golfing was 

given much publicity, he actually spent less time on the links than had 

Wilson before his stroke . . . . Once on the links, he played as if his life 

depended on every shot, and made so many bets that sometimes he was 

betting against himself on individual shots and holes, on low score against 

his partner, or with his partner six dollars Nassau against their opponents 

(meaning six dollars out, six dollars in, and six dollars across). [“Harding 

Spends Sunday Quietly,” The New York Times, March 7, 1921; Russell, 

page 445])

The Wilsons settled into a routine of an automobile ride every afternoon, as 

Mrs. Wilson recalled:

Relief from the burdens of official responsibility was such a boon that the 

first few days we simply basked in it, doing little except read the mail. 

This was heavy. Letters poured in from everywhere, from men and 

women of every walk and station in life . . . . 

Soon we had to develop a daily routine or be swamped . . . . After lunch 

he would retire for an hour’s complete rest, then keep appointments until 

about 3:30 . . . . After this came our daily drive. As the reader knows, 

Mr. Wilson loved motoring and he was always cheered by the greetings 

that met him on every side. [My Memoir, pages 324-325] 

They also visited the theater on Saturday evenings. Smith described the routine 

on theater night: 
200 

Few could get to see him at his home, but they stood in the rain and in the 

snow and wind each Saturday night to see him when he went to the 

vaudeville at Keith’s Theatre. “Wilson Night,” it was called—Saturday 

night after a week in which the ticket sellers had constantly to say, “This is 

as near to him as I can place you.” Always he sat in the same seat, U-21. 

At eight in the evening a police lieutenant with a squad closed off G Street 

between 14th and 15th to all vehicular traffic and took up station in a little 

alley by the side of the theater. The street filled up with people—always 

they were there, no matter what the weather; and week by week they grew 

in their numbers—and a little after eight the big Pierce-Arrow came slowly 

down the way and halted in the alley. 

The servant Scott, in black suit instead of the white jacket he wore at 

home, helped the ex-President out of the car and to the alley door held 

open by a member of the theater staff. He was always in evening clothes. 

As he came out, behind him there would be a thrill of excitement in the 

waiting crowd and a series of audible whispers: “There he is!” Inside, 

Edith helped him out of his coat and took off his hat and put them in a 

little vestibule, and he moved to Seat U-21 [sic], she preceding him with a 

guest or two, John Randolph Bolling, perhaps, or Margaret down for a 

weekend. The theater’s house detective stood in the aisle to keep people 

away. He had always loved the theater and in another day used to put a 

record on the Victrola that stood in the Oval Room at 1600 Pennsylvania 

Avenue and dance to it in imitation of the stage hoofers. Now there could 

be no dancing for him, but still he could laugh at the stunts and the jokes. 

When he missed a line, Edith whispered it to him, and when he dropped 

his handkerchief she picked it up. 

At the end of the performance people dashed out of the main entrance and 

circled back to the alley to see him into his car. Often a group of 

performers waited there to hand him a spray of flowers and say a few 

words. Cary Grayson remembered a young actress still in costume and 

stage make-up offering flowers and speaking for the other girls with her, 

saying, “We simply want to tell you that we love you dearly.” [Smith, 

pages 217-218] 

Now that he was out of office, his daily automobile rides were no longer news 

except on occasion. On November 2, 1921, for example, the Post reported that 

“Woodrow Wilson went for an automobile ride yesterday for the first time in 

almost a week since his attack of indigestion. He was out for more than an hour, 

riding over the Virginia hills. [“Wilson Goes For Auto Ride,” The Washington 

Post, November 2, 1921] 
201 

Former President Wilson would make few official appearances, but he intended to 

attend dedication of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National 

Cemetery on November 11, 1921. The day had been designated Armistice Day, a 

national holiday honoring the end of the great European war. (November 11 is 

now Veterans’ Day.)

His physical condition limited where he could walk, as it had during President 

Harding’s inauguration. The Times described his role: 

Ex-President Wilson was not there as he had planned to be, but he rode in 

the funeral procession through the streets of Washington as far as the 

White House and received an ovation all along the route. 

The crowds along the line of march were imbued with the solemnity of the 

occasion and showed an appreciation of the funeral spirit. But when they 

saw the stricken man who had been Commander-in-Chief of the forces 

with which the Unknown Warrior fought they broke into cheers. 

It was apparent that the sight of Wilson, his once strong body broken by 

ill-health, his limbs too frail to permit his marching with the other great 

men who followed the Unknown caisson on foot, was a grim reminder that 

he had been an outstanding figure in the world conflict which today’s 

ceremonial typified.

In the procession, President and Mrs. Wilson rode in a horse-drawn open 

barouche behind the Quantico Marine Band of 60 men playing funeral marching 

anthems. The Wilsons were followed by about 200 old men, all members of the 

Grand Army of the Republic. The Star added that after passing the White House, 

the Wilsons’ carriage left the procession and took them home. “The comment 

was heard in the crowd that the former President, long a sick man, looked better 

than many folks expected.” [“Solemn Journey of Dead,” The New York Times, 

November 12, 1921; “Comrade Escort to The American Stiffles [sic] Grief in 

Patriotic Pride,” The Washington Post, November 12, 1921; “Reverent Throngs 

Bow in Respect As Cortege Passes By,” The Evening Star, November 11, 1921] 

The day was not without mishaps, as the Star described:

A small touring car, Washington bound, ran out of gasoline in the middle 

of Highway bridge [cite of today’s I-395/14th Street Bridge complex] this 

morning and precipitated a traffic jam which prevented hundreds of 

Washingtonians from attending the services at Arlington, caused the 

automobile bearing the President of the United States to leave the main 

road and cut across the field three times, and drove a special squad of 

policemen nearly frantic in their efforts to straighten out the tangle.
202 

The touring car stalled in the middle of the bridge and held up a long line 

of machines behind it, all Washington bound. Some of them tried to pass 

and met the vanguard of the hundreds of machines which had left 

Washington and were on their way to the Arlington Cemetery. 

In short time the bridge and its approaches were jammed with 

automobiles, on some roads four abreast, and the two traffic policemen 

stationed at the entrance to the bridge, sent in hurry calls for help. 

Forty or so policemen responded and worked for more than an hour 

breaking up the tangle . . . . 

The President’s car left the White House on schedule time [sic]. When the 

machine, preceded by secret service men and policemen mounted on 

motor cycles, reached the outskirts of the jam, it left the road three times 

and cut across the grass, reaching points ahead where the road was 

comparatively clear.

At times the secret service men in the car got out and walked ahead, 

clearing space for the White House car. When the presidential party 

reached the Arlington experiment station the car was driven off the 

roadway and through the lanes which cut through the farm. [“Auto Causes 

Huge Tangle In Traffic,” The Evening Star, November 11, 1921] 

(The Arlington Experiment Farm of the Department of Agriculture was located in 

Virginia along the Potomac River near Columbia Island in sight of Arlington 

National Cemetery. BPR maintained an outdoor experimental laboratory on the 

farm.)

President Wilson turned 65 on December 28, 1921. Other than a family dinner, 

the Wilsons did not have any other celebration of the occasion, which brought 

more than 1,000 communications from around the world to their home on 

S Street:

Mr. Wilson was in better health today than he has enjoyed for several 

months. He was strong enough to receive a few intimate friends, but the 

names of these were not made public . . . . 

In the afternoon Mr. and Mrs. Wilson went for a long automobile ride. 

Many who saw him commented on the fact that his condition seemed 

improved since he participated in the parade in honor of the Unknown 

American who was buried in Arlington Cemetery on Armistice Day. 

[“World’s Greetings Reach Wilson at 65,” The New York Times, 

December 29, 1921] 
203 

The following year, on Armistice Day, November 11, 1922, more than 5,000 

“friends and admirers” showed up at the Wilsons’ S Street home to honor the 

former President. The crowd was so large that “the street car lines had to put on 

extra cars to handle it.” The 45-minute ceremony began at about 3 p.m. with the 

singing of several southern songs, including “Take Me Back to Old Virginia.” He 

came outside to greet the crowd:

Mr. Wilson was very happy. There could be no question about that. His 

friends maintained that physically he appeared to be in better condition 

than he was a year ago. The old ring of his voice was missing, but his 

enunciation was clear and distinct and reached to most parts of the crowd. 

He was assisted to his position on the stoop by his colored attendant, but 

stood without support while he was making his speech, by far the longest 

he had made since he was stricken in the Fall of 1919. For a while he 

remained with head uncovered. Then with a smile he placed his hat on his 

head.

He began by thanking the crowd, but discussed his views on the armistice that the 

day honored: 

I have been reflecting today that Armistice Day has a particular 

significance for the United States because the United States has remained 

contented with the armistice and has not moved forward to peace. 

It is a very serious reflection that the United States, the great originative 

nation, should remain contented with a negation. Armistice is a negation; 

it is a standstill of arms; it is a cessation of fighting, and we are so bent on 

a cessation of fighting that we are even throwing our arms away.

It is a singular circumstance . . . that while we prescribed the conditions of 

the armistice we will not concur in the establishment of permanent peace. 

That, of course, was brought about by a group in the United States Senate 

who preferred personal partisan motives to the honor of their country and 

the peace of the world. [Applause.] 

They do not represent the United States, because the United States is 

moving forward and they are slipping backward. Where the slipping will 

end, God only will determine. 

And I have been reflecting upon the radical difference between armistice 

and peace. Armistice, as I have said, is a mere negation; it is refraining 

from force. But peace is a very positive and constructive thing as the 

world stands nowadays, because it must be brought about by the 

systematic maintenance of common understanding and by cultivation—not 
204 

by amiable phrases, but the active co-operation for justice; and justice is a 

greater thing than any kind of expediency. [Applause.] 

America has always stood for justice and always will stand for it. Puny 

persons who are now standing in the way will presently find that their 

weakness is no match for the strength of a moving Providence. 

If you will pardon an invalid for putting on his hat, I will promise not to 

talk through it. [Laughter and applause.] 

I think, then, we may renew today our faith in the future though we are 

celebrating the past. The future is in our hands, and if we are not equal to 

it the shame will be ours and none others. 

I thank you from a very full heart, my friends, for this demonstration of 

kindness by you, and bid you and the nation godspeed. 

The Times described the end of the ceremony: 

When the demonstration at the Wilson home had ended the great crowd 

formed two lines on either side of S Street, in lines extending for two 

blocks beyond Connecticut Avenue. Through these cheering lines the exPresident left his home for his daily automobile ride. He lifted his hat time 

and again and smiled his deep appreciation of the tribute accorded him. 

[“Wilson See Nation Moving Forward; Hits At His Foes,” The New York 

Times, November 22, 1922] 

 On December 27, 1922, the day before the former President’s 66th birthday, 

Franklin D. Roosevelt, visited S Street. Berg wrote: 

Franklin Roosevelt informed him that in a little more than year, the 

organizers of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation had raised $1 million. The 

fund’s income would be used, Roosevelt said, to prompt public welfare, 

democracy, and peace through justice. 

Roosevelt was the foundation’s chairman:

The next day, Wilson’s birthday, he welcomed four of the Foundation’s 

board members and learned that most of the funding had come not from 

wealthy benefactors (such as Henry Ford, who had contributed $10,000) 

but from thousands of ordinary citizens, each of whom supported his 

vision with a dollar. The delegation left Wilson speechless. ‘I wish I 

could have controlled my voice so I could really have expressed what I 

felt,” he told Edith afterwards, “but I could not trust myself lest I break 

down and cry.” 
205 

His S Street home was again flooded with greetings and strangers waiting outside, 

despite a heavy rain, in hopes of a glimpse of the former President: 

When the delegation emerged there was a rush of people through the rain 

to the gate at the side of the house behind which Mr. Wilson’s closed 

automobile was waiting at the porte cochere. There was enthusiastic 

cheering when Mr. Wilson appeared, wearing a soft brown hat and a cape 

over a Winter overcoat. He hooked his cane over his left arm and stood 

alone with his hat in his right hand, bowing and smiling. Then he tossed 

his hat into the car and was assisted to a rear seat.

“Don’t catch cold,” cried one woman, bobbing up and down under her 

umbrella, while figures behind her were loud in lamentation over the 

obstruction in front of their cameras. Mr. Wilson smiled again and put on 

his hat. Then Mrs. Wilson entered the car and they drove off for an hour’s 

ride around the Potomac speedway. 

Those who had not seen Mr. Wilson for several months found him looking 

heavier and fuller faced, with possibly more color. Although he did not 

move his left arm and side with freedom, he appeared to depend less upon 

his cane. [Berg, pages 724-725; “Senate Felicitates Wilson On Birthday,” 

The New York Times, December 29, 1922] 

On June 20, 1923, President Harding, his wife Dutchess, and other officials and 

aides boarded a train at Union Station for a 15,000-mile, 2-month Voyage of 

Understanding across the country and to the territory of Alaska. Biographer 

Russell wrote:

For all his feigned heartiness as he waved good-by, Harding’s face was 

crossed with fatigue and his olive complexion sallow. Yet, in spite of his 

obvious physical and mental weariness, he seemed on the transcontinental 

journey incapable of resting or relaxing. Confined to the plush and burledwalnut elegance of the Superb, he grew restless, never remaining long in 

his seat but moving from side to side and peering through the windows at 

the now-browning landscape. Above all he wanted to play bridge, and 

when not at the bridge table he wanted to talk. Never did he want to be 

alone. [Russell, page 574] 

Already, the early reports of corruption in his Administration had emerged, the 

scope of which would undermine his reputation as President. 

On July 4, after a series of speeches and events across the country, he left Tacoma, 

Washington, for the 4-day voyage to Alaska:
206 

Harding had concluded most of his trip’s formal speechmaking although 

he still planned a major address on the way back at San Francisco on his 

now dominant and dominating issue of the World Court. Defining himself 

as he never had before, moving beyond his party in his determination to 

become leader of his country, he was willing to stake his reputation on the 

World Court as Wilson had dared to stake his on the League of Nations. 

Yet, in spite of the fact that his speeches showed him moving toward a 

new conception of himself and the Presidency, there was an undercurrent 

of doom to his Voyage of Understanding, a feeling of malignant fate in the 

offing. Convinced that he had been betrayed, Harding could not shake the 

feeling. [Russell, page 581] 

After the tour of Alaska, the Harding party ended at Sitka on a ship for the return 

to the States. Restless again, President Harding went into the dining room where 

Ora M. “Reddy” Baldinger, once a delivery boy at Harding’s newspaper, now his 

military aide, was enjoying a crab feast. Baldinger invited the President to join 

him. “For over an hour the old editor and his delivery boy squatted there in their 

shirt sleeves, elbows on the table, cracking the shells and picking out the meat as 

they talked of old times in Marion, their relaxed faces smeared with butter.” 

[Russell, pages 587-588] 

The ship took the party to Vancouver, where President Harding appeared listless 

during the few events. “He did his best, making five impromptu speeches and 

then speaking bareheaded to 40,000 people at Stanley Park, but he appeared worn 

and in spite of his bulk almost frail.” 

Several events, including an auto parade, were scheduled for Seattle, as well as a 

speech, written by Secretary Hoover, before 60,000 people in Seattle Stadium: 

Those near him could see the exhaustion written into his slack face, the 

slightly green tinge to his cheeks, the way his jaws set in pain. Several 

times while speaking he hesitated, slurred his words, called Alaska 

“Nebraska.” Then, halfway through he faltered, dropped the manuscript, 

and clutched the lectern in front of him with both hands. An alarmed and 

solicitous Hoover, sitting directly behind him, managed to pick up the 

scattered pages from the flood, handed him the next few, and sorted out 

the rest while the President caught his breath and continued speaking. 

[Russell, page 589] 

A planned speech in Portland was canceled, while the train took the Presidential 

party to San Francisco without stops, much to the disappointment of crowds at 

stations along the way. 
207 

Doctor Charles E. Sawyer thought the President’s problem was “a slight attack of 

ptomaine” that would have “no serious aspects.” President Harding went to bed 

as soon as the party arrived at the Palace Hotel. He seemed to be regaining his 

strength, but on August 2, 1923, at 7:32 p.m. President Warren G. Harding passed 

away.

The shocked Presidential party returned to Washington for the ceremonies 

attendant to the death of a President in office: 

During that long, fog-streaked night while the Palace stirred and hummed 

like a beehive that has been disturbed, far on the other side of the country 

in the quiet of a Vermont hill village, Calvin Coolidge—the prim, tightlipped Yankee whom the Dutchess despised—was being sworn in by 

lamplight as the thirtieth President of the United States. [Russell, page 

592] 

Thousands viewed the train as it traveled east, carrying the remains of President 

Harding to Washington, arriving in Washington’s Union Station on August 6. 

As plans for the funeral emerged, Chief Justice Taft, one of only two living exPresidents, planned to attend. Whether former President Wilson would be able to 

attend was uncertain. Initially, his health prompted President Wilson to decline to 

participate. On August 6, however, he wrote to ask President Coolidge to reserve 

a place in the procession for him. “It will be with feelings of the utmost solemnity 

and reverence that I will attend. I regret to say my lameness makes it 

impracticable for me to attend the exercises at the Capitol.” [“Wilson Asks Place 

in Funeral Procession Be Reserved for Him,” The Evening Star, August 6, 1923] 

On August 7, President Wilson motored with Mrs. Wilson to the New Willard 

hotel where President Coolidge was staying. He left his card with the doorman in 

an envelope marked “For the President.” It was one of hundreds of cards left for 

the new President. [“Wilson Leaves His Card,” The New York Times, August 8, 

1923] 

The procession on August 8 began at the White House. The Star reported: 

A little less than a half hour before the procession was to start Woodrow 

Wilson, accompanied by Mrs. Wilson and Rear Admiral Grayson, arrived 

at the north door of the White House. As his car came to a stop before the 

great pillars, past which he, too, had looked out upon the world many 

times in high hope and then in disappointment, the infantry guard stationed 

there saluted him, and he returned the salutation with a wave of his hand. 

The car then waited to take up its place in the funeral line . . . . 
208 

While waiting in his 1916 Pierce-Arrow, President Wilson held a palm leaf fan in 

his right hand to deal with the intense 95-degree heat of the day.

The procession began with President Harding’s coffin on a black caisson drawn 

by four black horses onto Pennsylvania Avenue. Mrs. Harding’s car followed, its 

curtains drawn. 

President Coolidge followed in his car, with former President Taft’s car behind 

him:

Then came a figure who was a reminder, too, of a gayer and happier day. 

Woodrow Wilson had come from the seclusion and quiet of the house 

where he bravely and patiently waits for his summons from the Creator, to 

show his respect and ease a genuine sorrow. 

Only a little while ago he rode over the same way with Warren Harding 

beside him in the full bloom of vigorous life, about to take up the burden 

he was laying down. Harding’s consideration for the sick man beside him 

touched every heart and dimmed many eyes that day. It touched Woodrow 

Wilson’s heart as few things had and today he came to pay it back and put 

his heart upon his sleeve. Little did anybody dream that Woodrow Wilson 

would be helping lay Warren Harding under the sod, but death had given a 

respite to the one and abruptly summoned the other 

The crowd was respectful, but not cheering the former President who had seen the 

country through the great war. 

The coffin was placed in the Rotunda of the Capitol for a prayer service before 

being taken to Union Station for the trip to Marion. 

The Star described the participation of four Presidents in the procession—

Coolidge, Harding, Taft, and Wilson—saying, “Washington had never known 

such a procession of the Presidents before. No dead President has ever before 

been mourned by two of his predecessors in the White House.” Of Wilson, the 

article said:

And last of all came Wilson, broken on the wheel of duty just short of four 

years ago, pale, exceedingly gray, but with the spirit of the crusader still 

burning strong within him. Wilson, who was eight years in the White 

House, the longest continuous term of any President since Grant . . . . 

He rode with the wife who has scarcely left his side in the four long years 

since he was stricken—stricken as he fought to lead the nation in the way 

he thought it should go, as he fought to carry out with his own people the 
209 

commitments he had made in their name at the peace councils of the old 

world . . . . 

Mr. Wilson could not take part in the services within the Capitol building. 

Bravely he had accompanied Mr. Hardin to the Capitol for his 

inauguration, but the effort at walking was too great. 

[“Cortege Passes Through Lane Of Grief On Journey From White House To 

Capitol,” The Baltimore Sun, August 9, 1923; “Pomp Of Nation In Parade,” The 

New York Times, August 9, 1923; “Silent Tens of Thousands Pay Tender, Tearful, 

Final Tribute To Harding, Martyr To Country,” The Evening Star, August 8, 1923; 

Small, Robert T., “Four Wearers Of Presidential Mantle Rode In Cortege Today,” 

The Evening Star, August 8, 1923] 

Dr. Grayson had advised President Wilson not to undertake the ordeal, but the 

President had gone ahead. The Sun followed him on this day of mourning: 

A man limped through the door of an S street house about 9 o’clock this 

morning. He leaned heavily upon a cane which he carried in his right 

hand. His left arm hung practically lifeless at his side. His left leg 

responded only indifferently to the pressure upon it. His shoulders were 

slightly stooped and his body was bent toward the left. 

As he emerged a negro butler and an able-bodied chauffeur assisted him 

into an automobile. Once he was seated, his figure seemed to straighten. 

His head became erect. His cane fell to the floor of the car. All manifest 

evidence of physical disability disappeared.

He was dressed in a formal frock coat, with high silk hat. He wore 

narrow-striped trousers, black shoes and black necktie. As he drove away 

his right hand rested comfortably upon the cushion of the car. 

The man was Woodrow Wilson. He was on his way to participate in the 

capital’s last tribute to his own successor in the Presidency, Warren G. 

Harding. He went contrary to the advice of his physician and against the 

best judgment of Mrs. Wilson. 

Riding beside him and glancing solicitously toward him from time to time 

was Mrs. Wilson. Riding in front of him, beside the chauffeur was Rear 

Admiral Cary T. Grayson, for 10 years his personal physician. Following 

immediately in his wake as he drove slowly down S street to Connecticut 

avenue, thence to the White House, were two motorcycle officers.

The Sun article recalled President Harding’s inaugural parade 3 years earlier: 
210 

As the car moved slowly along its route, tens of thousands of their 

countrymen applauded—some one man, some the other. But who there in 

all that vast multitude as he looked upon the robust Harding and the 

invalid Wilson would have dreamed that in less than three years the 

invalid would have followed that same route a second time in the cortege 

of the man into whose hands he had placed the reins of Government. 

Now, on the same avenue lined by somber people, President Wilson “saw 

thousands upon thousands of men, women and children instinctively pressed 

forward to catch a nearer glimpse of him. There were no cheers. There were no 

outbursts of any sort. Men lifted their hats as he passed, just as they had lifted 

them when the flag-covered casket passed. Children pointed eagerly in his 

direction. But that was all.”

After President and Mrs. Wilson returned to S Street, Dr. Grayson told reporters 

that the President had stood the ordeal well. “Mr. Wilson is stronger today than 

he was a year ago. He came through today excellently.” [Essary, J. F., “Wilson 

Joins With Nation To Honor Harding,” The Baltimore Sun, August 9, 1923; 

“Ordeal For Wilson To Attend Funeral,” The New York Times, August 9, 1923] 

Smith recounted an anecdote involving Senator Henry Cabot Lodge (R-Ma.), one 

of the leading opponents of the League of Nations: 

As they sat in the heat a stone’s throw from where they had their greatest 

moments, both personal and official, and also their most terrible ones, a 

red-faced and perspiring colonel of cavalry came up. The officer said in 

an excited voice, “Mr. Wilson, may I ask you a question?” “Certainly, 

Colonel.” “Mr. Wilson, do you know where I can find Senator Lodge?” 

Woodrow Wilson looked at the man. “I am not Senator Lodge’s keeper,” 

he said evenly. The Colonel saluted and spurred his horse and dashed off. 

Woodrow Wilson said, “What asylum did that Colonel escape from?” 

[Smith, page 225] 

On Armistice Day, November 11, 1923, thousands of admirers came to S Street 

(Smith says 20,000). “The trolley lines put on extra cars to carry them. They 

were not the elite of Washington or the government, noted [journalist] William 

Allen White, and among them were fewer than a dozen persons whose names a 

regular newspaper reader would recognize.” It was “the largest crowd ever to go 

to S Street.” 

Smith narrated the scene: 

At three-thirty Senator Carter Glass of Virginia came out of the house, and 

with him was the servant Scott, and behind them, leaning heavily on his 

cane but outfitted in morning coat and gray trousers, was Woodrow 
211 

Wilson. The band played Over There. Some ex-soldiers wearing their old 

uniforms were directly in front of the house, and when during the music 

and the cheering their old Commander in Chief looked at them he found a 

smile to give back in exchange for those on their young faces. 

Senator Glass spoke about the day and the reason they were there, his remarks 

interrupted by cheers:

Cheer after cheer rose from the people. Glass stepped back.

Woodrow Wilson’s eyes were on the ground as the applause slowly 

quieted. Edith stood behind him in a moleskin cape with sable collar. He 

moved forward one step and put on his hat so that he might lift his cane 

and with his good hand hook it into the top pocket of his overcoat. Then 

he took off his hat again and for perhaps thirty seconds he stood silent, 

swaying slightly. He raised his bowed head and peered at the ex-soldiers 

in front and at the people in the street. He moved the right hand holding 

the high silk hat in a vague gesture and then he began to speak. 

“Senator Glass, ladies and gentlemen: I am indeed deeply touched and 

honored by this extraordinary exhibition of your friendship and 

confidence; and yet I can say without affectation that I wish you would 

transfer your homage from me to the men who made the Armistice 

possible. It was because our boys had beaten the enemy to a standstill. 

You know—if you will allow me to be didactic for a moment— 

‘Armistice’ merely means ‘standstill of arms.’ Our late enemies, the 

Germans, call an Armistice ‘Waffenstillstand,’ an armed standstill; and it 

was the boys who made them stand still.” There was laughter and 

applause. “If they had not, they would not have listened to proposals of 

armistice. I am proud to remember that I had the honor of being the 

commander in chief—“ Someone yelled, “The best on earth!”—the 

commander in chief of the most ideal army that was ever thrown 

together—“ And his voice broke and his eyes filled for a moment and he 

said, “Pardon my emotion,” and went on: “Of the most ideal army that 

was ever thrown together, though the real fighting commander in chief 

was my honored friend [General John J. “Black Jack”] Pershing, to whom 

I gladly hand the laurels of victory. Thank you with all my heart for your 

kindness.” 

He turned away and put on his hat. He said, “That’s all I can do.” 

He started to leave as the band began the hymn How Firm a Foundation, but then 

the former President halted. “Stop the band,” he whispered to those nearby, “I 

have something more to say.” At a signal from those around the former President, 

the band stopped and the crowd quieted: 
212 

Before, Woodrow Wilson had spoken in a monotone, and what he said 

was mild, graceful enough, of no real significance. It was a sick old man’s 

few remarks in front of his house, it meant nothing. But now he was going 

to speak again for one moment, one paragraph, and he was going to find it 

in him to speak so that his voice, suddenly strong, would carry to the 

outermost reaches of the crowd ranging down S Street’s hill; to the little 

boys perched up in the maple trees; to the people on the sloping mud 

banks across the street. For this moment, this one last instant, that voice 

was the voice of the Professor Wilson who long ago called to the students 

at football games that they should cheer louder for the team; the voice was 

that of the President in the West crying aloud that there would be a terrible 

war if the nation did not enter the League. These the last words he was 

ever to say in public. The long crusade was over. This was summation—

valedictory. And no tears. 

He said:

“Just one word more; I cannot refrain from saying it. I am not one of those 

that have the least anxiety about the triumph of the principles I have stood 

for. I have seen fools resist Providence before, and I have seen their 

destruction, as will come upon these again, utter destruction, and 

contempt. That we shall prevail is as sure as that God reigns. Thank you.” 

[Smith, pages 231-232] 

The Times added: 

The ceremony lasted eleven minutes. As the band played “Onward, 

Christian Solders” and “Dixie,” the former President lingered a moment 

longer on the portal after he had finished speaking. Then Mrs. Wilson and 

a servant came to his assistance and he went within doors. 

It was announced, when the crowd showed no disposition to leave the 

scene, that Mr. and Mrs. Wilson would leave for their afternoon drive 

within a few minutes. The band played and there was singing along the 

densely filled street until the car appeared, with Mr. and Mrs. Wilson and 

Mrs. Bolling, Mrs. Wilson’s mother. 

The man who had just thrilled his audience by proclaiming that his 

principle would yet prevail received continuous tribute as the car moved 

slowly through the packed street. [“Wilson Overcome Greeting Pilgrims; 

Predicts Triumph,” The New York Times, November 12, 1923] 

In early December, the news tickers carried the news that President Woodrow 

Wilson had died. Newsmen showed up at 2340 S Street for more news of the sad 

end: 
213 

Captain Randolph Bolling, Secretary to Mr. Wilson, reassured the 

reporters that Mr. Wilson was “as fine as ever and had just returned from a 

two-hour automobile ride. 

Later, Dr. Grayson assured the reporters that the former President had not 

experienced any change in his condition and that any reports to the contrary had 

no foundation. [“Rumor Of Wilson’s Death,” The New York Times, December 7, 

1923] 

For the holiday season, Helen Bones visited S Street, the cousin who had 

introduced President Wilson to his wife Edith. On Christmas Eve, they went to 

Keith’s where the headline act was the madcap comedy team Olsen and Johnson. 

Smith, again, narrated the occasion: 

[The] final set was of a living room with a fireplace. Above the fireplace 

was a portrait of Woodrow Wilson. The cast came out on the stage for the 

finale, and the actress Nan Halpern stepped forward and said to the 

audience in the dark, “Merry Christmas to you and you and you.” She 

turned her back and went to the picture and looked up at it and said, “And 

to you, an abundance of Yuletide blessings and a bountiful year.” The 

people in the theater were entirely silent then, both those on the stage and 

those sitting before them, for she was raising herself to the picture and she 

was holding it in her arms and pressing her lips to it in a long sweet 

embrace. Down the aisle came showgirls. They carried roses. They went 

to Row U and handed them over. Onstage the cast began to sing Auld 

Lang Syne and at the first slow familiar notes the audience got up—every 

last one of them, Olsen noted—and stood and turned toward Seat U-21 

and sang along with the orchestra. This was no ordinary singing, Olsen 

thought. He had never heard such singing. At the end there was a long 

silence that seemed to Olsen to last and last until one of the girls on the 

stage stepped forward to the footlights. The brightness illuminated her 

tears glittering down through the mascara and stage make-up. She said, 

“Merry Christmas, Mr. President.” [Smith, pages 232-233] 

December 28 was his 67th birthday: 

Outside when he went for his afternoon drive at three o’clock there waited 

a magnificent birthday gift from a group of his old friends and associates. 

It was a Rolls-Royce, specially constructed to make his entrances and exits 

easier. It was black with a thin orange stripe—Princeton’s colors. On the 

door was “W.W.” [Smith, page 233] 

By February 1924, the former President was declining, with Dr. Grayson and 

other specialists unable to reverse the trend. Word that the end was near brought 

reporters to S. Street:
214 

Grayson went to speak with them. There was no attempt to minimize the 

gravity of the situation; Grayson said frankly that the situation was very 

bad . . . . 

 Grayson went into the sickroom to say that the two doctors were coming 

in to make an examination. When they came in behind Grayson, there was 

a tiny smile from the patient, and a faint whisper: “Too many cooks spoil 

the broth.” 

Last jest, thought Grayson. 

Later that night, Dr. Grayson told Wilson that he was dying. “Woodrow Wilson 

listened and breathed, ‘I am a broken piece of machinery. When the machinery is 

broken . . .’ His voice petered out. [Smith, page 237] 

Crowds outside the S Street home grew, newspapers carried the bad news, 

President Coolidge issued a statement saying that he was much disturbed. Two of 

Wilson’s daughters had been too far away to reach Washington in time, with only 

Margaret in attendance.

Saturday night, February 2, he seemed to be unconscious: 

For a moment [Edith] went out of the room. It had seemed be was totally 

unconscious, unmoving, eyes closed, hands limp on the blanket, but he 

sensed that she was gone. It could not have been that he knew it with his 

eyes, for he was blind now, not with his ears, for his hearing was gone 

now, but he knew that he was alone now, for all that Margaret and 

Grayson and the nurses were there. The last word he would ever say came 

from his lips:

“Edith!” 

On Sunday, the large crowd outside 2340 S Street was quiet:

Upstairs, the blue-gray eyes closed. They had been open for some ten 

minutes. The wife said, “Woodrow. Woodrow.” It was a few minutes 

past eleven. In the street the people were getting up one by one. 

The telegraphers were ready, and the reporters in front of the house and 

down by the telephones. Edith was still holding the right hand and 

Margaret the left. Weeping, Nellie was heading east on the California 

Limited. Jessie was in Siam. Grayson was bending over him, holding his 

wrist, and the two nurses stood at the foot of the bed. He had been three 

days dying his long death when, at 11:15 a.m., February 3, 1924, Grayson 

straightened up and stepped back. 
215 

Dr. Grayson stepped outside and said, “The end came at eleven-fifteen.” 

Reporters immediately began reacting, some waving to their colleagues at the 

telephones beyond the crowd. [Smith, pages 243-244] 

Edith and the two daughters (Jessie was too far away to reach Washington in 

time) decided on a family funeral service in the S Street home, and to bury 

President Wilson in the crypt of the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul, known as 

the Washington National Cathedral, not yet completed “atop Mount Saint Alban, 

the highest elevation in Washington.” This would not be a state funeral, and the 

body would not lie in state. 

Wednesday, February 6, was cloudy, wet, and cold. President Coolidge and the 

First Lady, Grace, left the White House for the short drive to S Street where the 

services would take place in the drawing room at 3 p.m. The guests included 

members of the Wilson Administration, such as former Agriculture Secretary 

Houston, a few friends, and even two doormen from Keith’s Theatre who had 

been helpful on Wilson Nights. After the brief service, eight servicemen carried 

the black steel coffin to the hearse. The family and guests entered their cars:

The procession got under way, a slow rolling line of cumbersome highroofed black automobiles heading down S Street’s hill. By the first car, 

the hearse, marched servicemen. Other servicemen, the soldiers and 

marines standing in a two-mile line to the Cathedral, one by one came to a 

salute as the hearse reached them. For as far as could be seen hands came 

up and stayed at foreheads for a moment and then dropped. No sidearms 

of any kind were worn, and there were no muffled kettledrums, no gun 

caissons, no horse with empty saddle and stirrups reversed, no band to 

play a dirge. At the junction of S Street and Massachusetts Avenue some 

young American Legionnaires stood with standards and flags, the only 

color in the gray afternoon. 

They turned up the Avenue and headed northwest, the crawling line of cars 

going no faster than the slow march of the boys by the hearse, the 

unbroken line of people under the black dripping umbrellas motionless 

save for those women—and men, also—who reached under their coats and 

brought out handkerchiefs. Fort Myer’s guns thudded . . . . 

Up Massachusetts Avenue wound the silent procession approaching 

Mount Saint Alban and the towering arches of the Cathedral of St. Peter 

and St. Paul. The sound of the tolling bells came through the wet air to 

meet the cars, and when the hearse turned into the spacious grounds the 

bells played Nearer, My God, to Thee. 

The tires of the cars whispered through the slush on the winding road 

leading past the gardens to the church itself. 
216 

When the procession halted, the eight servicemen removed the casket and carried 

it through the door of the Bethlehem Chapel: 

The boys carried their burden down the narrow corridor leading to the 

chapel sepulcher, passing thousands and thousands of banked flowers, the 

greatest floral display Washington had ever seen . . . . 

After a brief service, President Coolidge led the mourners out, leaving behind 

only the family, Dr. Grayson, the eight servicemen “at attention in the rear of the 

room and the workmen who would move away the marble slab in the aisle that 

covered the entrance to the underground cavern where the casket would rest. 

The serviceman placed the casket on the beams that would lower it into the vault. 

The casket, with its simple plate on it (Woodrow Wilson Born December 28 1856 

Died February 3 1924) was lowered into the ground. “Edith turned and headed 

blindly toward the door. McAdoo took her arm and led her out, and the two girls 

trailed after them.” [Smith, page 251-260] 

President Woodrow Wilson’s final automobile ride was over.