“It was in 1883 that Woodrow Wilson and Ellen Axson became engaged. She was visiting friends in the North Carolina mountains when my father fell seriously ill. He had to summon her by telegraph—my mother had died two years before, and my sister was the responsible member of the family. She went to Asheville to catch a train, but as she had several hours to wait for it she went to a hotel and whiled away the time reading by a window.
“As fate would have it, Woodrow Wilson was driving in the mountains, passed the hotel, chanced to look up, and saw her profile at the window. The two had been together in Rome the previous summer, and it needed just that unexpected encounter in the North Carolina mountains to show them what life held for each and both of them.”
Professor Axson spoke of his sister and her husband as being “more truly one than any two people” he had ever seen. He said they literally married each other’s family, never seeming to feel any difference between those of their blood and those related by marriage. Two brothers and a sister of Mrs. Wilson were also members of the Wilson family circle for long periods. He paints Woodrow Wilson as boyish, tender, generous, considerate, whimsical, and fun loving, and cites an instance of the depth of the family affection.
A favourite uncle of Mrs. Wilson was a visitor. From long custom, upon retiring he put his boots outside his bedroom door to be blacked. The young professor saw them. The Wilson household maintained no valet and the Bridget of the kitchen did not include boot blacking in her schedule of duties. Mr. Wilson concluded that Uncle Tom expected to have his boots blacked for him, and as there was no one else to do it, it fell to his lot to do them, and he did, telling the joke on himself.
This couple took colour from each other, each reflecting the other’s moods and tastes in books, pictures, music, and architecture. In the Wilson household, love ruled supreme. The husband and father, an incorrigible tease and fun-maker, could never be outdone in story-telling. One could never tell him a new story. His fund of anecdotes was inexhaustible, and in his clever telling of them he caught the spirit and personality of the principals.
Professor Axson said that, when Mrs. Wilson died, the President was the loneliest, most desolate man in the world. It was not long before his family and close friends began to hope he would remarry, and when he did, his first wife’s people joined his own in their affectionate welcome to the new First Lady. He claims they loved her for herself and for what she did for Woodrow Wilson in giving him new life, companionship, and the love he had to have to enable him to go on.
While President Wilson was nominated in the Democratic Convention without opposition, the election was a close and exciting contest. Charles Evans Hughes of New York, the Republican nominee, was reported elected and all of the country went to bed, election night, President Wilson included, with the idea that Hughes was to be the next President. Admiral Cary T. Grayson, the President’s physician, is authority for the statement that, while the Wilson family and friends were distressed and depressed over the returns that spelled defeat upon election night, President Wilson was in the best of spirits. He sensed a lifting of the yoke and was full of elation. Finally, the Admiral, believing defeat certain, attempted consolation predicting that, in another four years, the American people would call him back to the Presidency.
With the twinkle that always prefaced a story, he replied: “No, Grayson, I am like the Confederate soldier who returned to his home after Lee’s surrender. He looked at his wrecked farm, where the buildings had been burned, the stock run off or killed, and the fences torn down. He looked at his bare bleeding feet and at his one remaining arm in a sling and remarked: ‘I am glad I fought; I’m proud of the part I played; I have no regrets; but—I’ll be damned if I ever love another country.’”
For three days, the election decision hung in the balance, and then belated returns gave the majority to President Wilson.
His first administration had witnessed many events fraught with import to the nation’s history. He had been confronted with stupendous problems. The Panama Canal had been opened for traffic in August, 1915. The Mexican situation had grown more acute after the deposition of Madero and his death. In 1916, sixty thousand men of the United States National Guard and regulars had been stationed along the border. The Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution had been ratified, thus providing for the direct election of United States Senators. The Federal Trade commission had been established, and the Clayton Anti-Trust measure enacted.