Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him

by Joseph P. Tumulty

In haste,

Faithfully yours,
(Signed) WOODROW WILSON.

[Illustration: An evidence of the tender-heartedness which Mr. Tumulty claims for the President. (Transcriber's note: contains a reproduction of the above-quoted letter.)]

I recall a day when he sat at his typewriter in the White House, preparing the speech he was to deliver at Hodgensville, Kentucky, in connection with the formal acceptance of the Lincoln Memorial, built over the log cabin birthplace of Lincoln. When he completed this speech, which I consider one of his most notable public addresses—perhaps in literary form, his best— he turned to me and asked me if I had any comment to make upon it. I read it very carefully. I then said to him, "Governor, there are certain lines in it that might be called a self-revelation of Woodrow Wilson." The lines that I had in mind were:

I have read many biographies of Lincoln; I have sought out with the greatest interest the many intimate stories that are told of him, the narratives of nearby friends, the sketches at close quarters, in which those who had the privilege of being associated with him have tried to depict for us the very man himself "in his habit as he lived"; but I have nowhere found a real intimate of Lincoln. I nowhere get the impression in my narrative or reminiscence that the writer had in fact penetrated to the heart of his mystery, or that any man could penetrate to the heart of it. That brooding spirit had no real familiars. I get the impression that it never spoke out in complete self-revelation, and that it could not reveal itself complete to any one. It was a very lonely spirit that looked out from underneath those shaggy brows, and comprehended men without fully communing with them, as if, in spite of all its genial efforts at comradeship, it dwelt apart, saw its visions of duty where no man looked on. There is a very holy and very terrible isolation for the conscience of every man who seeks to read the destiny in the affairs for others as well as for himself, for a nation as well as for individuals. That privacy no man can intrude upon. That lonely search of the spirit for the right perhaps no man can assist.

To Woodrow Wilson the business of government was a solemn thing, to which he gave every ounce of his energy and his great intellectual power. No President in the whole history of America ever carried weightier responsibilities than he. Night and day, with uncomplaining patience, he was at his post of duty, attending strictly to the pressing needs of the nation, punctiliously meeting every engagement, great or small. Indeed, no man that I ever met was more careless about himself or thought less of vacations for the purpose of rest and recuperation.

There are three interesting maps which show the mileage covered by Presidents Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson. These maps show the states traversed by each of the Presidents. Great black smudges show the trail covered by President Roosevelt, which included every state in the Union, and equally large black marks show the territory covered by President Taft, but only a thin line shows the peregrinations and wanderings of President Wilson. The dynamic, forceful personality of Mr. Roosevelt, which radiated energy, charm, and good-nature, and the big, vigorous, lovable personality of Mr. Taft, put the staid, simple, modest, retiring personality of the New Jersey President, Mr. Wilson, at a tremendous disadvantage. Into the atmosphere created by these winning personalities of Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Taft the personality of Mr. Wilson did not easily fit, and he realized it, when he said to me one day, "Tumulty, you must realize that I am not built for the dramatic things of politics. I do not want to be displayed before the public, and if I tried it, I should do it badly."

Without attempting to belittle the great achievements of former Presidents of the United States, particularly Roosevelt, it is only fair to say that, comparing the situations which confronted them with those that met President Wilson from the very beginning of his incumbency, their jobs were small. As a genial Irishman once said to me, "Hell broke loose when Wilson took hold." Every unusual thing, every extraordinary thing, seemed to break and break against us. From the happening of the Dayton flood, which occurred in the early days of the Wilson Administration, down to the moment when he laid down the reins of office, it seemed as if the world in which we lived was at the point of revolution. Unusual, unprecedented, and remarkable things began to happen, things that required all the patience, indomitable courage, and tenacity of the President to hold them steady. The Mexican situation, left on our door-step, was one of the great burdens that he carried during his administration. Then came the fight for the revision of the tariff, the establishment of the Federal Reserve System, all items that constituted the great programme of domestic reform which emanated from the brain of Woodrow Wilson, and then in the midst of it all came the European war, the necessity for neutrality, the criticism which was heaped upon the President for every unusual happening which his critics seemed to think called for intervention of the United States in this great cataclysm. It was not a time for the camaraderie and good- fellowship that had characterized the good old days in which Mr. Roosevelt served as President.

And yet no man was less exclusive in dealing with the members of the Senate and House. In preparing the Federal Reserve Act in collaboration with Senator Glass, he was constantly in touch with the members of the Senate Banking and Currency Committee, in an endeavour to make clear the road for the passage of this important piece of constructive legislation. Constant demands were made upon his time and he gave of his energy and of the small reserve of strength that he had uncomplainingly and without a protest. No rest, no recreation, no vacation intervened. Every measure that he sought to press to enactment was the challenge to a great fight, as, for instance, the tariff, the currency, the rural credits, and the Panama tolls acts.

I have often been asked whether anger or passion ever showed itself in the President, and I am reminded of a little incident that happened at the White House during one of those conferences with the newspaper men, which, before the days of the war, and for a long time afterward, took place in the Executive offices. At the time of this particular conference, the President's first wife lay seriously ill at the White House, and stories were carried in the various newspapers exaggerating the nature of her illness, some of them going so far as to say she was suffering from this or from that disease. At the very time these stories were appearing in the newspapers there were also articles that his daughter, Margaret, was engaged to marry this man or that man. The President came to the newspaper men's conference this morning fighting mad. It was plain that something serious was afoot. Taking hold of the back of the chair, as if to strengthen himself for what he had to say, he looked squarely at the newspaper men and said, "I hope that you gentlemen will pardon me for a personal word this morning. I have read the stories that have appeared in certain newspapers of the country, containing outrageous statements about the illness of my wife and the marriage of my daughter. I realize that as President of the United States you have a perfect right to say anything you damn please about me, for I am a man and I can defend myself. I know that while I am President it will be my portion to receive all kinds of unfair criticism, and I would be a poor sport if I could not stand up under it; but there are some things, gentlemen, that I will not tolerate. You must let my family alone, for they are not public property. I acquit every man in this room of responsibility for these stories. I know that you have had nothing to do with them; but you have feelings and I have feelings, even though I am President. My daughter has no brother to defend her, but she has me, and I want to say to you that if these stories ever appear again I will leave the White House and thrash the man who dares to utter them."