and cool, that he was a sternhe schoolmaster, that he would save grandma presbyterian.. .. ellen askin wilson and i decided she couldn't possibly have been interesting or important. i've never even heard about mary ellen hobart pack, which are wilson's intimate friend for eight years. i had heard about edith bolling galt even in everything i heard was bad, she was a power-hungry woman who seized power when woodrow wilson had a stroke, that she was a secret woman president. fortunately i live right here in washington d.c. and just up the hill behind us is the library of congress, the sponsor of this great event. and it is a temple of learning and a fabulous resource for researchers. so, i started reading woodrow wilson's letters to alan acts can in 1883, just after they became engaged. they had a two-year engagement and wrote each other hundreds of letters. and what i discovered when it is reading the letters is yes, he was very cerebral, but he was far from cool. he was very romantic and passionate. soon after their engagement, she wrote her, i am not a boy any longer. it is less for you to teach me that fast and measurable difference to train a youth fancy and demands over austrian laws. and sometimes absolutely absolutely frightened that the intent to give my for you. two years later, just before their marriage, he wrote her, asking her to imagine the warmest of cases pressed down upon the sweetest center of the ellipse. woodrow was not just romantic, however. he was unusually dependent on women for the fulfillment of his own powers. he could not work unless he was assured that a woman he loved loved him also. fortunately, alan was the perfect partner for woodrow wilson. she loved him very much and she told him so eloquently. she was a very unusual woman for her time and place. she corrupt after the civil war in a small town in georgia and was unusually well-educated. her father was a presbyterian minister and alan was an avid reader. it was said she could find an apt quotation for any occasion. she also had abundant artistic talents. her work had won a prize at an exposition in paris and by the time she was 23, she concluded she was never going to find a man who could live up to her ideals. she decided that she and her friends would open a women's boardinghouse and they would support it with her artwork. people began to call her alley at the man hater. and met woodrow wilson. i fell in love and got married. allen was not only a loving wife, she was a capable housemate. woodrow wilson was at really a fan, but he may have suffered from a learning disorder. he was almost ore he had great difficulty in learning foreign languages, soha ellen learned german in order to translate the politicalr monographs that he needed for his research. she also made digests ofa political science books in english for him. with her help he achieved the first of his ambitions which was to be a professor at his alma mater in princeton, university. once he became a professor ateae princeton, he was a very populai professor, he began to be invited to make speeches. and she helped him a great deal with his speeches as well, providing those apt quotations when he needede them. he was invited to give a very important speech for the 150th anniversary of the founding off princeton. and they collaborated closely on that speech we found manuscripts with corrections in both of their handwritings, and at one point she said the ending is a little flat.e you need to make it soar. you should read a poem by john milton. she told him which poem to read. if you compare that poem to the speech, you can see that's justh exactly what he did. the speech is full of metaphors that, obviously, came from herl experience about art and domestic affairs. the speech was a huge success. and it was clear that wood wilson was destined -- woodrow wilson was destined for greater things. now, ellen loved being a professor's wife. for her, that was the pinnacle of happiness. but she knew that woodrow had more ambition, in fact, that's partly what had drawn her to him. she once said i can be a great wife to a great man than a small one. so when wilson was elected president of princeton college, she went along. she moved her house, she began to entertain, she had to entertain former president theodore roosevelt and the great african-american educator booker t. washington. this last rather scandalized the georgia aunts. and woodrow wilson was, again, very successful. he was so successful that he began to think of a career in public service which is what he had really always wanted. and he began to be discussed for governor of new jersey. but in 1906 with his rosy prospect ahead of them, a tragedy befell the wilsons. woodrow wilson woke up one morning in may blind in his left eye. he'd probably had a mini stroke. he was 49 years old. and he was devastated. the doctors told him that he might have to give up his career entirely. there was no medication for hypertension in those days. they told him, however, that he could recover if he just took regular vacations.. so in january of 1907 he went to bermuda for a month. ellen was planning to go with him, but she didn't because at the last moment she had a family emergency. he went, and two days before he was due to come home he met a fascinating woman. mary alan hobart peck. she was the leading social hostess of the island. she entertained the governor general, she entertained mark twain. and when woodrow got back to princeton, he started to write to her. ellen had always encouraged him to have friendships with other women. those pictures notwithstanding, woodrow wilson had a very silly side to him. he loved to sing and dance and tell jokes and recite limericks. ellen was a much more serious person, and she couldn't keep up with that side of him. she wanted him to have cheerful female company ons. companions. but this time she sensed that something was different about mary peck. so when woodrow wilson went to bermuda in january of 1908 and once again ellen was prevented from going by a family situation, she issued an injunction to him to watch himself with mary. and it was no use. there on that tropical island with all the sea breezes wafting across his skin he became completely infatuated with mary peck. there's a scrap of handwriting on a slip of paper that says: my precious one, my beloved mary. when he got back to princeton that spring, ellen was furious. she accused him of emotional love for mary. he went on vacation to england that summer, and ellen went to an artist colony in connecticut. she had given up her artwork in order to devote herself to woodrow, now she took it up again to have some part of her life that was not entwined with his. all that summer he wrote her pleading letters begging to be forgiven. we don't know what she wrotew because all of her letters are missing. sum we think that she probably burned them. but at the end of the summer,'tk woodrow wrote her a very happy letter. obviously, she'd forgiven him, and he said it's even better to be loved if you don't deserve it. so wouldn't you think that he would stop seeing mary peck? no, he department. no, he didn't. in fact, as soon as he got back to the united states, he and ellen went up to massachusetts where mary lived with her husband during the summer. i don't know why she did that. it could be that she wanted to see this rival. it could be that she wanted mary to see her and to know that shee had the better claim on him. it could be that she wanted to protect woodrow wilson's to reputation because he had a political career ahead of him.o so she pretended that mary peck was a family friend. sure enough, in 1910 woodrow wilson was elected governor of new jersey. once again ellen rose to the occasion. she'd been active in welfaredrow work in her community. this was known as municipal housekeeping. women argued that if they could run households, they could also clean up their communities. this was considered a safe alternative to the scary idea of women voting. so she began to investigate the state institutions, and she made a tour of many of them. this is a really groundbreaking move on her part. woodrow kind of tagged along on that o tour. woodrow's administration was such a success that he began to be spoken of as a potential presidential candidatement ellen recognized that there was a big obstacle to his running for president. william jennings bryant who had three times been the democratic nominee for president and who woodrow had insulted publicly several years before.een so ellen arranged for woodrow to have dinner with bryan, very intimate dinner. and sure enough, woodrow found he liked bryant, and they spokeo from the same platform after that. and she did as she had doned br before, continued to see mary peck as a family friend. woodrow began to travel around s the country making speeches. ellen followed his progress very closely, sending him telegrams of commentary.odro at one point she sent him a telegram and said stop saying you're not running for h president. ve it just makes you look foolish. he stopped. you're not running for president. it just makes you look foolish he stopped. sure enough, he became the democratic nominee in june of 1912. partly, with the help of bryant. that summer when the republicans held their convention, william howard taft, the incumbent was opposed by former president theodore roosevelt. taft won and roosevelt was so bitter over that loss that he formed a third-party, the progressive or bull moose party. >> and he was really seen as the bigger competitor to wilson. he was so popular. so one of roosevelt's advisors came up to him and he said, we've managed to obtain some letters of woodrow wilson's to mary peck. you should publish them and just campaign will be over. you will win. and roosevelt said, no, that would be wrong. also, he said nobody would believe me. who's going to think the man is a romeo. he looks like he ought to be working in a drugstore. [laughter] >> so he did not publish the letters and woodrow wilson won. so in the beginning of 1913, ellen found herself in the white house. it was not a place she ever wanted to be, but once she was there, she felt she had to use it for its maximum benefit. she began to be interested in what we would now call urban renewal. up here behind the capitol were a maze little alley ways, they were little, dark and dirty. they bred crime and disease. they were full of dilapidated little houses. at that time the federal government was running the district, and she wanted federal legislation to tear down those houses and build modern hygienic new houses at low cost for the residents. she got a white house car, and she began to take members of congress around those alleys to show them the squalor that existed right behind the marbled halls of the capitol building. as far as i know, she was the first first lady to lobby outside of the white house to a car that was not on her husband's agenda but in the send year of woodrow wilson's term, her health began to decline. and by june of 1914, she could no longer get out of bed. her doctor was in denial. he thought she was suffering from nerves. woodrow was distracted because at the end of june, the arch duke france ferdnan was killed. it was clear that ellen was dying. this was two days after all the european powers had declared war on each other. ellen knew she was running out of time. so she made two final requests. the first was to her husband's chief of staff. she asked him, please to go up to capitol hill and tell the congressmen she would die more easily if they would just pass that alley legislation. the senate took action right away in time for her to receive word before she lost consciousness. the bill was eventually passed but it was never implemented. with the onset of world war i, they needed all the buildings they could have, dilapidated or not and in any case they had more important things to think about. ellen's second request was to the white house physician. she said, doctor, please take care of my husband, and then she died. woodrow was disconsulate. he wandered the halls of the empty, echoing. he told one correspondent that he was reading detective stories as a man get drunk just to forget. you might have thought he would have turned to mary at this time, but due to the pressures of the presidency, their relationship really had cooled. and in any case, that would have confirmed the rumors about them. so he was alone. by the spring of 1915, the doctor became worried. after all, his patient was the president and the world was at war. so he introduced a friend of his, edith bowling galt to the president. mrs. galt was a widow. she was the proproprietor of galt jewelers which we old timers in washington remember fondly. it was known as the tiffany's of washington. she was 15 years younger than woodrow. she was vivacious, cheerful, flirtatious. the first night she came to dine in the white house in a long black velvet gown, woodrow wilson's secret serviceman said to his valet, oh, she's a looker. and the valet said, yeah, he's a goner. [laughter] >> and he was. he proposed marriage to her just two months after they met. she refused. she said they hadn't known each other long enough and in any case it, hadn't been a year, the minimum amount of time before a remarriage. woodrow didn't give up. in july, he invited edith to vacation with him and his three grown daughters in new hampshire. and he proposed again. this time, she accepted. but they kept the engagement secret because it still had not been a year since ellen's death. there was another wrinkle to this romantic saga and that was mary. woodrow confessed to edith -- he called his relationship with mary a folly, long-ago loathed and repented of. she forgave him but she made sure it was over. they announced their engagement in october of 1915. even before they got married, woodrow took her into his confidence. he wanted her to share every aspect of his work with him. he showed her secret state department documents. he annotated them for her better understanding, and she loved that. she liked to say, i love the way you put one dear hand on mine while with the other you turn the pages of history. they got married at the end of december, 1915. 1916 was a presidential election year and woodrow was running for re-election. edith campaigned with him. she was a big asset to his campaign because she warmed up his austere image. in november, woodrow wilson was narrowly re-elected. they were using the slogan, he kept us out of the war. but shortly after his inauguration, the germans resumed unrestricted submarine warfare and the united states was drawn into world war i. edith's role changed almost completely. she volunteered in a red cross canteen, handing out coffee and sandwiches to the soldiers as they came through union station. what she really liked was anything to do with woodrow. she named battleships. when he had to sign commissions for new officers in the army, she made a little game of it, risking away one paper and putting another one down in front of him. trying to see how many they could do in an hour. she even decoded the telegrams coming from europe, arguably, her most important job was keeping the president healthy. every day she would drag him out to play golf. they were both terrible golfers but they enjoyed it a lot. on november 11th, 1918, the war ended. and woodrow made the surprising decision to go to europe himself to negotiate the peace treaty. he was the first sitting president to go to europe and, of course, she was the first presiding first lady to go to europe. they were greeted like heroes. they were met by thongs of people throwing flowers and cheering them. they stayed at buckingham palace. edith wrote home, it was like a cinderella existence. but once the negotiations began, things got tough. and woodrow's health began to suffer. finally, in june of that year, the treaty of versailles was signed. it provided for a league of nations, an international body that would mediate disputes and hopefully prevent war in the future. but when woodrow brought the treaty back to the united states to be ratified by the senate, the senate refused. they were jealous of their constitutional prerogative to declare war and they were afraid the league of nations would oblige them when they didn't want to. they wanted to add amendments or reservations. and woodrow wanted the document ratified as written. so he undertook a speaking tour by train all across the united states to california and back. it was september. it was hot. of course, there was no air conditioning in these metal cars. he was speaking every day, sometimes more than once. as they returned from california and wound up through the rocky mountains, the altitude began to tell on his blood pressure. in pueblo, colorado, he collapsed. they raced back to washington, but it was too late. a few days after they arrived, he suffered a massive stroke. he was paralyzed. he could hardly speak. nobody knew what his mental faculties were like and as president he was completely incacapacitated -- incapacitated. edith decided to carry on. she had done what no other first lady since, she instructed the white house and doctors to keep his condition a secret. and she was the one who decided what should happen next. the next 18 months, the rest of his term, she later characterized as her stewardship. she decided who could see woodrow wilson. she decided what issues would be brought before him. mostly, she just deferred things. she wanted to wait until he should recover. she was implored to take more action for the sake of the country and she said, i'm not thinking about the country. i'm thinking about my husband. some people say that if she had allowed woodrow wilson more access to his advisors, that they would have changed his mind and gotten him to compromise on the league of nations. we discovered that edith herself wanted woodrow wilson to compromise. she thought his failure to compromise would mar his place in history. but she urged him gently. and when he resisted, she didn't insist. she always did what he wanted. so they stayed in office until the end of his term in march of 1921. they left the white house. they settled here in washington. he was the only president to have done that after leaving office. three years later, he died. after his death, edith had opportunity to run for office herself. she never took it. she was not interested in public office and political power. she never proposed any new legislation or lobbied for any cause. she didn't even think women audit to have the vote. i began this project thinking that edith was the path-breaker, the secret woman president. but i discovered that ellen was the one who shaped history in her own way. she was the innovativer. in her husband's administration, there was an assistant secretary to the navy, franklin delano roosevelt. his wife, eleanor roosevelt, was a young wife who sometimes visited the white house and knew ellen wilson. after ellen's death, no subsequent first lady lobbied for legislation until eleanor roosevelt entered the white house in march of 1933 during her first week there, she went up to capitol hill and began to lobby for an alley bill. as we all know, she lobbied for a lot of things in the next 12 years. and after her, most first ladies have felt they could and should have a cause of their own. this book festival was founded by laura bush, whose cause was libraries and literacy. arguably, a direct connection between ellen wilson and where we are today. i also discovered that being close to a president may seem glamorous, but it's very tough. all three of the women involved with woodrow wilson paid a heavy price. but i think that ellen realized this. she, of course, died in the white house. mary peck had wanted to go to the whit