The White House bulletin on the health of Woodrow Wilson was alarming.
“The president is a very sick man,” announced Wilson’s personal physician, Rear Admiral Cary T. Grayson, on Oct. 2, 1919. He and a four-person team of doctors all agreed that “absolute rest was essential for some time.”
Five days earlier, on Sept. 28, 1919, Wilson had been stricken ill in Wichita, Kansas, while on a marathon speaking tour across the country to rally support for American membership in the League of Nations, the precursor to the United Nations. For Wilson, the proposed international body was the most important component of the June 1919 peace agreement signed at Versailles to end World War I.
He was rushed back to Washington, where he collapsed in the White House bathroom from an ischemic stroke. For the next 18 months – the remainder of his presidential term – he would be incapacitated.
Feb. 3, 2024, marks the centennial of Wilson’s death, a natural time for meditations on his legacy. But the verdict is already in: No president has suffered a more precipitous decline in reputation and esteem.
Once accorded an honored place in the pantheon of presidential immortals, Wilson is now assailed for suppressing free expression during the Great War and mandating Jim Crow racial segregation in federal hiring. Those actions have obliterated his image as a noble idealist laboring to make the world safe for democracy and establish a secure postwar order.
Somewhat less damning, though not inconsequential, was his self-righteousness about remaining in office when he was no longer fit for the job, a lapse of judgment ultimately addressed by the passage of the the 25th Amendment to the Constitution in 1967. The amendment provides the procedures for replacing the president or vice president in the event of death, removal, resignation or incapacitation.
A noble cause
Wilson had been warned about his precarious health.
Never robust, and chronically exhausted from overwork, he had been told by Dr. Grayson not to undertake the grueling rigors of a cross-country speaking tour. Yet Wilson was insistent that the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles – stalled in the U.S. Senate – was more important than his health.
The White House bulletin on the health of Woodrow Wilson was alarming.
“The president is a very sick man,” announced Wilson’s personal physician, Rear Admiral Cary T. Grayson, on Oct. 2, 1919. He and a four-person team of doctors all agreed that “absolute rest was essential for some time.”
Five days earlier, on Sept. 28, 1919, Wilson had been stricken ill in Wichita, Kansas, while on a marathon speaking tour across the country to rally support for American membership in the League of Nations, the precursor to the United Nations. For Wilson, the proposed international body was the most important component of the June 1919 peace agreement signed at Versailles to end World War I.
He was rushed back to Washington, where he collapsed in the White House bathroom from an ischemic stroke. For the next 18 months – the remainder of his presidential term – he would be incapacitated.
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