So I found it a little curious that nearly no one (42 pageviews as of 24 hours after a weekday morning publication) has read the Robert E. Lee post. Apparently he is dead to you. More people have looked at Grizzly Goldner and that was posted twelve hours later, perhaps because you assumed that there'd be a picture of me with a beard, and I agree that a bearded Karen would be more amusing to look at than a bearded Civil War general.
Not to be deterred, this morning we're going to have another Famous Virginian lesson - and this one is about someone I always thought was from New Jersey.
Leaving Charlottesville mid-morning in a light drizzle, I encountered heavy fog for a couple of miles on I-64 at the southern end of the Blue Ridge Mountains. "Heavy" might be an understatement - this was pea soup. It alternated being pretty and scary, so I guess I will say that it was pretty scary. When it broke, the sun shone through, shrugged, looked around blankly, and asked, "what?" as if nothing had happened
To get to Charleston (WV, not SC) you get on I-81 South for a few miles just outside of Staunton, Virginia, and it was at this junction that I saw the sign for the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library. While I might zip by President McKinley in order to get to dinner on time, I was in no such hurry yesterday - and President McKinley, well, he was no Woodrow Wilson.
Turns out that Wilson not only was born in Staunton, where his father was a Presbyterian minister, but that he identified as a southerner even after he had lived in New Jersey many years, become President of Princeton, and even elected Governor of that state. (This might account for Wilson's poor record on civil rights.)
The Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Museum is located in three beautiful old homes near downtown Staunton, one of which was the manse (parsonage, for you non-Presbyterians out there) where Wilson was born and lived for about 16 months in the 1850's until his father was called to a church in Georgia. His mother had family in the area, however, so Wilson visited the town while growing up and particularly when he was in law school at UVA, just a train ride away across the mountains. He returned to the home of his birth for a couple of nights in December, 1912, to celebrate his 56th birthday as President-Elect.
Finding the museum was not the easiest thing I've done in a couple of days, due to resurfacing the street where the museum is located, but when I walked in I was greeted as if I were a relative thought to have been lost at sea. (It was not quite the greeting that Wilson received in 1912, but since I wasn't born in Staunton this seemed fair enough.) Such a welcome would have made sense to me had I been the only patron, but there were quite a few folks, I thought, particularly for mid-week. Wilson has a fan club, apparently.
They have a film, of course, and a very nice museum, and then you get a guided tour of the manse.
One point that they make, which is a good one, is how much changed from March, 1913 (just over 100 years ago), when Wilson took office, until 1921 when he left. For example, in 1913 Great Britain was still the dominant world power; by 1921, that role had shifted to the United States. The U.S. had intervened militarily in Europe, Mexico, the Caribbean and Russia during this time. The role of the Federal government grew greatly: anti-trust and business regulation, the income tax, the Federal Reserve system. A number of important social/political changes occurred as well, with women's suffrage being the most significant, but also other democratic (small D) reforms such as direct election of Senators. Obviously Wilson had a large role in many of these changes. (Although his role in women's suffrage was more of a follower than as a leader.)
Wilson was only the second Democrat (capital D) elected to the White House since 1860 - in other words, since the Civil War. (The other was Grover Cleveland, elected in 1892. Andrew Johnson was a Democrat but only became President upon Lincoln's assassination and was never elected.) Wilson was not the unanimous choice - it took a record 46 ballots to nominate him at the Democratic Convention - but in the General Election he was able to take advantage of a split in the Republican party (incumbent President Taft versus Teddy Roosevelt, who ran on the Bull Moose Party) and the presence of a fourth candidate, Socialist Eugene Debs. He won a large majority of the Electoral College despite winning only 42% of the popular vote.
Although Wilson lead the creation of the Federal Reserve central banking system and child labor laws, among other important items, he is of course best known for his role in World War I and his effort to create the League of Nations following the war.
The main level of the home where the museum is located (which was just being built when the Wilsons lived down the street in the mid-1850's) features the main exhibits and Wilson's cherished Pierce-Arrow car. (As a Hoosier, it was a little weird to see an exhibit about a car that didn't focus primarily on where it was manufactured!) There are artifacts such as this magazine cover from the New Jersey gubernatorial campaign where he ran (and served) as a reformer. I like the caption: "It takes grit to remove grime."
Interestingly, despite statements like the one above, Wilson was not generally viewed as a reformer before he was elected - not by the politicians and bosses who backed him, and not by the Progressive movement. He surprised everyone after he was elected by supporting Progressive causes such as public utility regulation, workers compensation, and election reform.
All of these exhibits are well done, but the basement of the museum contains the highlight and it is absolutely creepy. When I first went downstairs I was the only person in the exhibit and it felt like I was walking into a haunted house. The exhibit focuses on World War I, in particular what it was like at the front line.
You can look through the periscope they used (which is just past the soldier-mannequin in this picture) and when you enter the basement the sound system turns on so you really feel like you're in a trench. It's not a place you want to stay long.
Because fifty years and much technological innovation separated the wars, it's easy to forget that World War I was a trench war, in a lot of ways similar to the Civil War. Wilson, who was a boy during the Civil War (and whose father served as a chaplain for the Confederate army), did not forget this. Wilson is quoted on a sign on the wall to the basement that says,
I come from the South and I know what war is. I have seen its wreckage and ruin. It is easy for me as President to declare war. I do not have to fight....It is some poor farmer's boy, or the son of some poor widow who will have to do the fighting and dying.Following World War I, Wilson fought to establish the League of Nations to provide a peaceful mechanism for nations to resolve conflicts. The U.S. Senate refused to ratify our participation in the League. The English and French wanted to punish the Germans and they did so, with the result of course being the rise of Nazism and World War II.
Wilson's first wife died while he was President, and he was remarried to Edith while in the White House. You may recall that Wilson had a series of strokes toward the end of his presidency and there is some controversy about whether Mrs. Wilson effectively became President during this time, or whether she just served as a go-between, communicating President Wilson's thoughts and orders. In 2006 the museum received a donation of the private letters of Wilson's physician from the physician's family, and based on those letters it seems clear that Mrs. Wilson was making decisions because her husband was, indeed, a very sick man. (After leaving office, Wilson lived in Washington, DC for three years before he died. Mrs. Wilson lived for another 35 years and helped open the museum in Staunton, along with President Franklin Roosevelt.)
Then the tour begins. A really nice lady named Linda invited us to return to April 18, 1856, as we walked from the museum to the manse. She explained the setting at the time - across the street from the home were only woods, and the three-story manse is built to be most impressive from its back, which faces down a hill to the First Presbyterian Church where Rev. Wilson served. There is a Presbyterian women's college across the street but in 1856 it consisted of only one building, further down the street from the manse.
We entered the manse from the lower level, which Linda called the "working level." Here was the kitchen, a laundry room, an informal eating area where the family took their daily meals, and the cook's bedroom. The Wilsons were from Ohio and in letters Mrs. Wilson referred to having three "servants" provided by the church to help her. But this was pre-Civil War Virginia, Linda reminded us, and these "servants" were likely slaves owned by a local farmer and rented to the Presbyterian Church.
The kitchen of the manse was very modern for the 1850's, featuring an iron stove. Linda explained that the origin of the word "range" is that the stove features a range of temperatures. The front burners were directly over the fire, while the back burners were heated only indirectly - hence the term, "putting it on the back burner." Another old phrase which dates to this time, Linda said, was having "irons in the fire" - a reference to the need to keep several irons heating up so that they could be used to iron clothing before cooling.
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was born in the manse December 28, 1856. He had two older sisters and would eventually get a little brother although not for eleven years. He was named for his maternal grandfather and uncle, both named Thomas Woodrow. As a child he was called Tommy but dropped the Thomas altogether as a young man. Linda said that Mrs. Wilson got to name him, while Rev. Wilson named their second son, who became Joseph Wilson, Jr. You rarely hear about a second son being named Junior, but that's what happened with the Wilsons. And President Woodrow Wilson sounds better than President Joe Wilson, for sure.
The main floor of the manse includes the bedroom (and bed) where Wilson was born, Rev. Wilson's study, and a parlor and dining room. After the Wilsons left in 1858, many ministers and their families lived here including the one who opened his home to President-Elect Wilson in 1912, which must have been pretty exciting.
Also nearby in western Virginia is Lexington, home of Stonewall Jackson's final resting place, but I passed it by to make sure I got through the mountains to Charleston before dark. Which I did. Thank goodness for Daylight Savings Time. Another reason I like Daylight Savings Time is that when I am talking with a Hoosier Republican with whom I don't want to argue politics, such as Sandy's fiance Bill, I can say that I do agree with former Governor Daniels about DST. It's nice to have at least a little common ground.
I grew up about an hour north of Staunton, so we went to the Woodrow Wilson Birthplace several times on field trips as a kid, but I've never been to that basement part! Creepy!
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