9-16-18
A president’s secret letters to another woman that he never wanted public
Breaking Newstags: Woodrow Wilson, sex scandals, Trump
Family and friends had known about the president’s intimate relationship with another woman for years, but whispers about their involvement were growing.
Woodrow Wilson was so worried that he asked his close adviser, Colonel Edward M. House, to meet him after dinner in his White House study on Sept. 22, 1915. In the meeting, Wilson talked about his longtime friendship with Mary Peck, a divorced woman he had met in Bermuda eight years earlier. He told House that the friendship was platonic but that he had been “indiscreet in writing her letters rather more warmly than was prudent.”
Besides personal embarrassment, the release of the letters would complicate Wilson’s hopes to marry the younger, richer Edith Bolling Galt and cast a shadow over his bid for reelection just as the war in Europe was expanding.
comments powered by Disqus
News
- A girl named Greta and the seriously sexist history of Time’s Person of the Year
- Poll: Majority of Democrats think Obama was better president than Washington
- Civil War Soldiers Used Hair Dye to Make Themselves Look Better in Pictures, Archaeologists Discover
- Monumental statue of black man defies Confederate monuments
- From Consensus To Deadlock: Is Impeachment Still A Check On Presidents?
- Black Scholars Respond to Dr. Lorgia García Peña Tenure Denial at Harvard
- Historians Kirsten Weld and Erik Baker Interviewed About Harvard Graduate Worker Strike in Chronicle of Higher Education
- Kate Shaw: Andrew Johnson Was Impeached for Being a Racist Demagogue
- Bullets That Killed John F. Kennedy Immortalized as Digital Replicas by Smithsonian
- 37 books for history lovers: 11 Historians Select Their Favorite Books of 2019