Best of the History Guy: Presidents

foreign the conflict known as the French and Indian War fought between 1754 and 1763 was incredibly important to the history of North America it was that Conflict for example that decided that Canada and Florida would be dominated by the British not the French and the Spanish during that war the people that in the future would be the Patriots Etc of the American Revolution met each other and formed the relationships that would allow that Revolution to occur and of course it was the British trying to pay for the costs of the French and Indian war with the Stamp Act and the Townsend duties that would become the primary complaint that would drive the American Revolution but most Americans don't really understand the French and Indian War why we fought it or how it started and that's too bad because the story of how the French and Indian War started involves a young inexperienced Virginia militia officer whose name would Loom large in the history of the Americas and so the story of how 21 year old George Washington started what could be described as the first real worldwide war is a story worth remembering in the 1740s and 1750s Traders for the French and British started running into each other much more often in the area that was called the Ohio country that's at part of North America that's west of the Appalachian Mountains but south of Lake Erie and the trade there with the Native Americans was extremely lucrative and the Land There was ripe for settlement the French sought as a critical connection between French Canada and New Orleans and the British saw it as a critical place to grow Westward from the American colonies and so conflict over that region was darn near unavoidable the British colonial governor of Virginia a man named Robert dinwiddy had a financial interest in the Ohio territory and felt that it was important that Britain stake its claim to that territory and so he sent a group of Virginia militiamen to the forks of the Ohio river which is now the modern day City of Pittsburgh to build a fortification to defend British interests and then he got a lieutenant colonel in the Virginia militia George Washington to gather up all the militia he could to go help defend that Fort but the French had anticipated the move and before Washington even got there they sent a larger Force down river and chased out the small Virginia force that was trying to build that Fort and built their own fort there called Fort Duquesne and then the French sent a small group of 35 men South to go see what the Virginians were up to now both sides are really itching for war over the territory but neither side wants to be the one responsible for starting that war now when Washington got news that the the French had taken the forks of the Ohio River he decided to build his own fort at a place called Great Meadows which was about 40 miles south of Fort Duquesne where he could muster militia forces and try to gather Indian allies and on May 27 1754 he received word from some of his Indian allies that the small French Force had entered his area and so he took 40 militiamen and some of his Indian allies to go confront the French there's a lot of controversy about what happened next what we do know is that Washington and his Force found the French camp and surrounded it that at some point the Virginians fired and there was a fight in which 15 of the French were killed and the rest were forced to surrender for the loss of just one Virginia militiamen now the French claimed that they were fired upon without provocation but the Virginians claim that it was a Frenchman who fired first what we do know though is that the officer in charge of the French fort Ensign Joseph culo the VA de jumanville was killed in the fight and there's a second controversy because the French claimed that jumanville was a diplomat who had been sent south with a message for the British to leave the area while Washington insists that they were spies there to spy on the Virginia militia but regardless one of the things we do know is that that small 15-minute Skirmish in the spot that we now call jamonville Glenn were the first shots in a war that would eventually inflame four continents Washington knew that the French were likely to respond and so he returned back to the Great Meadows to finish building his fortification a small wooden Stockade that he called Fort Necessity and then he surrounded that with trenches and breastworks and that's where he would defend himself if the French came and he waited there to gather troops and eventually they had about 300 Virginia militia and were reinforced with 100 British regular soldiers of the independent company of South Carolina but Washington was unable to bring substantial Indian allies now in June of 1754 the commander of Fort Duquesne who happened to be insan jumanville's brother Captain Louis colon de Vie left Fort Duquesne South with 600 French Canadian troops and about a hundred Indian allies now Washington and his small force made a valiant defense of Fort Necessity but they were well outnumbered his Virginia militia were untrained and undisciplined the terrible rain had turned his trenchworks into mud the French were able to fire from the forest and shoot without even gout coming out from undercover and the powder was wet so the Virginians could barely even defend themselves but the VA realized that his situation was tenuous too because at any time more British reinforcements might arrive and so he offered Washington very friendly surrender terms he was going to allow Washington to leave with his colors and arms which meant that they could simply March away and even keep their guns and fly their flags and anxious to get out of a terrible situation Washington gratefully accepted these surrender terms when he got back to Virginia he thought it would be in disgrace but in fact Governor Dinwiddie blamed the other colonies for not supporting them and it actually ended up burnishing Washington's reputation even though this was the only military surrender of George Washington's military career when devias wrote The Surrender terms that Washington had to sign they were written in French and Washington didn't speak French so they had to be translated to him and in that surrender term there was a line in which Washington took responsibility for the assassination of Vincent jamonville Washington always insisted that that was mistranslated to him that he was taking responsibility for killing a spy but the French made it look like he was taking responsibility for assassinating an ambassador and that line where an agent of the British crown took responsibility for assassinating a French Ambassador would earn the French sympathy in Europe and that would lead to escalation after escalation until the two empires the British and the French finally went into all-out war and while Washington's role can be a bit overstated because the tensions were really driving them to war anyway it really was the shots that were fired by George Washington's troops at jumanville Glen and Fort Necessity that sparked that war that was called the French and Indian War which had such a huge impact on North America and drove the American Revolution but even more the French and Indian War was just the North American part of that war the broader War which eventually was called the Seven Years War would Encompass not just the French and the British but all the major European powers and would lead to conflict in not just North America but Europe Africa and the Indian subcontinent it would redefine power structures it would change the colonial structures and would so impact European politics that the tensions caused by the results of the seven year war would still be impacting European politics in the wars of the 20th century and that was all started by George Washington and that is a story worth remembering [Music] in 1893 the United States was in crisis a series of global economic issues as well as domestic issues had coalesced into what was called the Panic of 1893 and the economy was in free fall unemployment was 43 percent in Michigan 35 percent in New York 25 percent in Pennsylvania the downturn caused a rush on goal by people holding certificates back by silver that the federal government struggled to pay dozens of Banks and businesses closed it was the worst downturn of its kind until the Great Depression and the last thing that the nation needed was more bad news when in May of 1893 Grover Cleveland who had just been re-elected to a second non-consecutive term as president found a lump in his cheek afraid that the news could cause a panic the president would have a dangerous surgery that he did not know whether he would survive at a critical time in U.S history and keep it hidden from the public Grover Cleveland's secret surgery and the questions it raises about the people's right to know about the health of the executive is history that deserves to be remembered Grover Cleveland holds a unique position in American history he is the only President elected to non-consecutive terms he's the only president to get married in the white house and he was the only Democratic president to be elected in the American Gilded Age which came to a close after the cataclysmic political shift that followed the Fallout of the 1893 panic known as an honest man and sometimes called Grover the good he was seen as a man of virtue in an era of deep corruption though Cleveland had alienated many important sections in his first term he still won the popular vote in the election of 1888 but he lost the Electoral College to Benjamin Harrison one of the primary political conflicts of the era was between civil rights who supported a policy of free silver or unlimited minting of silver money the issue was that silver was much less valuable than gold and much less than the face value of what they were minted into it caused serious inflation which benefited depth strap farmers who figured that while their debts would remain the same they would have more money to pay them naturally this was disadvantageous to banking business and financial interests who opposed the bimetalist policy and preferred remaining on the gold standard Cleveland had fought the Civil Right forces during his first term and Harrison in the intervening term had signed the Sherman Silver Purchase Act which significantly increased how much silver the government bought the Sherman Act created a run on gold that threatened the stability of the economy and though it was only part of what caused the 1893 Panic Cleveland saw it as a threat that had to be removed immediately but that was before he discovered the tumor Cleveland had been a lifelong smoker and the growth was on the left side of his mouth where he'd chewed his cigars in tobacco when he first noticed the lump he took a mirror and found a crater-like ulcer with a granulated surface the tumor continued to grow and on June 18th he had Dr O'Reilly the White House doctor take a look Riley described it as the size of a quarter removed a small piece and had it sent anonymously to the Army Medical Museum the pathologist diagnosed it as an epithelioma a growth that could be either benign or malignant though he wasn't sure which one it was the cancer continued to grow and Cleveland's young wife recalled that it caused him to walk the floor at night his personal physician Joseph Bryant advised that it is a bad looking tenant where in my mouth I would have it removed it once unfortunately it wasn't that simple even unaware of the cancer One Financial editor wrote that Mr Cleveland is about all that stands between this country and absolute disaster and his death would be a great calamity Cleveland called Uncle jumbo was not in robust Health besides and the 57 year old suffered from gout and rheumatism Cleveland feared that if word got out that he was terminally ill in the middle of the political battle over silver it would weaken his political position and imperile the country the president agreed to have the operation but on the condition that remained a closely held secret even adelai Stevenson the vice president would not be told he chose to have the surgery aboard the yacht of his close friend Elias Benedict Benedict Was a wealthy banker and was considered one of America's leading yachtists his boat the Oneida was a 142 foot long pleasure boat on which Cleveland had already logged nearly 50 000 nautical miles sailing and fishing the Publican press wouldn't think it odd then they reasoned for him to take a four-day fishing trip over the Fourth of July Dr Bryant put together a team of six surgeons to perform the surgery led by Dr William King a pioneering brain surgery who had in 1888 performed one of the first successful brain tumor removals they were all sworn to keep the details of the surgery a secret they would each make their way to the United Dock in New York City from different locations on the night of June 30th with Cleveland and Benedict arriving later that evening Dr Keane was in charge of preparing the ship for the surgery which included removing all the furniture from the ship's Saloon except for an organ which was nailed down for a surgery table they last a chair to a mass in order to keep it stable King also arranged to have necessary medical supplies including tanks of oxygen and nitrous oxide secretly brought board the plan was to perform the surgery while the ship was sailing across Long Island Sound and to deposit the present afterwards at gray Gables his summer home in Massachusetts where his wife was anxiously waiting the president hoped that doing the surgery in early July would give him enough time to recover before Congress returned in August if performing a delicate surgery on a large tumor in the president's mouth on a moving ship while the patient is strapped to a chair sounds difficult and dangerous you'd be right the situation was made even more perilous by the science of the time only during the 19th century had proper oncology and pathology studies been possible and while improvements had been made doctors were limited in their ability to perform delicate surgery and prevent infection the doctors were talented but not necessarily experienced at this kind of surgery they would be removing part of the president's jaw and while Dr Bryant had written a paper examining similar procedures he'd only performed two of them himself the ship's crew were told only that the president was having some teeth removed a story that would be repeated to the Press as the ship set sail on July 1st the party was blessed with good calm weather they began the surgery about noon the doctors made no external incisions instead using a mirror-backed light to illuminate the mouth as well as a lure cheek retractor which Keane had brought from Europe the president was given nitrous oxide as anesthetic as the doctors performed the surgery they discovered that the tumor was a large gelatinous mass that extended upward coming close to the president's eye a large part of the Jawbone and hard palate was removed by chisel as well as five teeth there was remarkably little blood loss and after only an hour and a half the surgery was successfully completed and the president's mouth filled with gauze Matthew algio who wrote a book about the surgery says modern doctors Marvel at this operation the doctor successfully completed a difficult surgery in half the time it would take to be done today and on a moving boat the size of the tumor and the amount of bone removed caused lasting disfigurement to the present's phase which while partially hidden by his famous mustache also affected his speech later a rubber prosthetic was made that restored both Cleveland's appearance and his voice the United arrived in Massachusetts on July 5th and Cleveland was reportedly recovering well Dr Bryant and Dr Keane stayed to perform a smaller surgery this one with the new technique of electrocutory by the end of July Cleveland was fishing again enjoying himself and looking healthy it seemed that the whole operation had gone off without anyone the wiser but two months later a crack in the story appeared there had been rumors that the president had been diagnosed with cancer but they had been easily quashed it wasn't until the end of August the somebody slipped up Elisha J Edwards was a successful reporter working for the Philadelphia press as their New York correspondent he was at the Pinnacle of his career and had a popular syndicated column he wrote six days a week he was approached by a Dr Leander Jones at the end of August who began his conversation we have nearly escaped I think having vice president Stevenson transform from the Senate chamber to the White House as president Jones then related the remarkable tale of the secret surgery and that a tumor had been removed on the boat Edwards was understandably shocked Jones told him that the source was a dentist Doctor Hasbrouck one of the Physicians who had assisted with the surgery Jones was sure the story would get out and so felt no regret passing the story along but Edwards needed more corroboration before he was willing to put his reputation on the line he Tracked Down Dr Hasbrouck at his home and related the story as he had heard it Hasbrouck was aghast some of the Physicians who aboard the yacht must have told you that story he said you could not have obtained it any other way seeing that it was already out Hasbrook told Edwards everything and added that the president was expected to make a full recovery ecstatic Edwards ran to his office to write the story worried that someone else would write it before he did I had the newspaper man's desire to be the first to publish important news he said so sensitive was the information that once he wrote it down he refused to trust anyone to Telegraph it to Philadelphia and instead used a telephone call to call it into the office of the Philadelphia press newspapers didn't use huge Banner headlines much yet so the title of Edward's piece didn't stand out but the content of it did the president a very sick man it began Edward was something of a rarity he wasn't one for using The Sensational writing that so defined the period of yellow journalism he emphasized the character and strength of the president while describing the surgery with remarkable accuracy privately even Dr King called the article a good Scoop well publicly denying every part of it during the gilted Age cancer was almost taboo Edwards doesn't use the word but it says describes Cleveland's ailment as that dread and mysterious enemy which positions scarcely dare to name and suggested its similarity to horrific math tumor that had taken former President Grant eight years prior Edwards was very careful about how he wrote the article offering excuses for why the doctors lied and writing the Cleveland only wished to keep people from being overwhelmed by anxiety and suspense he also reported that the tumor was benign and that the president was no longer in any danger other papers that reported in the wake of the revelations were less composed he had a cancer said the San Francisco morning call predictably the administration denied the claims entirely Cleveland suffered only from some rheumatism and a short tooth Representatives said and any reports to the contrary were sheer nonsense Edwards only identified two of the six doctors Hasbrouck in Cleveland's physician Dr Bryant and Bryant insisted that nothing dramatic at all had occurred onboard the Oneida the other doctors were silent as well the administration launched a coordinated smear campaign to discredit the report newspapers declared Edwards a disgrace to journalism Cleveland recruited his friends to Stonewall other reporters looking to cooperate the story one of them editor of a newspaper himself wrote an open letter that said if the president was sick his closest friends do not know Benedict told reporters that the New York world that the report was all Bosch and that Cleveland hadn't been at all impaired he never missed a meal even the steward of the United stuck to the story claiming he had seen Cleveland on Deck every day on Cleveland's return tip to Washington with his wife then nine months pregnant Cleveland made himself visible and chose to walk at times he would normally have taken a carriage the New York Times reported that his actions we saw command enjoying perfect health on September 6 Cleveland hosted reception for doctors attending the Pan American Medical congress mingling with a gas and thanking them all in a short speech there was no evidence that he had ever been ill the ordeal ruined Edwards his career stalled and for the next 15 years he struggled to find work he finally got a job in 1909 with a struggling Wall Street Journal but his reputation was beyond repair the health of the president remains an important subject but even today there is still no clear law or standard regarding what must be publicly released about the president's health from the drama of President Garfield slow death after being shot by an assassin in 1880 to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Health in efforts to hide the extent of his disability due to polio the public interest and knowing that their leader is healthy and strong has went against issues of privacy and politics Cleveland surgery is only one of many illnesses covered up by the White House for 18 months the White House concealed that President Wilson had been Paralyzed by a severe stroke President Harding had a heart attack that was reported as food poisoning until he died six days later Cleveland would persevere through a tumultuous second term but in 1896 the civil rights to control the Democratic party and nominated William Jennings Bryan over Cleveland he continued to express his opinions and offer advice occasionally his name would come up as a potential candidate for president or Senate but he essentially retired from politics in 1908 he had a heart attack passed away June 24th the age of 71. his last words were I have tried so hard to do right it wasn't until 1917 24 years after the surgery and nine years after Cleveland's death that Dr King had published the tale of the secret surgery in full in the Saturday evening post to vindicate Mr Edward's character as a truthful correspondent only then was the story accepted to be true and Edwards received hundreds of letters of congratulation he's finally given credit for one of the biggest Scoops in American history and there is one more PostScript to the story that didn't come out until 1980 87 years after the surgery aboard the Oneida it turns out the president's tumor had been preserved all those years in modern analysis determined it to be a vericuous carcinoma a growth of considerable less risk than some had feared if you want to see that actual tumor it is on display with other medical Oddities at the mutual Museum of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia [Applause] it was May 30th 1878 and John Harrison the grandson of former president William Henry Harrison was at the Medical College of Ohio searching he was searching for the body of a friend whose grave had been Disturbed and whose body had been stolen 10 days previously through the help of a Cincinnati detective they had found out there had been a delivery to the Medical College of Ohio 3 A.M the previous morning of something white that was presumed to be a cadaver they searched the grounds and they made some disturbing discoveries but they didn't find the body of his friend and they'd almost given up when they found a hidden trap door underneath which was a top rope they pulled it up to find out that it was hanging a human body with a sheet over the head from the age of the cadaver Harrison didn't think it could be his friend but the detective suggested that he look at the face anyway just to be sure they pulled back the sheet and harrisoned to his horror realized that he recognized the face it's father he gasped John Scott Harrison had been buried just the previous day only to have his body snatched and discovered by his own son at a medical school the body snatching of John Scott Harrison a former congressman and Son of United States President represented the Macabre practice that had gone on for centuries but also Illustrated the challenges of a new scientific age it is history that deserves to be remembered on May 25th 1878 John Scott Harrison the only man to be both the Son and the father of a U.S president died at his home he was the last surviving child of w.h Harrison the ninth president of the United States although he died a mere 31 days into his tenure he was buried in Congress Green Cemetery in Ohio near president Harrison's tomb while burying the body John Scott's Sons including future president Benjamin noticed that the grave of a friend Augustus Devin who had died 10 days earlier looked Disturbed realizing if their friend's body had been stolen the gas men were terrified that the same could happen to their father and so they took precautions he was already in a masonry Vault but as an added precaution they had several large stone slabs so large that quote their weight required the efforts of 16 strong men to overcome placed atop the casket and then they had the whole thing sealed in concrete as a further precaution they hired a Watchman to look over the grave for 30 days in the mid 19th century body snatching was common practice the teams of men and sometimes women who stole the bodies were often known as resurrectionist or Resurrection men and had developed sophisticated means of robbing the graves of fresh bodies which they didn't sell to medical colleges who desperately demanded bodies for use in the study of surgery and Anatomy the 19th century was something of a Renaissance for American Medical Science in 1800 there were only four medical colleges in the country but by 1900 there were more than 160. the growing professionalism and needs of the colleges necessitated demand for bodies to be used for teaching especially as medical teaching became more focused on Anatomy in 1824 a physician Charles Knowlton was arrested for illegal dissection which he defended by saying the value of any art or science should be determined by the tendency it has to increase the happiness or to diminish the misery of mankind the controversy wasn't new the conflict between doctors seemed to become more knowledgeable and effective and the social mores of respecting the dad repeatedly boiled over dozens of times in the late 18th and 19th centuries in 1788 a riot known as the doctor's Riot broke out in New York City over bodies of poor people being stolen especially from predominantly black cemeteries laws such as the Massachusetts Anatomy Act of 1831 sought to strike a balance between the two in Most states it was legal to dissect the bodies of convicted criminals who had been sentenced to death but the supply of such bodies was not nearly enough to meet the medical school's demand the Harrisons had taken every precaution for their beloved father but the resurrectionists seemed to know how the body had been buried because they dug at the foot of the grave and burrowed through the brick casing instead of from the head of the grave as was the usual strategy it wasn't uncommon for teams of resurrectionists to have mourners often women view the burial to report on the condition of the body and the burial The Watchman was a suspect but claimed that he'd been spooked in the dark and chosen not to go to the grave at all although some reports suggest the Watchman had fled the city though rampant medical colleges tended to get away with buying bodies from resurrectionists because the bodies were usually of poor undesirable groups and it was even sometimes legal to do so the body snatching of John Scott Harrison received national attention as both he and the former president were well liked and papers as far away as Helena Montana and even Dundee Scotland reported on it it brought back into terrible Focus the horrors of anatomy research that stood in the 19th century the Harrisons were National figures with Benjamin standing as a leading Republican in Illinois recently defeated for Seton Congress there and John Scott having served in the house for a Time when John Harrison showed up the medical school of Ohio armed with a search warrant and accompanied by a police detective a janitor named JQ who was described as obnoxious and protesting showed them around they found several disturbing things including the body of a black woman who they described as being chipped at a box full of severed limbs in the body of an infant but they didn't find a sign of Augustus Devin it was only when the police detective a man named Thomas Snell Baker had the janitor tail that they discovered the trap door with the hidden body the janitor was arrested but the faculty of the college quickly put up the five thousand dollar bail Carter Harrison discovered the Disturbed grave and rushed to deliver the news to John and the Searchers in Cincinnati when they met Carter and John exchanged the terrible news first that the body had been stolen and then that it had already been discovered the Ottawa Illinois free Trader suggested that the doctors had targeted John Scott specifically to study his sudden death while the Philadelphia times expressed the dismay of the nation much surprise is expressed that the leading Medical College should be caught in desecrating the grave of an honored Citizen and that the faculty had no comment except to say that the discovery was just their luck the sons of the Elder Harrison were in dismay Carter Harrison was said to have been quite overpowered by the discovery Dr Robert bartholo Dean of the college faculty expressed his regret that John Scott's body had been taken but denied any wrongdoing claiming that the resurrectionist identity was unknown to the faculty and that the janitor had no knowledge of the transaction and that no member of The Faculty or students had touched the body Benjamin wrote an anguished open letter in response while he lay upon your table the long white beard which the hands of infant grandchildren had often stroked in love was rudely shorn from his face have you so little care of your college that an unseen and unknown man may do all this Benjamin Had A source in the form of a Dr Seeley who claimed to know the identity of the Grave robber but when he was pressed he clammed up apparently worried about his own complicity the Harrisons believe that the college faculty had gotten to the man first a second search by Benjamin this time with Pinkerton detectives turned up his father's clothes shoved in the building's rafters this convinced the future president that the college had deliberately hidden the body and that they were hiding their complicity God keep you from that taste of Hell which comes with the discovery of a father's grave robbed and the body hanging by the neck like a dog in the pit of a Medical College he lamented in the paper the enraged citizens might have repeated the violence of New York's Anatomy riots but Benjamin Harrison was a cautious man who was cognizant of his position as a Hoosier political leader and he sought to calm them down still he insisted he would use every available means to make sure that the perpetrators were brought to Justice and he initiated both civil and criminal actions the re-burial of John Scott Harrison as well as the college's protests that the attention was hurting their craft kept the newspapers and the public frothing crowds milled in the alley where Mr Harrison's body had been dumped trying to get a look inside and one paper lamented what can we do with the bodies of our loved and lost ones to save them from the ignomy of the shoot and windlass and dissecting knife of the Medical College new sin broke that the Scandal was larger than they imagined nearby Miami College which during the summer was mostly empty during the day was being used by a man who among other aliases used the name Dr Morton to store corpses which were then being sent all over the area essentially a Clearinghouse for the trade in cadavers a janitor at Miami College confessed that Dr Morton had been packing bodies away in the basement of the college all summer and sending them to towns all over the region packed in barrels labeled Quimby and Company it was that break that allowed them to finally find the body of Augustus Devon stored in a vat of brine at the University of Michigan real name Charles Morton the doctor was a medical school dropout who moved and sold hundreds of bodies in the region he arrived in Cincinnati in March with a blonde woman he called his wife told his neighbors he was a doctor and that he loved night fishing which is why he was gone at all hours of the night while Devin was reburied on June 16th a month after he had first been buried John Scott Harrison was brought to the tomb of a family friend where it would be safe until it would eventually be brought back to its original resting place near his home in North Bend Ohio in December of 1879. detective snail Baker tried to track down Dr Morton but failed to find him College doctors weren't willing to be forthcoming with one admitting that anyone who gave the man up would receive the general hatred of all body snatchers and might prevent the university in the future from obtaining an adequate supply of bodies for their studies the outcomes of the Harrison's court cases are unknown j.q Marshall was not convicted but it isn't known if Dr Morton was ever found or charged in connection with a crime several civil suits were also filed but any records of what happened were lost when the Hamilton County Courthouse was burned during the Cincinnati Courthouse Riots of 1884. Benjamin Harrison's career skyrocketed during the 1880s eventually taking him to the White House in 1889 the subject of his father's grave robbing was not something he or the rest of family care to recall he said little of it after the affair was finished the body snatching of John Scott Harrison led to many important changes five states passed new Anatomy laws which both increased the penalty for body snatching but also made it easier for medical schools to obtain unclaimed bodies of people who had died in the care of the state and while that reduced the demand for illicit bodies it didn't eliminate it and the trade continued into the 20th century the second change affected the nature of burial itself the Harrison horror inspired a number of inventors to tackle the question of how to make coffins inventors in Ohio designed anti-grave robbing coffins one of which would fire a shotgun-like device and another which would explode like a land mine if the coffin was breached while several instances of exploding coffins appear in newspapers and in patent applications it doesn't appear that these inventions were ever actually installed more practically Andrew van bibber patented in 1878 the mort safe the earliest example of a modern burial Vault the next year George W Boyd invented the first burial Vault that utilized air sealing to close the Vault itself today burial bolts are mostly meant to protect bodies from the elements but they began their existence protecting bodies from much more nefarious threats the story of John Scott Harrison's body provides insights into the changing needs and struggles of a society as the Industrial Revolution the flowering of Science and increased professionalism sought inroads into a nation that was already facing great change the tug of war between the growing demands of science and social mores was further Complicated by sluggish government oversight which struggled to keep up with a pace of change it's all part of the broader backdrop of The Growing Pains of an era of enormous societal rearrangement and we are facing similar challenges in the pace of change today which is all the more reason that history deserves to be remembered [Music] it is October 2nd 2020 and 101 years ago today Edith Wilson found her husband the 62 year old president of the United States unconscious in his private bathroom Woodrow Wilson's stroke is often seen as a tale about how his wife took control of the country for a brief period of time a question about which there is still significant disagreement but his stroked consequences far beyond the role played by his wife it impacted U.S and World relations it impacted how the nation sees the president and it might even have impacted who was elected as the next president for an event that was so consequential it was kept surprisingly Secret at the time and is still a little understood today it is history that deserves to be remembered Erwin Hood Ike Hoover served as white house chief Usher from 1909 to 1933. his 29 years in the position which is the head of the household staff and operations at the White House is a record Hoover later recalled the events of October 2nd 1919. at exactly 10 minutes before 9 o'clock on this memorable day I noted the time in writing the same day my telephone on the desk in the Usher's room at the White House rang and Mrs Wilson's voice said please get Dr Grayson the president is very sick the telephone used was a private one that did not go through the general telephone switchboard Mrs Wilson had come all the way out of the end of the upper Hall to use this particular telephone instead of the regular one in their bedroom I reasoned at the time that it was done to avoid publicity for there been talk about the operators of the switchboard listening in and distributing information they picked up that is from the moment of his stroke Edith Wilson went down a separate Hall to ensure that it be kept secret it was a level of secrecy that would be considered shocking today so secret that the website eyewitness to history noted that for 17 months the president lay in his bed near death barely able to write his own name in the world knew none of it the general Neuroscience noted that the severity of his stroke was kept from Wilson himself his cabinet Congress and the American people a June 2017 article on the website historynet describes the immediate effect of what they called Wilson's big lie not knowing Wilson's condition or prognosis the cabinet and the entire nation spent the next 17 months paddling in a sea of hearsay Whispers And speculation part of the reasoning for the secrecy had to do with the events of the time having spent his first presidential term trying to stay out of the war in Europe he spent much of his second term trying to manage its aftermath while the Paris peace Conference of 1919 included representatives from 32 Nations the decisions were made by what was called the Big Four David Lloyd George of Great Britain George clemenzo of France the turtle Orlando of Italy and Woodrow Wilson according to diplomatic historian Renee Albert Carey this group met informally 145 times and made all the major decisions of the Treaty of Versailles that would both officially bring an end to the Great War and Define what was to come next the treaty was greatly impacted by Wilson's 14 Points a statement of what Wilson saw as the principles for just peace made in a January 8 1918 speech on war aims and peace terms to the United States Congress while the treaty was not completely representative of these points according to story and Irwin Unger the Allied leaders were skeptical of what they saw to be wilsonian idealism and were perhaps more interested in retribution than just peace Wilson did win a victory in the creation of the League of Nations Wilson is often incorrectly given credit for the idea of a world body created to prevent war in fact the idea had been tracked back to the 18th century in the work of German philosopher Emmanuel Kant a forerunner the inter-parliamentary union was formed in 1889 and still operates today and historians have noted that President Theodore Roosevelt had proposed a league of Peace saying in speech in 1910 it would be a master stroke if those great Powers honestly bent on peace would form a league of Peace not only to keep the peace among themselves but to prevent by force if necessary it being broken by others however if not the originator of the idea Wilson was a powerful Advocate both at the conference and after and his role in the creation of the League of Nations was recognized in 1919 when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace for being the father of the League of Nations but his efforts in Europe had exhausted him and he came home to find significant opposition in Congress although opposed largely by Irish and German Americans for different reasons there seemed to be a majority support for passage of the treaty by the American people but a treaty required a two-thirds vote in the United States Senate and following the election of 1918 the Senate included a republican majority including powerful Senators who had a rocky relationship with the president opposition was largely led by the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge whose efforts were supported surprisingly by former president Theodore Roosevelt the complaints had to do with provisions of the treaty that some felt would essentially threaten National sovereignty and could compel the nation into war a number of Republicans were amongst a group called irreconcilables largely isolationists who were adamantly opposed to the treaty Lodge on Roosevelt LED another group however who supported the tree but with modifications as modifications would have required agreement among all the nations at a time the treaty Wilson opposed any modification and Democrats who supported Wilson actually worked against the treaty if it were to be passed with modifications realizing that the treaty did not have the support it needed in the Senate Wilson decided to take his case directly to the people the decision to stress Wilson's White House physician where Admiral Kerry T Grayson who argued that Wilson had not recovered from the stress and exhaustion of the Paris peace conference reportedly Wilson told his personal secretary but the League of Nations is now in its crisis and if it fails I hate to think what will happen to the world I cannot put my personal safety my health and the balance against my duty I must go Wilson left on a Whistle Stop Tour by train on September 3rd but on September 25th the exhausted president collapsed in Pueblo Colorado suffering from physical manifestations of exhaustion and unrelenting headaches the tour was canceled and the trainsped back to Washington September 26th the stroke came six days later there are several reasons why Wilson's condition might have been kept so secret but one of the most significant was the treaty the people around Wilson were afraid that if Wilson's condition was known that it would embolden the opponents of the treaty but if their Hope was that keeping his condition secret would push it through now it didn't work on March 19th the Senate voted on the Treaty of Versailles and it fell seven votes short of the two-thirds majority needed to ratify a treaty the United States signed a separate piece with Germany but it stayed out of the League of Nations and that alone is good enough reason to ask what if but history is history icover noted the course of events the morning of October 2nd I was told I know it to be right that he'd gone to the bathroom upon rising in the morning and was sitting on the stool when the Affliction overcame him that he tumbled to the floor striking his head on the shark Plumbing of the bathtub in his fall that Mrs Wilson hearing groans from the bathroom went in and found him in an unconscious condition she dragged him to the bed in the room joining and came up into the Hall to call over the telephone for the doctor upon seeing the President Hoover was not encouraged he looked as if he were dead there was not a sign of Life his face had a long cut about the temple from which the signs of blood were still evident his nose also bore a long cut lengthwise this too looked red and raw there was no bandage reportedly when Dr Grayson first saw the body he exclaimed my God the president is dead the confusion over how to proceed was underlied in a meeting of Wilson's cabinet on October 6th Secretary of State Robert Lansing who had not seen Wilson since early September and who had been given no more information than the rest of the country called the meeting Linton expressed a simple problem who was supposed to decide if the president was disabled and what should happen if he was the cabinet did not have an answer and was kept in the dark Grayson fervently loyal to Wilson presented a Rosy picture at odds with private observations and refused to declare the president unfit he even reportedly did not admit that the president had suffered from a stroke describing his illness as a touch of indigestion and a depleted nervous system Grayson was blunt with the cabinet secretary Lansing asked me the direct question as to what is the matter with the president was the exact nature of the president's trouble how long would he be sick and was his mind clear or not my reply was the president's mind is not only clear but very active and that it clearly showed that he was very much annoyed when he found out that the cabinet had been called and that he wanted to know by whose authority the meeting had been called and to what purpose given observations made later by Ike Hoover it seems that Grayson's statement to the cabinet was entirely a lie the president's secretary Joseph Pete tumulty told Lansing I will not be a party to ousting him and perhaps most importantly the vice president former Indiana Governor Thomas R Marshall a politician most famous for once quipping during a senate debate that what this country needs is a really good five cent cigar did not want to assume power without the acquiescence of Congress privately Wilson and Marshall had had a falling out during Wilson's first term and Grayson and Edith Wilson had been even more careful to keep the Vice President in the dark but regardless Marshall did not want to be seen as a usurper still in the dark the cabinet made no decisions in the October 6th meeting except to which the president a man privately described as near death a speedy recovery the issue was not easy to resolve as a matter of law prior to the passage of the 25th amendment in 1967 the only relevant law was Article 2 Section 1 Clause 6 of The Constitution in the case of the removal of the president from Office his death resignation or the inability to discharge the powers and duties of said office the same shall devolve on the vice president the Clause did not clarify who decided what inability meant and in practice it meant that the president had to make that decision himself and Wilson refused to there is ongoing question over the role his wife Edith played during his disability Wilson's first wife Ellen axon Wilson died of kidney disease on August 6 1914 during Wilson's first term in office Wilson was introduced to Edith Galt then widowed in March 1915. they married in a private ceremony December 18th there was some Scandal being married so quickly after Ellen's death but Wilson said in his proposal in this place time is not measured by weeks or months or years but by Deep human experiences still the wedding was postponed on an expected year of mourning Edith was a strong and Confident Woman and fiercely loyal to her husband during his disability she controlled access to the president some have argued she became the de facto executive described sometimes as the first woman president for her part she insisted that she made no decisions calling her role a stewardship but with even cabinet ministers and the vice president being denied access to the president exactly how significant her role was in both the administration of his duties and in covering up his disability has always been a matter of question it's still include exactly how significant the president's disability was he was able to meet dignitaries or members of Congress occasionally for brief meetings mostly to reassure Congress and the people but the meetings were carefully managed brief and a blanket was used to hide his paralysis he did not meet with his cabinet until March and then shocked them by his weak and sickly appearance I coover commented that Wilson eventually did grow better but that is not saying much there was never a moment during all that time when it was more than a shadow of his former self one of the considerations of Woodrow Wilson's stroke is the question of what if in the Fantastical world of historical counterfactuals some people argue that if Wilson had not had his stroke then he would have been able to press the Senate to pass the Treaty of Versailles have the United States joined the League of Nations they argued it would have been a more powerful organization and more able to forcely respond to the rise of militarism in Germany between the wars and prevent the rise of Adolf Hitler and thus prevent the second world war still other people argue that both of those premises are probably false that there was never a possibility of a two-thirds majority in the Senate and that the League of Nations turned out to be ineffectual and unable to even deal with minor crises like the second italio Abyssinian war in any case it's impossible to say what might have happened but you can at least conclude that had the nation not lost its most powerful Advocates on behalf of the treaty at a critical point then things might have at least spun differently another interesting counterfactual came later as even Wilson seemed unaware of the significance of his disability he insisted that he was healthy enough to run for a third term this desire appeared to have caused what many think was the Democrats strongest candidate William McAdoo both Secretary of the Treasury and Wilson's son-in-law married to the president's daughter Eleanor from launching the sort of campaign that could have secured him the Democratic nomination the alternative candidate Ohio governor James Cox was soundly defeated by the relative Dark Horse Republican candidate Warren G Harding in 1920. had Dr Grayson and Edith Wilson not misrepresented the extent of the disability to Wilson himself might the Democrats have had a different candidate and potentially a different outcome in 1920. and that brings up another interesting story because doctors today believe that Woodward Wilson stroke in October 1919 was not his first stroke but most likely his fifth stroke the first coming in 1896 when he was chairman of jurisprudence and political economy at Princeton University he fully recovered from the stroke but as the Journal of Neuroscience notes ironically his friend said that he saw that stroke as a defining event and that his personality changed and became much more driven afterwards that is to say that his original stroke might have been what put him on the path to the presidency and if that is true that means that not just one but two of Woodrow Wilson's Strokes impacted who would become president of the United States Woodrow Wilson's house never recovered he died on February 3rd 1924 and Beyond the what might have bins is the what was for the remainder of his term Wilson was never more than a shadow of what he'd been not able to be a forceful personality during tumultuous events following the end of the war including the demobilization of the massive four million man army and labor unrest through 1919. the nation was essentially leaderless for 17 critical months the longest presidential disability in the nation's history certainly because of what was what was not and what might have been October 2nd 1919 deserves to be remembered I hope you enjoyed this episode of the history guy shorts in a Pacific gotten history between 10 and 15 minutes long and if you did enjoy please go ahead and click that Thumbs Up Button if you have any questions or comments or suggestions for future episodes please write those in the comment section I will be happy to personally respond be sure to follow the history guy on Facebook Instagram Twitter and check out our merchandise on teespring.com and if you'd like more episodes on forgotten history all you need to do is subscribe [Music]

Channel: The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

Views: 126,805

Keywords: history, history guy, the history guy

Id: hfHPCspCmKA

Length: 50min 38sec (3038 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 03 2022