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Cabinet Room, where the president broke down.“My message today was a message of death for our young men,” he said.“How strange it seems to applaud that.” The president supposedly launched into a self-pitying monologue, defending his long struggle to keep the United States neutral. He spoke bitterly of how he had been maligned in the newspapers by men such as Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge. Wilson read Tumulty a letter from a friend who understood what he was trying to do. Finally, Tumulty said,“he wiped away great tears [and] laying his head on the table, sobbed as if he was a child.”
    Repeated in dozens of history books and Wilson biographies, this touching scene almost certainly never happened. Tumulty wrote it in 1920, when the illusion of victory had been shattered by cruel realities. Like Frank Cobb’s imaginary interview, it represents something that Tumulty wished Wilson had said and done. By 1920, Tumulty was one of the few men in U.S. politics who remained loyal to Wilson, in spite of the shameful way the president and his wife had treated him. 39
    Without Tumulty, Woodrow Wilson might never have become president. The shrewd, genial Irish-American from Jersey City had shepherded Wilson through the wilderness of New Jersey machine politics when he ran for governor in 1910. Tumulty had stayed loyal when Wilson did what almost every Irish-American politician in the United States considered unforgivable. He broke his promise that he would not attack James Smith, the powerful Democratic Party boss whom George Harvey had persuaded to offer Wilson the gubernatorial nomination. Instead, to prove his liberal bona fides, Wilson made Smith one of his principal targets. In sticking with Wilson, a man whom fellow Irish-Americans called a liar and an ingrate, Tumulty destroyed his once bright future in the New Jersey Democratic Party. 40
    In Washington, Tumulty had been equally valuable in dealing with Congress and the press during Wilson’s first term. He combined abundant charm with shrewd judgment and tact. Nevertheless, after Wilson’s reelection in 1916, the president had fired Tumulty. Why? Because Edith Galt Wilson and Colonel House had advised him against having an Irish Catholic in his White House. Edith considered Tumulty “common.” House foolishly joined the First Lady in this effort to dispose of a rival for Wilson’s attention, never dreaming that he was next on her hit list.
    Tumulty had been the target of attacks by anti-Catholics and politicians jealous of his influence—often one and the same. Too many Irish Americans assumed he could get them favored treatment on everything from government jobs to freeing Ireland from Britain’s grip. In dealing with these problems, Tumulty did nothing to impugn his loyalty or impair his usefulness to the president.
    Tumulty wrote Wilson a sad letter, in which he said his dismissal “wounds me more deeply than I can tell you.” Although he was “heartsick,” he would depart “grateful for having been associated so closely with so great a man.” Newspaperman David Lawrence, a former student of Wilson’s at Princeton and an admirer of Tumulty, persuaded the president to change his mind. But the old, confident friendship between Tumulty and Wilson was gone beyond recall. The secretary was always aware that Edith Wilson’s critical eye was fixed on him—and her opinion often meant more to the president than his advice. 41

XII
    Edith Galt Wilson was by no means the first presidential wife to wield political power behind the scenes. Abigail Adams was known as a “compleat politician,” whose counsel her harassed husband, John, frequently sought. Dolley Madison’s political skills were crucial to the survival of James Madison’s troubled presidency. Sarah Polk was James Polk’s constant confidante and adviser on everything from patronage to fighting the Mexican war.
    But these First Ladies had been married to their politician husbands for