Veeps: Thomas Marshall
Today on a long flight I began to read Scott Berg's new bio of the 28th President called Wilson. I haven't gotten to the part about where the President has a stroke, but his wife won't let his Vice-President run the country, but I'm curious to get all the details. In the meantime, let's talk about the VP in question.
Wilson's Veep was Thomas Riley Marshall, who was born on March 14, 1854 in North Manchester, Indiana. In the style of Jed Clampett, oil and natural gas were discovered on land belonging to Wilson's paternal grandfather Riley Marshall and he became very rich. Riley was able to send his only child, Daniel, to medical school. Daniel married Martha Patterson in 1848. The couple had a son Thomas and a daughter who died in infancy. The family moved first to Quincy, Illinois in 1857 and Daniel Marshall, a staunch Democrat, took his son to the Lincoln and Douglas debate in Freeport in 1858. Four-year-old Thomas Marshall met Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln and sat on the lap of whichever candidate was not speaking. The family moved to Osawatomie, Kansas in 1859 but the violence of "Bleeding Kansas" led them to move to Missouri in 1860. While in Missouri, several men led by Duff Green demanded that Daniel Marshall provide medical assistance to the pro-slavery faction. He refused, and after their departure, the Marshalls' neighbors warned them that Green was planning to return and murder them. The Marshalls quickly packed up and went to Illinois by steamboat. The family remained there only a brief time before moving to Indiana.
Marshall attended Wabash College where he joined the Democratic Club and began writing pro-Democrat political columns in the school paper. In 1872 he wrote an unfavorable column about a female lecturer at the school, accusing her of "seeking liberties" with the young boys in their boarding house. She hired lawyer Lew Wallace, the author of Ben-Hur, and filed a suit demanding that Marshall pay her $20,000 for libel. Marshall hired future United States President Benjamin Harrison to defend him. Harrison had the suit dropped by showing that the charges made by Marshall were probably true. In Marshall's memoir, he wrote that when he approached Harrison to pay his bill, Harrison told him that he would not charge him for the service, but instead gave him a lecture on ethics.
Marshall graduated in June 1873. As a result of his libel case, he had become increasingly interested in becoming a lawyer. He read law in the office of Walter Olds, a future member of the Indiana Supreme Court and was admitted to the Indiana bar on April 26, 1875. In 1879, he met and began to court Kate Hooper, and the two became engaged to marry. Kate died of an illness in 1882, one day before they were to be wed. Her death was a major emotional blow to Marshall, and he began to drink heavily.
Marshall's father died in the late 1880s and his mother died in 1894, leaving him with the family estate and business. In 1895, while working on a case, Marshall met Lois Kimsey who was working as a clerk in her father's law firm. They married on October 2. It is said that the couple spent only two nights apart during their thirty-year marriage.
Marshall's alcoholism had begun to interfere with his law practice. He arrived at court hung-over on several occasions and was unable to hide his problem in his small hometown. His wife helped him to overcome his drinking problem and give up liquor after she locked him in their home for two weeks in order for him to dry out. He became active in temperance organizations and delivered several speeches about the dangers of liquor. Although he had stopped drinking, his past alcoholism was later raised by political opponents.
In 1906, Marshall told to state party leaders that he was interested in running for governor in the 1908 election.[28] He gained the support of several key labor unions, and was endorsed by the Indianapolis Star. Marshall a narrow victory in the election (he received 48.1% of the vote to Watson's 48.0%). He was the first Democratic governor in Indiana in two decades. Marshall was inaugurated as Governor of Indiana on January 11, 1909. During his term, Marshall focused primarily on a progressive agenda. He successfully supported the passage of a child labor law and anti-corruption legislation as well as the popular election of United States Senators. He also overhauled the state auditing agencies and claimed to have saved the government millions of dollars. Marshall was a strong opponent of Indiana's eugenics and sterilization laws, and ordered state institutions not to follow them. His governorship was the first in which no state executions took place, due to his opposition to capital punishment and his practice of pardoning and commuting the sentences of people condemned to execution. He also used anti-trust laws to attempt to break several large monopolies.
Marshall planned to run for a United States Senate seat, but at the 1912 Democratic National Convention in Baltimore, his name was put forward as Indiana's choice for president. Woodrow Wilson won the party's presidential nomination and Marshall won the vice presidential nomination. Marshall privately turned down the nomination, assuming the job would be boring, but he changed his mind after Wilson assured him that he would be given plenty of responsibilities. The Wilson–Marshall ticket easily won the 1912 election because of the division between the Republican Party and the Progressive Party.
Once elected, the relationship between the two running mates was not a good one. Marshall was not fond of Wilson, as he disagreed with him on a number of issues. Although Wilson invited Marshall to cabinet meetings, Marshall's ideas were rarely considered, and Marshall eventually stopped attending them. In 1913 Wilson decided to bypass Marshall and meet personally with members of the Senate to discuss policy. Before this, presidents had used the vice president as a go-between, but Wilson did not trust Marshall. One historian called their relationship one of "functioning animosity".
In the debates leading up to World War I, a number of isolationist senators filibustered bills that Wilson considered important. The filibusters lasted for weeks and twice lasted for over three months. Wilson requested that Marshall put a gag-order in place to cut off debate, but Marshall refused. Marshall led the Senate to adopt a new rule on March 8, 1917, allowing filibusters to be broken by two-thirds of voting Senators. This replaced the previous rule that allowed any senator to prolong debate as long as he desired.
A number of Democratic party leaders wanted Marshall removed from the 1916 reelection ticket, but Wilson decided keeping Marshall on would demonstrate party unity. In 1916 Marshall won reelection, becoming the first vice president re-elected since John C. Calhoun in 1828, and Wilson and Marshall became the first president and vice president team to be re-elected since James Monroe and Daniel Tompkins in 1820.
During Marshall's second term, the United States entered World War I. Marshall was a reluctant supporter of the war. Shortly after the first troops began to assemble for transport to Europe, Marshall and Wilson hosted a delegation from the United Kingdom in which Marshall became privy to Wilson's war strategy. But he was largely excluded from war planning and received news of the war through the newspapers.
Thomas Marshall in his Senate office
On the evening of July 2, 1915, Eric Muenter, an anarchist and onetime German professor at Harvard and Cornell universities, who opposed American support of the allied war effort, broke into the Senate chamber, laid dynamite around Marshall's office door, and set it with a timer. The bomb exploded prematurely, just before midnight while no one was in the office. Muenter was later apprehended and confessed to attempted assassination of the vice president. Marshall was offered a personal security detachment after the incident, but declined it.
Wilson sent Marshall around the nation to deliver morale-boosting speeches and encourage Americans to buy Liberty Bonds in support of the war effort. Marshall gladly accepted the responsibility. As the war neared its end, Marshall became the first vice president to conduct cabinet meetings. Wilson left him with this responsibility while traveling in Europe to sign the Versailles treaty and to work on gathering support for his proposed League of Nations.
Wilson experienced a mild stroke in September 1919. On October 2, he was struck by a much more severe stroke that left him partially paralyzed and incapacitated. Wilson's closest adviser, Joseph Tumulty, did not believe Marshall would be a suitable president and conspired with first lady Edith Wilson to prevent Marshall from assuming the presidency. Wilson's wife Edith strongly disliked Marshall because she considered him to be uncouth. On October 5, Secretary of State Robert Lansing was the first official to propose that Marshall forcibly assume the presidency. Other cabinet secretaries backed Lansing's request, as did Congressional leaders, including members of both the Democratic and Republican parties. The process for declaring a president incapacitated was unclear at that time, and Marshall wanted Wilson to voluntarily allow his powers to devolve to the vice president, but that was impossible given his condition and unlikely given Wilson's dislike for Marshall. Marshall informed the cabinet that the only cases in which he would assume the presidency were a joint resolution of Congress calling on him to do so, or an official communication from Wilson or his staff asserting his inability to perform his duties. Wilson was kept secluded by his wife and personal physician and only his close advisers were allowed to see him. None would divulge official information on his condition. Marshall sought to meet with Wilson to personally determine his condition, but he was unable to do so, and he relied on vague updates he received from Wilson's physician. Congressional leaders considered Marshall's request for a joint resolution. But senators opposed to the League of Nations treaty believed that as president Marshall would make several key concessions that would allow the treaty to win ratification. Wilson, in his present condition, was either unwilling or unable to make the concessions. In order to prevent the treaty's ratification, the anti-League senators blocked the joint resolution.
On December 4, Lansing announced in a Senate committee hearing that no one in the cabinet had spoken with or seen Wilson in over sixty days. The senators seeking to elevate Marshall requested that a committee be sent to check on Wilson's condition, hoping to gain evidence to support their cause. Dubbed the "smelling committee" by several newspapers, the group discovered Wilson was in very poor health, but seemed to have recovered enough of his faculties to make decisions. Their report ended any support for the joint resolution.
At a Sunday church service in mid-December, in what Marshall believed was an attempt by other officials to force him to assume the presidency, a courier brought a message informing him that Wilson had died. Marshall was shocked, and rose to announce the news to the congregation. The ministers held a prayer, the congregation began singing hymns, and many people wept. Marshall and his wife exited the building, and made a call to the White House to determine his next course of action. But Marshall had been been the victim of a hoax. He learned that Wilson was still alive.
Wilson began to recover by the end of 1919, but remained secluded for the remainder of his term. Marshall was prevented from meeting with him to ascertain his true condition until his final day in office.
Marshall was considered as a candidate for the 1920 presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention, but was unable to obtain much support outside of his home state. The party niominated James M. Cox as president and Franklin Delano Roosevelt as vice president, but they were defeated by the Republican ticket of Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge. On their election, Marshall sent a note to Coolidge in which he offered him his "sincere condolences" for his misfortune in being elected vice president.
After leaving office, Marshall bought a home and opened a law practice in Indianapolis. He spent over a year writing books on the law and a humorous memoir called Recollections. Marshall remained a popular public speaker, and continued to travel to give speeches. The last he delivered was to high school students in the town he was born in. While on a trip to Washington D.C., Marshall had a heart attack while reading his Bible in bed on the night of June 1, 1925. His wife called for medical assistance, but he died before it arrived. A service and viewing was held in Washington two days later and was attended by many dignitaries. Marshall was interred in Crown Hill Cemetery.
Wilson's Veep was Thomas Riley Marshall, who was born on March 14, 1854 in North Manchester, Indiana. In the style of Jed Clampett, oil and natural gas were discovered on land belonging to Wilson's paternal grandfather Riley Marshall and he became very rich. Riley was able to send his only child, Daniel, to medical school. Daniel married Martha Patterson in 1848. The couple had a son Thomas and a daughter who died in infancy. The family moved first to Quincy, Illinois in 1857 and Daniel Marshall, a staunch Democrat, took his son to the Lincoln and Douglas debate in Freeport in 1858. Four-year-old Thomas Marshall met Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln and sat on the lap of whichever candidate was not speaking. The family moved to Osawatomie, Kansas in 1859 but the violence of "Bleeding Kansas" led them to move to Missouri in 1860. While in Missouri, several men led by Duff Green demanded that Daniel Marshall provide medical assistance to the pro-slavery faction. He refused, and after their departure, the Marshalls' neighbors warned them that Green was planning to return and murder them. The Marshalls quickly packed up and went to Illinois by steamboat. The family remained there only a brief time before moving to Indiana.
Marshall attended Wabash College where he joined the Democratic Club and began writing pro-Democrat political columns in the school paper. In 1872 he wrote an unfavorable column about a female lecturer at the school, accusing her of "seeking liberties" with the young boys in their boarding house. She hired lawyer Lew Wallace, the author of Ben-Hur, and filed a suit demanding that Marshall pay her $20,000 for libel. Marshall hired future United States President Benjamin Harrison to defend him. Harrison had the suit dropped by showing that the charges made by Marshall were probably true. In Marshall's memoir, he wrote that when he approached Harrison to pay his bill, Harrison told him that he would not charge him for the service, but instead gave him a lecture on ethics.
Marshall graduated in June 1873. As a result of his libel case, he had become increasingly interested in becoming a lawyer. He read law in the office of Walter Olds, a future member of the Indiana Supreme Court and was admitted to the Indiana bar on April 26, 1875. In 1879, he met and began to court Kate Hooper, and the two became engaged to marry. Kate died of an illness in 1882, one day before they were to be wed. Her death was a major emotional blow to Marshall, and he began to drink heavily.
Marshall's father died in the late 1880s and his mother died in 1894, leaving him with the family estate and business. In 1895, while working on a case, Marshall met Lois Kimsey who was working as a clerk in her father's law firm. They married on October 2. It is said that the couple spent only two nights apart during their thirty-year marriage.
Marshall's alcoholism had begun to interfere with his law practice. He arrived at court hung-over on several occasions and was unable to hide his problem in his small hometown. His wife helped him to overcome his drinking problem and give up liquor after she locked him in their home for two weeks in order for him to dry out. He became active in temperance organizations and delivered several speeches about the dangers of liquor. Although he had stopped drinking, his past alcoholism was later raised by political opponents.
In 1906, Marshall told to state party leaders that he was interested in running for governor in the 1908 election.[28] He gained the support of several key labor unions, and was endorsed by the Indianapolis Star. Marshall a narrow victory in the election (he received 48.1% of the vote to Watson's 48.0%). He was the first Democratic governor in Indiana in two decades. Marshall was inaugurated as Governor of Indiana on January 11, 1909. During his term, Marshall focused primarily on a progressive agenda. He successfully supported the passage of a child labor law and anti-corruption legislation as well as the popular election of United States Senators. He also overhauled the state auditing agencies and claimed to have saved the government millions of dollars. Marshall was a strong opponent of Indiana's eugenics and sterilization laws, and ordered state institutions not to follow them. His governorship was the first in which no state executions took place, due to his opposition to capital punishment and his practice of pardoning and commuting the sentences of people condemned to execution. He also used anti-trust laws to attempt to break several large monopolies.
Marshall planned to run for a United States Senate seat, but at the 1912 Democratic National Convention in Baltimore, his name was put forward as Indiana's choice for president. Woodrow Wilson won the party's presidential nomination and Marshall won the vice presidential nomination. Marshall privately turned down the nomination, assuming the job would be boring, but he changed his mind after Wilson assured him that he would be given plenty of responsibilities. The Wilson–Marshall ticket easily won the 1912 election because of the division between the Republican Party and the Progressive Party.
Once elected, the relationship between the two running mates was not a good one. Marshall was not fond of Wilson, as he disagreed with him on a number of issues. Although Wilson invited Marshall to cabinet meetings, Marshall's ideas were rarely considered, and Marshall eventually stopped attending them. In 1913 Wilson decided to bypass Marshall and meet personally with members of the Senate to discuss policy. Before this, presidents had used the vice president as a go-between, but Wilson did not trust Marshall. One historian called their relationship one of "functioning animosity".
In the debates leading up to World War I, a number of isolationist senators filibustered bills that Wilson considered important. The filibusters lasted for weeks and twice lasted for over three months. Wilson requested that Marshall put a gag-order in place to cut off debate, but Marshall refused. Marshall led the Senate to adopt a new rule on March 8, 1917, allowing filibusters to be broken by two-thirds of voting Senators. This replaced the previous rule that allowed any senator to prolong debate as long as he desired.
A number of Democratic party leaders wanted Marshall removed from the 1916 reelection ticket, but Wilson decided keeping Marshall on would demonstrate party unity. In 1916 Marshall won reelection, becoming the first vice president re-elected since John C. Calhoun in 1828, and Wilson and Marshall became the first president and vice president team to be re-elected since James Monroe and Daniel Tompkins in 1820.
During Marshall's second term, the United States entered World War I. Marshall was a reluctant supporter of the war. Shortly after the first troops began to assemble for transport to Europe, Marshall and Wilson hosted a delegation from the United Kingdom in which Marshall became privy to Wilson's war strategy. But he was largely excluded from war planning and received news of the war through the newspapers.
Thomas Marshall in his Senate office
On the evening of July 2, 1915, Eric Muenter, an anarchist and onetime German professor at Harvard and Cornell universities, who opposed American support of the allied war effort, broke into the Senate chamber, laid dynamite around Marshall's office door, and set it with a timer. The bomb exploded prematurely, just before midnight while no one was in the office. Muenter was later apprehended and confessed to attempted assassination of the vice president. Marshall was offered a personal security detachment after the incident, but declined it.
Wilson sent Marshall around the nation to deliver morale-boosting speeches and encourage Americans to buy Liberty Bonds in support of the war effort. Marshall gladly accepted the responsibility. As the war neared its end, Marshall became the first vice president to conduct cabinet meetings. Wilson left him with this responsibility while traveling in Europe to sign the Versailles treaty and to work on gathering support for his proposed League of Nations.
Wilson experienced a mild stroke in September 1919. On October 2, he was struck by a much more severe stroke that left him partially paralyzed and incapacitated. Wilson's closest adviser, Joseph Tumulty, did not believe Marshall would be a suitable president and conspired with first lady Edith Wilson to prevent Marshall from assuming the presidency. Wilson's wife Edith strongly disliked Marshall because she considered him to be uncouth. On October 5, Secretary of State Robert Lansing was the first official to propose that Marshall forcibly assume the presidency. Other cabinet secretaries backed Lansing's request, as did Congressional leaders, including members of both the Democratic and Republican parties. The process for declaring a president incapacitated was unclear at that time, and Marshall wanted Wilson to voluntarily allow his powers to devolve to the vice president, but that was impossible given his condition and unlikely given Wilson's dislike for Marshall. Marshall informed the cabinet that the only cases in which he would assume the presidency were a joint resolution of Congress calling on him to do so, or an official communication from Wilson or his staff asserting his inability to perform his duties. Wilson was kept secluded by his wife and personal physician and only his close advisers were allowed to see him. None would divulge official information on his condition. Marshall sought to meet with Wilson to personally determine his condition, but he was unable to do so, and he relied on vague updates he received from Wilson's physician. Congressional leaders considered Marshall's request for a joint resolution. But senators opposed to the League of Nations treaty believed that as president Marshall would make several key concessions that would allow the treaty to win ratification. Wilson, in his present condition, was either unwilling or unable to make the concessions. In order to prevent the treaty's ratification, the anti-League senators blocked the joint resolution.
On December 4, Lansing announced in a Senate committee hearing that no one in the cabinet had spoken with or seen Wilson in over sixty days. The senators seeking to elevate Marshall requested that a committee be sent to check on Wilson's condition, hoping to gain evidence to support their cause. Dubbed the "smelling committee" by several newspapers, the group discovered Wilson was in very poor health, but seemed to have recovered enough of his faculties to make decisions. Their report ended any support for the joint resolution.
At a Sunday church service in mid-December, in what Marshall believed was an attempt by other officials to force him to assume the presidency, a courier brought a message informing him that Wilson had died. Marshall was shocked, and rose to announce the news to the congregation. The ministers held a prayer, the congregation began singing hymns, and many people wept. Marshall and his wife exited the building, and made a call to the White House to determine his next course of action. But Marshall had been been the victim of a hoax. He learned that Wilson was still alive.
Wilson began to recover by the end of 1919, but remained secluded for the remainder of his term. Marshall was prevented from meeting with him to ascertain his true condition until his final day in office.
Marshall was considered as a candidate for the 1920 presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention, but was unable to obtain much support outside of his home state. The party niominated James M. Cox as president and Franklin Delano Roosevelt as vice president, but they were defeated by the Republican ticket of Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge. On their election, Marshall sent a note to Coolidge in which he offered him his "sincere condolences" for his misfortune in being elected vice president.
After leaving office, Marshall bought a home and opened a law practice in Indianapolis. He spent over a year writing books on the law and a humorous memoir called Recollections. Marshall remained a popular public speaker, and continued to travel to give speeches. The last he delivered was to high school students in the town he was born in. While on a trip to Washington D.C., Marshall had a heart attack while reading his Bible in bed on the night of June 1, 1925. His wife called for medical assistance, but he died before it arrived. A service and viewing was held in Washington two days later and was attended by many dignitaries. Marshall was interred in Crown Hill Cemetery.