Toward the end of 1919, Woodrow Wilson's health broke down and he went into a kind of exhausted twilight. He withdrew to his bedroom upstairs at the White House. He saw almost no one. Edith Wilson began receiving Cabinet members in the next room, relaying what she said were her husband's wishes. Wilson's enemies on Capitol Hill claimed that she had taken over the Administration. "Mrs. Wilson is President!" shouted Senator Albert Fall of New Mexico. "We have petticoat government!"
The idea, needless to say, struck Fall as an...
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