On the Road with President Woodrow Wilson by Richard F
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On the Road with President Woodrow Wilson By Richard F. Weingroff Table of Contents Table of Contents .................................................................................................... 2 Woodrow Wilson – Bicyclist .................................................................................. 1 At Princeton ............................................................................................................ 5 Early Views on the Automobile ............................................................................ 12 Governor Wilson ................................................................................................... 15 The Atlantic City Speech ...................................................................................... 20 Post Roads ......................................................................................................... 20 Good Roads ....................................................................................................... 21 President-Elect Wilson Returns to Bermuda ........................................................ 30 Last Days as Governor .......................................................................................... 37 The Oath of Office ................................................................................................ 46 President Wilson’s Automobile Rides .................................................................. 50 Summer Vacation – 1913 ...................................................................................... 61 Winter Vacation - 1913 ......................................................................................... 63 In Pass Christian ................................................................................................... 65 Back to Harlakenden House – 1914 ...................................................................... 76 Harlakenden House – 1915 ................................................................................... 81 The Big Announcement ........................................................................................ 93 The Wedding ....................................................................................................... 112 The Honeymoon .................................................................................................. 117 The Road Bill ...................................................................................................... 124 The AASHO Bill ................................................................................................. 131 The Final Push .................................................................................................... 134 Getting to Shadow Lawn ..................................................................................... 136 XII. Good Roads ............................................................................................. 140 Transportation ................................................................................................. 141 Supporting the President ..................................................................................... 145 President Wilson’s Front Porch Campaign ......................................................... 149 The Good Roads Speech in Indianapolis ............................................................ 153 The Second Term ................................................................................................ 166 The Post War Period ........................................................................................... 173 The 1920 Election ............................................................................................... 190 Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 198 1 On the Road with President Woodrow Wilson President Woodrow Wilson initiated the Federal-aid highway program by signing the Federal Aid Road Act on July 11, 1916. He does not appear to have played a direct role in securing congressional approval, but his team at the Department of Agriculture, particularly Director Logan Waller Page of the Office of Public Roads and Rural Engineering, was influential. Nevertheless, President Wilson favored such a program because he understood, from personal experience, that it was needed. For information on development of the 1916 Act, see “Creating of a Landmark” on this Web site at https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/highwayhistory/landmark.pdf Woodrow Wilson – Bicyclist On March 1, 1869, Thomas Woodrow Wilson, a 12-year old, saw the Hanlon brothers riding velocipedes on Broad Street in Augusta, Georgia. David V. Herlihy, the author of Bicycles: The History (Yale University Press, 2006), wrote in Adventure Cyclist magazine that Tommy, as he was known, “was practically an eyewitness” to the inception of the bicycle. “He may even have ridden the old boneshaker himself because two rinks flourished briefly near his home . .” Whether he tried the boneshaker is unknown, but Tommy was not gripped by the growing enthusiasm for bicycling that began with the introduction of the ordinary – the bicycle with a large front wheel and a small back wheel. Today, it is difficult to comprehend how extensive the Bicycle Craze of the 1880s and 1890s was following introduction of the ordinary or “English Bicycle.” The worldwide craze included the formation of city, State, and national bicycle clubs, such as the League of American Wheelmen (L.A.W.), the most influential of them; city bicycling free of trolley schedules and fares; construction of velodromes for learning, practice, and exercise, similar to the roller and ice skating rinks of a later era; bicycle racing, a sport that was as popular in its time as Nascar is today; bicycle sale and repair shops in every city, one of which was the source of income for Orville and Wilbur Wright as they developed the first self-propelled airplane to take flight; fashions, including the then-scandalous “bloomers” for women; opportunities for African Americans such as Marshall “Major” Taylor, one of the most famous bicycle racers in the world; and national advocacy by the L.A.W., bicycle makers, and “cranks” (fans) for good roads. The bicycle, in short, was a revolution. In 1883, while Woodrow was practicing law in Atlanta, his 16-year old brother Joseph (Josie) caught the bicycling fever in Wilmington, North Carolina. He bought a Columbia ordinary, one of the premier brands, and soon founded one of 2 the South’s early bicycle clubs. “Josie did his part for the cause, suing the State of North Carolina to give wheelmen access to a local turnpike.” He promoted the bicycle to his older brother in letter after letter (in one, he wrote “Hurrah!!!! For the bicycle”), but Woodrow was not persuaded: Woodrow did not truly fit the wheelman mold. For starters, he was not much of an athlete. At five feet 11 inches, he towered over his younger brother, and he had played some baseball in his college days, but both his eyesight and his general constitution were poor. Besides, he was approaching the 30-year milestone, an age when many wheelmen hung up their wheels to get on with life. Indeed, Woodrow was already dating the woman he would soon marry, Ellen Louise Axson. In 1884, when Joseph went to military school, he left his Columbia with Woodrow, hoping he would try bicycling. “Whether Woodrow ever dared to mount the Columbia and take it on a furtive spin or two is not known, [but] if he did, he never succumbed to ‘high wheel fever’”: And by 1887, it seemed that Woodrow would never cycle. He had married Ellen, become a father to the first of their three daughters, and was fully engaged in his new career as a university professor, teaching ancient history and international law. Joseph, returning from school, became the secretary-treasurer of the bicycle club and an agent for two bicycle companies, Columbia and Ridge. Woodrow, increasingly experiencing fatigue and headaches, believed that exercise might help him overcome his illnesses, but resisted the bicycle until a variation, called the “safety,” with same size wheels, arrived in the United States from England: Although it was at first widely dismissed as an eccentricity, the diminutive chain-driven bicycle from Great Britain quickly gained traction. With the adoption of pneumatic tires, the revamped bicycle was at last ready to deliver on its original promise to provide efficient, enjoyable—and reasonably safe transportation. It soon toppled the old high wheel and threw open the gates of the cycling kingdom to the general population. The safety reached the United States in 1882. As the safety displaced the ordinary, Joseph lost interest. “If he could no longer mount his ‘ordinary’ with his head held high, it was time to give up the sport altogether.” His older brother, however, finally caught the fever: 3 Along with millions of others, Woodrow would get swept up by the great bicycle boom of the 1890s . Woodrow probably purchased his first bicycle around 1894, after he had returned to Princeton as a professor. For the next 16 years or so, even after the bicycle had lost its cachet [to the automobile], and even after he had assumed the university’s highest administrative post, Woodrow continued to rely on his bicycle to get around campus. [Herlihy, David V., “Woodrow Wilson, Cyclist,” Adventure Cycling, June 2017.] At an unknown point, he joined the L.A.W., which published Good Roads magazine monthly beginning in 1892 (“The Illustrated