--- title: How Woodrow Wilson died url: https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/endings/woodrow-wilson/ description: Woodrow Wilson, president of the United States from 1913 to 1921, suffered a disabling stroke on 2 October 1919 whose gravity was withheld from the… section: FRAME --- ![Illustration: an interwar radio-and-newsreel intelligence collage with a 1930s map of Europe and propaganda poster proofs.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/detail/hero-interwar.jpg) [Regimes](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/) / [How they died](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/endings/) # How Woodrow Wilson died At a glance The US president from 1913 to 1921 suffered a severe stroke on 2 October 1919 that his wife Edith and his physician Cary Grayson kept from the public and most of his government; he left office in 1921 an invalid and died in Washington on 3 February 1924, the first president buried in the capital. - **Leader:** Woodrow Wilson - **Died:** 3 February 1924 - **Place:** Washington, D.C., United States (his house at 2340 S Street NW) - **Cause:** Exhaustion following a digestive disturbance, with arteriosclerosis and paralysis from the 1919 stroke (Rear Admiral Grayson's statement, reported 4 February 1924) - **Regime:** [Wilson administration](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/wilson-administration/) On this page - [The final days](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/endings/woodrow-wilson/#the-final-days) - [The death](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/endings/woodrow-wilson/#the-death) - [What happened to the body](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/endings/woodrow-wilson/#what-happened-to-the-body) - [How the death was announced and used](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/endings/woodrow-wilson/#how-the-death-was-announced-and-used) - [Timeline](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/endings/woodrow-wilson/#timeline) - [Same-standard note](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/endings/woodrow-wilson/#same-standard-note) - [Sources](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/endings/woodrow-wilson/#sources) **In one line:** Woodrow Wilson, president of the United States from 1913 to 1921, suffered a disabling stroke on 2 October 1919 whose gravity was withheld from the public and from his own cabinet, lived on in Washington for over four years, and died at his house on 3 February 1924. ## The final days In September 1919 Wilson took his case for the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations to the country in a rail tour of the West. He had been ill in Paris in April 1919, an illness that some historians have described as a first stroke and others as influenza; the sources differ. On the tour his headaches and exhaustion grew. After a speech at Pueblo, Colorado, on 25 September the rest of the tour was cancelled and the train returned to Washington on 28 September. ![The brick front of a three-storey Georgian-style town house with arched upper windows and a small balcony over the door, seen through a bare tree in winter](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/images/endings/woodrow-wilson-1.jpg) The house at 2340 S Street NW, Washington, where Wilson lived from 1921 and died in 1924; colour photograph from the Historic American Buildings Survey, Library of Congress (undated, late twentieth century). [Source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:VIEW_OF_NORTH_FACADE_-_Woodrow_Wilson_House,_2340_South_S_Street,_Northwest,_Washington,_District_of_Columbia,_DC_HABS_DC,WASH,220-38_(CT).tif): Historic American Buildings Survey, Library of Congress; photographer and date not given on Commons, Public domain (Historic American Buildings Survey, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/dc0104.color.572008c). In the early hours of 2 October 1919 Edith Wilson found him collapsed in a bathroom at the White House. The stroke left him paralysed on the left side and with impaired sight on one side. The physicians were Cary T. Grayson, his Navy doctor, with specialists called in, among them the neurologist Francis Dercum. The way it was handled is the information-control element of the case. On 2 October Grayson announced that "The president is a very sick man" and that "absolute rest was essential for some time" (as quoted in *The Conversation*), and the public statements did not name a stroke. Secretary of State Robert Lansing, who pressed him for information at the cabinet meeting he called on 6 October, was given an account of "a depleted nervous system" and indigestion (HistoryNet). Edith Wilson screened visitors, papers and messages. In her *My Memoir* (1939) she described a "stewardship" of passing on only what she judged needed the president's attention, and said she made no decisions herself; historians, among them Phyllis Lee Levin, have questioned how sharply that line held, since in practice she controlled what reached him and in what form. The Constitution then had no mechanism for declaring a president unable to serve; the Twenty-fifth Amendment came in 1967. Wilson stayed largely out of public view for months. The Senate rejected the Treaty with reservations on 19 November 1919 and again on 19 March 1920. Lansing called a cabinet meeting without presidential approval on 6 October 1919 (HistoryNet), and he left office on 13 February 1920; the State Department's Office of the Historian records that he resigned over disagreements about the League of Nations and Wilson's inability to perform his duties. Sources differ on whether the departure is better described as a resignation or a dismissal. Wilson left office on 4 March 1921, and he and Edith moved to a house on S Street. ## The death For three years Wilson lived as an invalid at the S Street house. He died at 11:15 on the morning of Sunday 3 February 1924, aged 67 (United Press, Washington, 4 February 1924). Grayson's statement, as reported by United Press, said that his eyes "remained open for about 10 minutes, and then he closed them and passed away shortly afterward just like a tired man going to sleep." The same report records that earlier he had said, "I'm a broken piece of machinery. When the machinery breaks down, I'm ready." Other accounts give different last words; the archive has not seen a primary text for them and does not repeat them. The disputed points are these. - **The cause.** Grayson's statement gave death as "exhaustion following a digestive disturbance" that began early the previous week, on a background of arteriosclerosis and hemiplegia from the 1919 stroke, the heart muscle being "so fatigued that it refused to act any longer" (United Press). No detailed autopsy report was found. - **The 1919 illness.** Whether Paris in April 1919 was a stroke, influenza or both is open. - **Edith Wilson's role.** Her own account and later historians' accounts differ on how much she decided. ## What happened to the body A private service lasting about fifteen minutes was held at the S Street house at 3 p.m. on Wednesday 6 February 1924, followed at 3:30 p.m. by a service in the Bethlehem Chapel of Washington Cathedral, after which the body was placed in the cathedral crypt, described at the time as a temporary resting place. There was no state funeral and no lying in state at the Capitol. President Coolidge ordered military and naval honours and flags at half-staff on federal buildings for thirty days (United Press, 4 February 1924; Washington National Cathedral). ![Soldiers in greatcoats and a clergyman in white surplice stand in a Washington street as people in overcoats gather around a hearse in the background](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/images/endings/woodrow-wilson-2.jpg) Titled "Woodrow Wilson funeral" in the National Photo Company Collection, Library of Congress, 1924; the casket is at the hearse at the back. [Source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Woodrow_Wilson_funeral_LOC_npcc.10541.jpg): National Photo Company Collection, Library of Congress, npcc.10541 (https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2016836813), Public domain (Library of Congress; 1924 photograph, published before 1930). ![Twenty-seven uniformed men in two rows on the steps of a building, with a typed caption below reading Pallbearers for the Wilson funeral selected from the Army, Navy and Marine Corps](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/images/endings/woodrow-wilson-3.jpg) The pallbearers chosen from the Army, Navy and Marine Corps for the funeral, 1924 (National Photo Company Collection, Library of Congress, LCCN 2004668273). [Source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Group_portrait_of_27_U.S._Army,_Navy_and_Marine_Corps_pallbearers_selected_to_serve_at_funeral_of_Woodrow_Wilson_LCCN2004668273.jpg): National Photo Company Collection, Library of Congress, LCCN 2004668273 (https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2004668273/), Public domain (Library of Congress; 1924 photograph, published before 1930). Wilson was the first president buried in Washington (History.com). In 1956, the centennial of his birth, his remains were moved to a new sarcophagus in the Wilson Bay in the cathedral nave (Washington National Cathedral). Edith Wilson lived in the S Street house until her death in 1961 and bequeathed it and its furnishings to the National Trust for Historic Preservation; it opened as a museum in 1963 (Woodrow Wilson House). ![Illustration: a microfilm reader and card-catalogue drawers with film strips and index cards.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/graphics/microfilm-archive.jpg) Illustration, not an archive object ## How the death was announced and used Grayson's statement on the death was issued from the house and carried by the wire services on 4 February 1924. Coolidge's proclamation of honours is recorded above. ![A pale stone sarcophagus lid with a carved cross on the end and red carnations draped over its edge, in a Gothic stone interior](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/images/endings/woodrow-wilson-4.jpg) Wilson's tomb in the Wilson Bay of Washington National Cathedral, photographed by Tim Evanson on 29 December 2011 (CC BY-SA 2.0). [Source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Woodrow_Wilson_tomb_05_-_South_Nave_Bay_F_-_National_Cathedral_-_DC.jpg): Photograph by Tim Evanson, 29 December 2011 (Flickr 6623017255), CC BY-SA 2.0, CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/). The death was used in the political argument over the League of Nations, which the United States never joined. Supporters of the League described Wilson as a man who had given his health for it. Opponents, including the senators who had fought the Treaty, said his reservations about compromise had defeated it. Edith Wilson published her own account in 1939. The Twenty-fifth Amendment, on presidential disability, was ratified in 1967. ## Timeline - April 1919: serious illness in Paris (disputed). - 3 to 25 September 1919: western speaking tour; tour cancelled after Pueblo. - 2 October 1919: stroke; Grayson announces that the president is "a very sick man". - 19 November 1919: Senate rejects the Treaty with reservations; 19 March 1920 again. - 13 February 1920: Lansing leaves office. - 4 March 1921: leaves office. - 3 February 1924: dies in Washington. - 6 February 1924: funeral; buried at Washington National Cathedral. ## Same-standard note This page uses the same sections and definitions as every "How they died" page and marks disputed points. Wilson died of natural causes in private life, three years after leaving office. The extent of his incapacity after the stroke of October 1919 was withheld from the public and from much of the government by his wife and his physician while he remained president. This differs from leaders whose deaths were announced by a state alone, and from leaders killed in conflict, and no equivalence is implied. ## Sources - United Press, Washington, 4 February 1924: https://www.upi.com/Archives/1924/02/04/Wilson-to-lie-in-crypt-of-cathedral-services-to-be-private/7421777382101/ - "The last days of Woodrow Wilson", *The Conversation*: https://theconversation.com/the-last-days-of-woodrow-wilson-219462 - HistoryNet, "How Woodrow Wilson's Hidden Illness Left America with no President for Over a Year": https://historynet.com/how-woodrow-wilsons-hidden-illness-left-america-with-no-president-for-over-a-year/ - Office of the Historian, Robert Lansing: https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/people/lansing-robert - Washington National Cathedral, "100 Years Ago Today: Woodrow Wilson's Cathedral Burial": https://cathedral.org/blog/100-years-ago-today-woodrow-wilsons-cathedral-burial/ - History.com, "Woodrow Wilson dies": https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/february-3/woodrow-wilson-dies - Woodrow Wilson House, "About the Wilson House": https://woodrowwilsonhouse.org/about-the-wilson-house/ - Edith Bolling Wilson, *My Memoir* (1939). - Phyllis Lee Levin, *Edith and Woodrow: The Wilson White House* (2001); John Milton Cooper, *Woodrow Wilson* (2009); Edwin A. Weinstein, *Woodrow Wilson: A Medical and Psychological Biography* (1981); Cary T. Grayson's published account, *Woodrow Wilson: An Intimate Memoir* (1960). - Image records: Library of Congress, National Photo Company Collection, npcc.10541 and LCCN 2004668273; Historic American Buildings Survey record for the S Street house (HABS DC,WASH,220). - Photograph of the tomb in the Wilson Bay, Washington National Cathedral, by Tim Evanson, 2011 (CC BY-SA 2.0).