The Love Letters of a President

I've written before about how President Barack Obama writes letters, but over the weekend, I heard about another letter-writing president, Woodrow Wilson.

The CBS Sunday Morning Show had a segment on President Wilson, who served from 1913 to 1921. The story mentioned how the president's wife, Ellen, died while he was in office. Within a few months, he had fallen in love with Edith Bolling Galt and was writing her up to three letters a day in order to convince her to give him a chance.

It was such an intriguing story that I did a little more research on the 28th U.S. President. It seems that he had also written many letters to Ellen, before and after their marriage. One of their three daughters, Eleanor Wilson McAdoo, edited some of the letters into a book, "The Priceless Gift: The Love Letters of Woodrow Wilson and Ellen Axson Wilson," published in 1962, 38 years after her father's death.

According to Ellen's foreword in the book, after Woodrow Wilson's death, there were more than 1,400 letters found in his house, including those between the president and his first wife.

You can read Ellen's book online here. You can also read about the manuscript collections of Ellen Wilson and Edith Wilson at the National First Ladies' Library website.

What a great legacy these letters have given us, as Americans, as letter writers, as humanity.