Augusta, Ga.: training ground for a president

He was just ''Tommy'' when he lived there, but as he played baseball, studied and observed his community at war, he was preparing to become President Woodrow Wilson.

By MICHAEL SCHUMAN
© St. Petersburg Times
published June 30, 2002

AUGUSTA, Ga. -- The latest home of a president of the United States to open to the public was not lived in by Bill Clinton or George W. Bush or President Bush. It was home to a president with links to both the Civil War and World War I.

Visitors to this brick Greek Revival home in downtown Augusta meet a boy named Tommy Wilson. But most who come here will not know that Woodrow Wilson's first name was actually Thomas.

He lived in this 21/2-story house from ages 3 through 13. He left a little more than four decades from the day he would take the oath of office in 1913 -- as Woodrow Wilson, the nation's 28th president.

But the emphasis in this home tour is Tommy the boy, son of a Presbyterian minister who moved often. The 10 years the boy spent in this handsome home were the longest period he would live in any one home in his life.

Tommy was much like any boy of his era. He played with marbles, like the ones placed here on the floor of the spacious bedroom he shared with his younger brother. Tommy daydreamed in school, as evidenced by the sketch of his pet greyhound and the lineup of his neighborhood baseball team that he scrawled on the pages of his geography textbook. Both of these have been on view since the house opened to the public last September.

One day, a mischievous Tommy took his mother's diamond ring and began scratching his name on a window pane in the "best room," which today would be known as a guest room. The boy managed to scratch the letters TOM on the glass; perhaps the approach of one of his parents forced him to stop before he added the MY.

As an adult, Wilson would one day write that his first memory was standing by the fence in front of the house a few weeks shy of his fourth birthday and overhearing two men state that "Mr. Lincoln" had just been elected president and there was going to be a war.

Alarmed, Tommy ran indoors and asked his father, an ardent secessionist, who this Mr. Lincoln was, and what this talk of war was all about.

When the Civil War was raging, Rev. Joseph Ruggles Wilson's church -- with one of Augusta's more affluent congregations -- was used as a hospital for Confederate soldiers.

From a window in the upstairs family room, Tommy could see the wounded being treated in the churchyard. When the war ended, the youngster witnessed former Confederate President Jefferson Davis, by then a prisoner, being led away in handcuffs.

Could all this have affected Wilson's view of armed conflict decades later, when he was president? At that time, former President Theodore Roosevelt and other hawks were questioning President Wilson's patriotism for not sending U.S. troops into the "war to end all wars."

How could it not?

During a tour of the Woodrow Wilson House, director Heather E. Gordon alluded to one other aspect of Wilson's public policy that likely stemmed from his Augusta youth: his stance on slavery.

Although Rev. Wilson cited Bible verses in his sermons supporting slavery, the Wilson family did not own slaves. They did, however, employ two African-American servants, a female cook named Old Mittie and a male butler whose name is not known.

All presidents have to bend to get what they want from Congress, and a half-century after the Emancipation Proclamation, Wilson often caved on issues of race. That has become fodder for revisionist historians.

For example, after Secretary of the Treasury William G. McAdoo nominated an African-American named Adam E. Patterson for registrar of the treasury, southern representatives and senators hit the roof. Wilson responded by withdrawing the nomination.

And after screening the silent classic film Birth of a Nation, in which creation of the Ku Klux Klan is praised, Wilson is said to have announced, "It is like writing history in lightning. My only regret is that it is all so terribly true."

The gist of the guided tour of the Wilson house focuses on growing up in the 1860s and the idiosyncrasies of Victorian America. Peacock feathers decorate a mantle in the front parlor and a chest of drawers with handles carved to resemble acorns in the best room are typical of the Victorian nod toward nature.

Much emphasis was placed on proper appearance. The small cane bed in an upstairs bedroom was used by Wilson's two sisters for short naps so their wooden bed and its decorously fluffed pillow would not be disturbed.

In the front hallway is a silver tray on a small table. Proper Victorians placed their calling cards in the tray -- what Heather Gordon terms the "caller ID of the 1860s."

Presidential candidate Wilson came back to this home in 1911, looking for vestiges of his youth. Some were pointed out for him under the dining room table, one of 13 original Wilson family pieces still here. Beneath the table are the scuff marks Tommy had made during meals eaten nearly a half century earlier.

Were there any hints that the child would grow up to become president? It was here that he polished his administrative skills by writing the bylaws for, and organizing, the neighborhood baseball league. He and his teammates met in the hayloft of the Wilson family carriage house in the back yard, reachable only by ladders, and therefore not accessible to most mothers.

On the other hand, Tommy did not learn to read until age 11 because he suffered from a learning disorder, most likely dyslexia. That did not stop him from earning a Ph.D. (the only president who did), nor from becoming a professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University, and then earning the post of president of that prestigious institution.

But you can visit here to see where the future intellectual scribbled the local baseball lineup on his geography textbook.

If you go

GETTING THERE: Augusta is best-known for drawing golfing's finest every April, to the Masters. The town is not much more than a chip shot from the rolling Savannah River, which separates Georgia from South Carolina. There is connecting air service from the Tampa Bay area. By car, it is nearly 550 miles, using Interstate 75 north to Macon, then either taking state highways directly northeast to Augusta or north to Interstate 20, and then east to Augusta.

The boyhood home of Woodrow Wilson is located at 419 Seventh St. It is open year-round, Tuesday-Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is $5 for adults, $4 for those 60 and older, $3 for ages 5 to 18.

Plans are in the works to renovate and open as offices and a gift shop the house next door to the Wilson home. It was the boyhood home of Joseph Rucker Lamar, a baseball teammate of Tommy Wilson who grew up to be a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

OTHER SITES: The Riverwalk is five blocks of multilevel brick paths and gardens overlooking the Savannah River. At the National Science Center's Fort Discovery, one can ride a high-wire bicycle and attempt a simulated moon walk. Inside the Augusta Museum of History, visitors can clean cotton from a replica cotton gin. The Morris Museum of Art is the nation's first museum dedicated to Southern art and artists -- from John James Audubon to Robert Rauschenberg.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: For information on the Wilson home, contact Historic Augusta, P.O. Box 37, Augusta, GA 30903-0037; call (706) 724-0436; www.downtownaugusta.com/historicaugusta.

For general information: Augusta Metropolitan Convention & Visitors Bureau, P.O. Box 1331, Augusta, GA 30903-1331, toll-free 1-800-726-0243 or (706) 823-6600; www.augustaga.org.

- Michael Schuman is a freelance writer living in Keene, N.H.

© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • Tampa Bay Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111

Contact the Times | Privacy Policy
Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright