President Woodrow Wilson Appoints Secretary of the Treasury William Gibbs McAdoo Chairman of the U.S. Delegation to the Pan-American International High Commission

William Gibbs McAdoo met Princeton president Woodrow Wilson in 1909, and the two men were enormously impressed with each other. After Wilson became governor of New Jersey in 1911, McAdoo joined the faction promoting Wilson for President. In 1912, McAdoo was vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and well placed to assist Wilson. When Wilson was about to concede the 1912 nomination after being informed he had too few votes to survive, McAdoo made a dramatic telephone call to the New Jersey governor and convinced Wilson to stay in the race. After Wilson's victory, McAdoo was named Secretary of the Treasury, and his achievements there led many contemporaries to declare him the best Treasury Secretary since Alexander Hamilton. He played a key role in the creation of the Federal Reserve system, saved the US banking system after the First World War began, started the Federal Farm Loan Board, ran the railroads in 1918-19; and sold $17 billion of war bonds (ten times the expected revenue) to finance the war.

To promote trade and better relations with Latin America, in May 1915 Wilson held the first Pan-American Financial Conference in Washington. To further these goals, the conference called for an International High Commission to meet at Buenos Aires in April 1916.  The Democratic Party platform of 1916 wrote approvingly of this, saying these conferences had "greatly promoted the friendly relations between the people of the Western Hemisphere." To represent the United States in Buenos Aires, President Wilson selected Treasury Secretary William Gibbs McAdoo, who delivered the keynote address.

Ellen Wilson was the President's youngest daughter. She began seeing McAdoo when he assumed his role as Secretary of the Treasury. He was a widower at that time, and the two became romantically involved.

McAdoo and Ellen Wilson were married in 1914. Although the couple divorced in 1934, at the time of the break up Eleanor retained a number of things, including some documents signed by her father that had been presented to McAdoo. Of course, she also had her own memorabilia from her father. Sometime shortly prior to her death, Ellen Wilson McAdoo gave some of these mementos to a very close friend. We recently obtained them directly from that friend's family.

Document Signed as President, Washington, February 7, 1916, appointing "William Gibbs McAdoo of New York, Secretary of the Treasury," to be "Chairman of the Delegation to represent the United States of America in the proceedings of the International High Commission to be held in Buenos Aires, Argentina…" It is countersigned by Robert Lansing as Secretary of State. This document is offered here for the first time.