President Woodrow Wilson’s Original Signed Appointment Naming William Gibbs McAdoo Secretary of the Treasury

William Gibbs McAdoo was the son of a prominent Georgia jurist, who moved to Tennessee and became a lawyer there. In 1892 he went to New York City to practice and quickly became smitten with the idea of constructing subway tunnels under the Hudson River to connect New York and New Jersey, bypassing the need for ferries. Against the opposition of entrenched interests in the railroad industry, as well as the political opposition of Tammany Hall, McAdoo managed to achieve this feat. Within a decade of its completion, his two-tunnel system was carrying 100 million passengers a year. McAdoo do became very well-known and was enormously popular. He was also politically active.

In 1909, McAdoo met Princeton president Woodrow Wilson, 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. Later, after failing to gain the Democratic presidential nomination himself, McAdoo moved to California. In 1932, he arranged for the swing of California's convention votes from John Nance Garner to Franklin D. Roosevelt, securing FDR the nomination. As an FDR Ally, he became US Senator from California.

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, March 5, 1913, the day after his Inauguration, appointing "William Gibbs McAdoo of New York" as "Secretary of the Treasury." It is countersigned by William Jennings Bryan as Secretary of State. This is undoubtedly the most significant presidential cabinet appointment document that we have ever carried, and it is offered here for the first time.