First ladies help fight the good fight during war

From the moment first lady Jill Biden welcomed Ukraine’s Ambassador Oksana Markarova to the 2022 State of the Union address, President Biden’s spouse has been following in the footsteps of her predecessors’ wartime contributions to our nation. Standing firm with her husband against the Russian invasion, another first lady, Ukraine’s Olena Volodymyrivna Zelenska, has earned admiration around the world for her heart-wrenching descriptions of the terror inflicted on her country, especially its children.

How can first ladies, who are unelected and have no government authority, participate in a traditionally male arena of war? Such conflict is the epitome of “hard power,” exercised through military means. In contrast, first ladies typically have mastered “soft power,” marked by cultural exchanges and public diplomacy, which can be especially useful in wartime. But American presidential spouses have gone beyond these symbolic roles to embrace substantive duties, too. Their historic efforts fall into the following octet of accomplishments:

1. Holding down the fort. First lady Dolley Madison stayed behind to protect the White House, after her husband fled the British army advancing on Washington in 1814. With her spyglass trained on the horizon to determine the enemy’s position, Mrs. Madison ordered the salvaging of the Executive Mansion’s most important items, including official documents and Gilbert Stuart’s massive portrait of George Washington, which hangs today in the East Room. Urged to save herself, Dolley finally had to abandon the president’s home to the invaders, who torched it. Yet she and her husband advocated the White House’s rebuilding, and it remains a symbol of the free world to this day.
2. Visiting the troops. Mary Todd Lincoln experienced painful hardships by coming to office just as the country hurtled toward civil war. She staunchly supported the Union, despite hailing from Kentucky, a border state, but critics accused her of spying for the Confederacy. Instead, she opened the White House to bivouacking federal soldiers and tended to the sick and wounded troops in Washington hospitals. No one could top Eleanor Roosevelt’s extensive tour of the Pacific Theater during World War II. Flying into combat zones, she visited every service member she could reach, offering a word of encouragement and asking how she could contact their relatives stateside. Barbara Bush accompanied her husband to Saudi Arabia for a November 1990 visit to American troops massing for Operation Desert Shield, the response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. The Washington Post called her President George H. W. Bush’s “secret weapon” and enthused, “For homesick American troops celebrating Thanksgiving just 80 miles from the Kuwaiti border, she was everybody’s missing Mom whose smile sent spirits soaring.”
3. Bolstering military families. During Michelle Obama’s first ladyship, the U.S. slogged through its two longest wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, with service member families enduring multiple overseas deployments of their loved ones. In 2011, Mrs. Obama and then-second lady Jill Biden co-founded Joining Forces, an initiative to support not only active military but veterans and their families by providing health, education and employment opportunities. Dr. Biden has continued these efforts as first lady. In just the third week of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, she visited Fort Campbell, Ky., to boost the morale of families whose spouses and parents were shipping out to Europe. She empathized with their anxieties, recalling how her late son Beau had served in Iraq.

4. Offering their own relatives to the cause. All four of Eleanor Roosevelt’s sons volunteered for military service during World War II and served in combat. Mamie Eisenhower had suffered through the isolation of Ike’s lengthy service overseas, and then watched their son John report for duty in the Korean War, which ended just after President Eisenhower took office. Lady Bird Johnson witnessed the anguish of her daughters, Linda and Luci, when their husbands headed to combat in Vietnam.
5. Sacrificing on the home front. Edith Wilson assisted the nation’s efforts during World War I by setting examples of rationing. She declared gasless Sundays, meatless Mondays, and wheatless Wednesdays. Mrs. Wilson acquired a flock of sheep to keep the White House lawn trimmed and then auctioned off their fleece, with proceeds going to the Red Cross.
6. Supporting our allies. While their husbands must maintain alliances with hope of achieving victory, first ladies often deftly employ soft power to promote allies’ interests. Eleanor Roosevelt traveled to England in 1942 to show common cause with the British. From the start of the Global War on Terror, Laura Bush championed the rights of Afghan women. Taking her spring break from teaching duties, Jill Biden traveled across the country and began her speeches with moments of silence for the Ukrainians battling Russia’s war of aggression.

7. Calming the nation. In the modern media era, no two attacks were more traumatic for the American psyche than Pearl Harbor or 9/11. Eleanor Roosevelt soothed the nation’s jangled nerves just after the Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese sneak attack on Hawaii, even before her husband addressed the nation with his historic “Day of Infamy” speech to Congress. In her radio address, she declared that “we are the free and unconquerable people of the United States of America,” and concluded, “I feel as though I were standing upon a rock and that rock is my faith in my fellow citizens.” When terrorists struck the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, Laura Bush was on her way to Capitol Hill to testify about education reform before Sen. Edward Kennedy’s committee. Instead, they stood before cameras to project a sense of calm and reassurance for the American people.

8. Sustaining the commander in chief. During military confrontations, presidents need the support of their spouses, personally and politically, but none could have offered that sustenance more starkly than Jacqueline Kennedy when the nation and world faced nuclear annihilation in 1962’s Cuban Missile Crisis. Hearing that some Cabinet officials were sending their wives to safer locales, Mrs. Kennedy told the president, “Please don’t send me anywhere. If anything happens, we’re all going to stay right here with you. … I want to die with you.” 

Especially when the United States faces adversaries around the globe, it owes a debt of gratitude to the women who have exhibited courage and responsibility in this unofficial position of first lady, bestowed simply by virtue of marriage to the president.

Barbara A. Perry is Presidential Studies director and Gerald L. Baliles Professor at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. She is the author of “Jacqueline Kennedy: First Lady of the New Frontier.” Follow her on Twitter @BarbaraPerryUVA.