Thomas R. Marshall - Legacy

Legacy

The situation that arose after the incapacity of President Wilson, for which Marshall's vice-presidency is most remembered, revived the national debate on the process of presidential succession. The topic was already being discussed when Wilson left for Europe, which influenced him to allow Marshall to conduct cabinet meetings in his absence. Wilson's incapacity during 1919 and the lack of action by Marshall made it a major issue. The constitutional flaws in the process of presidential succession had been known since the death of President William Henry Harrison in 1841, but little progress had been made passing a constitutional amendment to remedy the problem. Nearly fifty years later, the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution was passed, allowing the vice president to assume the presidency any time the president was rendered incapable of carrying out the duties of the office.

Historians have varied interpretations of Marshall's vice presidency. Claire Suddath rated Marshall as one of the worst vice presidents in American history in a 2008 Time Magazine article. Samuel Eliot Morison wrote that had Marshall carried out his constitutional duties, assumed the presidency, and made the concessions necessary for the passage of the League of Nations treaty in late 1920, the United States would have been much more involved in European affairs and could have helped prevent the rise of Adolf Hitler, which began in the following year. Morison and a number of other historians claim that Marshall's decision was an indirect cause of the Second World War. Charles Thomas, one of Marshall's biographers, wrote that although Marshall's assumption of the presidency would have made World War II much less likely, modern hypothetical speculation on the subject was unfair to Marshall, who made the correct decision in not forcibly removing Wilson from office, even temporarily.