Video: 'America's WITTIEST Vice President??? Thomas Marshall's interesting legacy'

(Tuesday, March 14, 1854) — Thomas R. Marshall, 28th vice president of the United States from 1913 to 1921 under President Woodrow Wilson, was born today in North Manchester, Indiana.

A prominent lawyer in Indiana, he became an active and well known member of the Democratic Party by stumping across the state for other candidates and organizing party rallies that later helped him win election as the 27th governor of Indiana.

Marshall’s popularity as Indiana governor, and the state’s status as a critical swing state, helped him secure the Democratic vice presidential nomination on a ticket with Wilson in 1912 and win the subsequent general election.

Wilson and Marshall were re-elected in 1916. Marshall became the first vice president since Daniel D. Tompkins, nearly a century earlier, to serve two full terms, and the first vice president re-elected, since John C. Calhoun.

Marshall’s vice presidency is most remembered for a leadership crisis following a stroke that incapacitated Wilson in October 1919.

Because of their personal dislike for Marshall, Wilson’s advisers and wife Edith sought to keep him uninformed about the president’s condition to prevent him from assuming presidential powers and duties.

Many people, including cabinet officials and congressional leaders, urged Marshall to become acting president, but he refused to forcibly assume Wilson’s powers, not wanting to set a standard of doing so.

Without strong leadership in the executive branch, the administration’s opponents defeated the ratification of the League of Nations treaty and returned the United States to an isolationist foreign policy.