Thomas Riley Marshall was Vice President under Wilson for two consecutive terms, but he is best remembered for his remark, “What this country needs is a good five-cent cigar.”

He was born in North Manchester, Indiana, and was the son of a country doctor. His mother had been ill and the family traveled to Illinois and Kansas for her health before returning to Indiana. 

Young Thomas had always wanted to be a lawyer and spent much of his free time visiting the courthouse to hear the lawyers present their cases. Some of the lawyers he heard were Thomas Hendricks, and Benjamin Harrison. After graduating with a law degree from Wabash College in Crawford he passed the bar and opened a law office in 1875. 

His family had always been Democrats and in 1876 he became the secretary of the Democratic County Convention. Having gained some recognition as party secretary he decided to run for Prosecuting Attorney in 1880 but he was defeated. He was very devastated by the loss and never sought office again until the governor’s race of 1880. 

When the Indiana Democrats met for their state convention the front-runners had knocked each other out of the running, and dark horse candidate Thomas Marshall was nominated. During the national election Republicans carried Indiana but Democrat Marshall was still able win the Governors office. 

Marshall thought of himself as a progressive governor pointing to the employer’s liability law, and child labor law passed during his administration as examples. When the Democrats met for their 1912 national convention Indiana party boss Thomas Taggert led the delegation with Governor Thomas as their favorite son candidate. For a time it looked like Marshall could win as a dark horse candidate, but when William Jennings Bryan endorsed Woodrow Wilson Taggert saw his opportunity to help Indiana by putting Marshall on the ticket. Governor Marshall did not impress Wilson but Taggart’s 29 delegate votes were very persuasive and it was WILSON and MARSHALL that went on to win the three-way race for President. 

Thomas R. Marshall came to regard the Vice Presidency as a boring do nothing job. When he was first offered a spot on the ticket with Wilson he turned it down, but his wife wanted to live in Washington and she changed his mind. Unlike some of his predecessors Marshall had no experience as a legislator at the state or federal level, his administrative experience was only four years, he was never a military commander, and he had never supervised or owned a large business. What made Vice president Marshall unique was his quick wit and sense of humor. Washington correspondent Lois Ludlow reported that even those Senators who appeared shocked at the Vice President’s comments would later “laugh until their sides hurt” in the privacy of the cloak room. Another story tells of the time Capitol tours went by the Vice Presidents office. When his door was open the tour guides would point him out as if he were an item on display. One day he stepped from his office and said “If you look on me as a wild animal, be Kind enough to throw peanuts at me”. Later his office was moved to a more private setting where Marshall said he could put his feet on the desk and smoke. His attitude was summed up in a story he told about a woman with two sons, “One ran away and went to sea, the other was elected Vice President of the United States, neither one was ever heard of again”. 

Marshall’s often-repeated “…five-cent cigar” story was supposed to have taken place when one Senator paused during a speech. He was saying, “What this country needs…” when Marshall turned to a clerk and said, “What this country needs is a good five cent cigar”. The saying was first said in the newspaper comics by the character Abe Martin, but it soon became forever associated with Vice President Marshall. 

President Wilson had invited his vice president to cabinet meetings, but when Marshall found that his ideas were ignored and that he had little input he declined further invitations saying it was too difficult to maintain a confidential relationship with both the legislative and executive branches. 

In April of 1913 President Wilson broke with protocol. After addressing both houses of congress, he made a personal visit to the Capitol building the next day and met with members of the Senate. It was obvious that Wilson had no intention of using Marshall as a go between for the executive and legislative branches. 

Although many people enjoyed his sense of humor some Democratic leaders saw Marshall more as a court jester than a serious politician and thought he should be dumped from the ticket before the next election. In 1916 Wilson, who owed his first victory to Roosevelt’s third party and now faced a tough challenge from Charles Evans Hughes, decided it was best to preserve the image of party unity. Marshall agreed and for the first time since James Monroe and Daniel Thomkins in 1820 a President and Vice President team was reelected. 

When the United States entered the World War the Vice President supported the war effort by making speeches encouraging the purchase of Liberty Bonds. Marshall was well prepared for this position because the vice presidency had given him plenty of spare time, and he had been earning extra money as a public speaker. When Wilson made his trip to Europe to negotiate a peace treaty he arranged for Marshall to conduct and supervise cabinet meetings making him the first Vice President to ever have that responsibility. 

In 1919 Wilson was bedridden after suffering from a stroke. The Vice President now found himself in the position of not knowing from day to day if the President would recover, and wondering when or if he should step forward and take over the reigns of the Presidency. Some historians have defended Marshall saying that Wilson wife and doctor did such a good job of keeping the President’s condition a secret that the Vice President had no way of knowing whether or not Wilson was still competent enough to continue as President. Other historians have argued that Marshall was a weak shallow man who shirked his Vice Presidential duties, reminding people that it was Secretary of State Lansing that conducted cabinet meetings and not Marshall even though he had already granted that authority by Wilson before the stroke. But others have countered that Marshall was being careful not to divide the nation by making it appear that he was too anxious to grab the presidency away from sick but recovering Woodrow Wilson. 

In 1922 President Warren G. Harding appointed Marshall to be the head of the Federal Coal Commission, an agency designed to settle labor disputes at the Coal mines. That was his last job with the federal government.

He died while on a visit to Washington D.C. in 1925

What ever the reason for Marshall’s decisions during the days of Wilson’s stroke it has left us with some what if questions: What if an alert healthy acting President Marshall had been there to represent United States interest in Europe? How much better would the Democrats have done in the next election if a competent Vice President had been there to assure Americans that their constitutional system of succession works? Or, should we be grateful to Mrs. Wilson and the Doctor for keeping a political lightweight like Marshall out of the White House. Of course we will never know, and Thomas Riley Marshall has disappeared in to history remembered only for “Five cent cigars”. 

He and his wife lived in the house that has been the home of the Whitley County Historical Society for many years.