Family and friends had known about the president’s intimate relationship with another woman for years, but whispers about their involvement were growing.

Woodrow Wilson was so worried that he asked his close adviser, Colonel Edward M. House, to meet him after dinner in his White House study on Sept. 22, 1915. In the meeting, Wilson talked about his longtime friendship with Mary Peck, a divorced woman he had met in Bermuda eight years earlier. He told House that the friendship was platonic but that he had been “indiscreet in writing her letters rather more warmly than was prudent.”

Besides personal embarrassment, the release of the letters would complicate Wilson’s hopes to marry the younger, richer Edith Bolling Galt and cast a shadow over his bid for reelection just as the war in Europe was expanding.