Hey, history lovers. I'm Mike Rosenwald with Retropod. The show about the past, rediscovered.

New York City, 1915. Mary Peck opens her front door. The man who greets her there has an unbelievable offer.

He'll pay $300,000 for some letters she has in safekeeping.

That was a great deal of money back then, about $7 million in today's dollars. So what made

these letters so valuable? They were love letters written to marry by President Woodrow Wilson when he was married to his first wife.

Wilson was running for re-election.

The man at the door was apparently trying to sabotage the campaign.

If this plot sounds vaguely recent, there's a reason.

In politics, sex, money, and lies are as common as candidates posing for the cameras

holding babies.

During that fall, Wilson had a full plate of stressors.

The British Ocean liner Lysitania had been sunk by a German submarine, and pressure

on the United States to enter World War I was mounting.

There was his re-election to think about, too.

But the issue with Peck weighed most heavily.

Should it come out, Wilson's image as a stand-up,

do-it-the-right-way guy would have imploded instantly. Friends and family knew about his

relationship with Peck for years, but whispers were growing, and Wilson knew it. In his anguish, Wilson even wrote a statement

in case his letters to Mary got out. He had met her in Bermuda eight years earlier, when he was

50 and she was 44. At the time, Wilson was the president of Princeton University.

His wife Ellen Wilson had insisted he take a winter vacation to recover from the fights he had with colleagues over Princeton's future.

She remained at their New Jersey home to tend to a sick daughter.

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