Editing Thomas R. Marshall (section)

==Legacy==

The situation that arose after the incapacity of Wilson, for which Marshall's vice-presidency is most remembered, revived the national debate on the process of presidential succession.<ref name = g296/> 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 lack of a clear process for presidential succession had first become an issue when President [[William Henry Harrison]] died in office in 1841, but little progress had been made passing a constitutional amendment to remedy the problem.<ref>Feerick 1992, pp. 1–3.</ref> Nearly fifty years later, after the assassination of [[John F. Kennedy]], the [[Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution]] was passed, allowing the vice president to assume the presidential powers and duties any time the president was rendered incapable of carrying out the powers and duties of the office.<ref>Feerick 1992, p. 15.</ref>

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.<ref name = tmag/> [[Samuel Eliot Morison]] wrote that had Marshall carried out his constitutional duties, assumed the presidential powers and duties, 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.<ref>Bennett 2007, p. 289.</ref> Charles Thomas, one of Marshall's biographers, wrote that although Marshall's assumption of presidential powers and duties 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 his duties, even temporarily.<ref name = b308/>