Wheeler takes over the government and declares martial law

Wheeler takes over the government and declares martial law after Charles A. Lindbergh disappears, using the unresolved flight and an asserted FBI report of kidnapping to justify extraordinary national controls. The transition places executive authority in Wheeler’s hands while closing borders, restricting movement, and deploying military and police forces; its legitimacy is then challenged by Anne Morrow Lindbergh and by demands to restore constitutional procedures.

Background and Escalating Crisis

The takeover follows a period in which the Lindbergh administration had already expanded federal involvement in the lives of American Jews. Its Office of American Absorption promoted Just Folks, which sent Jewish boys away from their city homes to work on farms, and an employer letter framed Homestead 42 as a government-funded opportunity for families to relocate. These initiatives were presented as programs of assimilation and national belonging, but they formed part of a political landscape in which Jewish citizenship and security had become pressing concerns.

Opposition and violence had also moved into public view. Walter Winchell began a congressional campaign with a speech at Broadway and 42nd Street, drawing thousands, then carried his warnings through other cities. In Boston, a hostile crowd attacked him and tried to set him on fire; he was rescued by his bodyguards and treated at Carney Hospital. After further unrest in Detroit, Newark’s Jewish leaders organized a citizens’ committee to coordinate with city and state authorities, while Longy Zwillman separately tasked Bullet Apfelbaum with assembling a Provisional Jewish Police. These developments establish a climate of mounting political danger, though the account does not identify them as the direct cause of Wheeler’s later actions.

Wheeler Assumes the Presidency

On October 8, 1942, search parties covered the expected route between Louisville and Washington. They found no wreckage despite favorable weather. The Army, Coast Guard, and Navy joined the search, alongside National Guard units and volunteers across states east of the Mississippi. With no reported sighting of the plane by evening, the cabinet met at the vice president’s home.

There, Wheeler announced that he would assume the duties of acting president. He said he had consulted Anne Morrow Lindbergh, congressional majority leaders, and the chief justice of the Supreme Court, and invoked Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution as the basis for his decision. The announcement made the disappearance the hinge of a transfer of power: the search had produced no physical evidence, but the executive succession was being asserted before the president’s fate was established. That evening, newspapers across the country printed the stark headline Where Is Lindbergh?

Martial Law and the Government’s Account

By the morning of October 9, martial law had been imposed throughout the continental United States and its territories and possessions. Under military guard, Wheeler went to the Capitol and addressed an emergency closed-door session of Congress. He said that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had information establishing that Lindbergh had been kidnapped and was being held by unknown parties somewhere in North America. This was the administration’s stated account; the searches described in the preceding day’s report had found neither the aircraft nor its wreckage.

Wheeler presented the measures as necessary to secure Lindbergh’s release and bring those responsible to justice. The borders with Canada and Mexico were sealed, airports and seaports shut, and the enforcement of order divided between the U.S. armed forces in Washington, D.C., and the National Guard elsewhere, working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and local police. The declaration thus did more than place Wheeler at the head of the government: it gave the claimed kidnapping an immediate nationwide security response and sharply constrained ordinary movement and civic life.

Resistance and Constitutional Stakes

The emergency deepened over the following days. On October 15, the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Lionel Bengelsdorf on suspicion of involvement in an alleged conspiracy against the country; Governor Lehman, Bernard Baruch, Justice Frankfurter, and other prominent figures were also detained. The authorities had not disclosed whether the suspected kidnapping charge would be brought against any or all of those arrested. In New York, Fiorello La Guardia and Eleanor Roosevelt publicly demanded the release of Lehman and the other accused, and La Guardia was subsequently arrested. The sequence shows how the government’s emergency measures extended from control of borders and streets to the detention of political figures and pressure on public institutions.

On October 16, Anne Morrow Lindbergh escaped from Walter Reed Army Hospital, where authorities had held her as a mental patient, and broadcast an appeal to the country. Speaking in her husband’s name, she called on the National Guard to disband, the armed forces to leave the cities, the Federal Bureau of Investigation to release those detained, and law-enforcement authorities to restore detainees’ rights. She also demanded that government-sequestered newspapers, magazines, and radio stations resume normal operations under the First Amendment, and asked Congress to remove the acting president and follow the Presidential Succession Act of 1886. Her intervention recast the crisis as a contest over lawful succession and civil liberties, not merely an effort to locate a missing president.