The claim appeared in a post and video (archived here) on Instagram on January 4, 2025, with a text overlay on the video that read, "Why Were Birth Certificates Really Created...This Is What They Did..." A voice opened the video saying:
I am just going to read a quote from Edward Mandell House and what he had to say in a private meeting with Woodrow Wilson, president between 1913 and 1921, from the private papers of Woodrow Wilson.
This is what the post looked like on Instagram at the time of writing:
(Source: Instagram screenshot taken on Tue Jan 7 20:02:11 2025 UTC)
The full quote attributed to House to Wilson in the video is:
Very soon, every American will be required to register their biological property in a national system designed to keep track of the people and that will operate under the ancient system of pledging. By such methodology we can compel people to submit to our agenda which will affect our security as charge back for our fiat paper currency. Every American will be forced to register or suffer not being able to work and earn a living. They will be our chattels and we will hold the security interest over them forever by operation of law merchant under the scheme of secured transactions. Americans by unknowingly or unwittingly delivered the bills of lading to us will be rendered bankrupt and insolvent, forever to remain economic slaves through taxation secured by their pledges. They will be stripped of their rights.
The quote has existed on the internet for several years without a source attribution. It was posted on several sites, including on LinkedIn and on Facebook here (archived here) and here (archived here) in 2022. The quote in the video implies there was a sinister reason for the creation of birth certificates, which predates the Wilson administration but was updated during his administration. According to the American Bar Association (archived here), the "United States began collecting birth data at the national level in 1902, via the U.S. Census":
Certain individual states had already been collecting birth data, including Virginia, which began collecting data as a colony in 1632 and Massachusetts in 1639, so it became a matter of getting each state to follow suit. The federal government first developed a standard birth certificate application form in 1907, five years after the Census Bureau began collecting data. The current system of the states collecting data and reporting it to the federal government developed between 1915, when the federal government mandated that states collect and report the data, and 1933, by which time all of the states were participating.
"There are no records in the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library archives, of which we are aware, that Woodrow Wilson made this statement or was in any meeting when this statement was made," Chris Chrzan (archived here), marketing associate with the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Museum (archived here), told Lead Stories via email on January 8, 2025.
The University of Michigan holds a collection (archived here) of "The intimate papers of Colonel House arranged as a narrative by Charles Seymour," and Lead Stories reached out to them for comment. Chris Powell, with the University of Michigan Library digital content and collections, responded via email on January 6, 2025, saying there was no record of this quote in their records of House's papers. He explained how he searched their archives, first using the word "biological" and then using the word "fiat," unique words in the quote:
In the pages that include the name Woodrow Wilson (archived here) a search of the word 'biological' did not have any matching results (archived here).
I didn't spot the word fiat at all as I skimmed through, which seems strange.
Powell explained the further search he conducted:
I decided to look at a bigger and newer digital library, where I did a full text search across all the books by Edward Mandell House for anything that contained the words Woodrow Wilson (archived here) biological and got no results. I did the same for the phrase 'fiat paper currency' which also seems important to the latter part of the quote and again, no results.
I can't say this proves or disproves anything, but no results at all seems a bit strange. I also couldn't find the phrase 'register their biological property in a national system' or even the shortened 'register their biological property' in any of the tens of millions of volumes in HathiTrust.
Moira Fitzgerald with the Yale University Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, which holds the papers of Edward Mandell House (archived here), told Lead Stories via email on January 7, 2024, they have no reference to the quote in his papers:
As you might suspect, your inquiry is not the first time we have been asked about this specific quote. It appears on numerous websites with differing attributions. Some references have attributed it to a conversation House had with President Wilson, while others have noted it was in a letter. Unfortunately, after an extensive search, we have found no reference to the quote in his papers and have been unable to verify House ever said or wrote it.
Fitzgerald continued:
There is no way to definitively say House never wrote or said these words. However, we have found no evidence to corroborate the attribution. Interestingly, the quote seems to have been popularized when it appeared (unattributed) at the end of the song 'Bohemian Grove' (archived here) by the rapper Ab-Soul on his 2012 album 'Control System.'
The reference staff in the manuscript division at the Library of Congress told Lead Stories via email on January 8, 2025, that the Woodrow Wilson papers (archived here) have been digitized and are available online but "the collection has not been transcribed so it cannot be keyword searched in the digital platform."
The email explained that the staff did search for keywords from the quote but did not find any matching results:
The published edition (archived here) of the Woodrow Wilson papers can be searched through the Rotunda subscription database hosted by the University of Virginia (archived here). After several searches using various keywords, we did not find any results in that database for the quote you are trying to verify.
Other Lead Stories fact checks on claims regarding birth certificates can be found here.
