FDR – Read Now and Download Mobi

Praise for
FDR

“Miraculous … a careful, intelligent synopsis of the existing Roosevelt scholarship … and a meticulous re-interpretation of the man and his record … At last we have the biography that is right for the man.”

—The Washington Post

“Magisterial … The author’s eloquent synthesis of FDR’s complex and compelling life is remarkably executed and a joy to read.… This erudite but graceful volume illuminates FDR’s life for scholars, history buffs and casual readers alike.”

—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“[A] remarkable, sympathetic biography … [Smith] does a fine job.”

—The New Yorker

“Compelling … richly researched … one of those monumental works that … does not lose sight of the individual at its heart.”

—The Denver Post

“An outstanding biography of ‘the most gifted American statesman of the twentieth century’ … an exemplary and highly readable work that ably explains why FDR merits continued honor.”

—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“A marvelous book.”

—The Dallas Morning News

“Especially deft … Smith vibrantly captures the complete drama of an American original.”

—Newark Star-Ledger

“An intricate network of personal detail … deeply moving.”

—The New York Sun

“Smith’s towering new biography brings the great man to vivid life once more, offering us a valuable chance to ponder again the crucial mystery of leadership.”

—JON MEACHAM, author of Franklin and Winston and American Gospel

“[Smith] is an accomplished biographer, and he lays out in the most charming prose the dynamics of a gifted politician.”

—The Washington Times

“This page-turner is the best single-volume biography available of America’s thirty-second president. Essential.”

—Library Journal (starred review)

ALSO BY JEAN EDWARD SMITH

Grant

John Marshall: Definer of a Nation

George Bush’s War

Lucius D. Clay: An American Life

The Conduct of American Foreign Policy Debated
(ED., WITH HERBERT M. LEVINE)

The Constitution and American Foreign Policy

Civil Liberties and Civil Rights Debated
(ED., WITH HERBERT M. LEVINE)

The Papers of General Lucius D. Clay (ED.)

Germany Beyond the Wall

Der Weg ins Dilemma

The Defense of Berlin

Copyright © 2007 by Jean Edward Smith

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Random House Trade Paperbacks, an imprint
of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

RANDOM HOUSE TRADE PAPERBACKS and colophon are trademarks
of Random House, Inc.

Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Random House, an imprint of
The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in 2007.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., for
permission to reprint brief excerpts from Working with Roosevelt by Samuel I. Rosenman,
copyright © 1952 by Harper & Brothers. Copyright renewed © 1980 by
Dorothy R. Rosenman, Robert Rosenman, and James R. Rowen. Used by permission.

Unless otherwise noted, the photographs in this work are courtesy of the Franklin D.
Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, Hyde Park, New York.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Smith, Jean Edward.
FDR / Jean Edward Smith.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-1-58836-624-5
1. Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano), 1882–1945.  2. Presidents—United States—Biography.  I. Title.

E807.S58 2007      973.917092—dc22      2006043087
[B]

www.atrandom.com

v3.1_r1

To the memory of my parents,
Eddyth and Jean—proud Mississippians
devoted to Franklin Roosevelt

HE LIFTED HIMSELF FROM HIS WHEELCHAIR
TO LIFT THIS NATION FROM ITS KNEES.

Preface

THREE PRESIDENTS DOMINATE American history: George Washington, who founded the country; Abraham Lincoln, who preserved it; and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who rescued it from economic collapse and then led it to victory in the greatest war of all time. Elected for an unprecedented four terms, Roosevelt proved the most gifted American statesman of the twentieth century. When he took office in 1933, one third of the nation was unemployed. Agriculture lay destitute. Factories were idle, businesses were closing their doors, and the banking system teetered on the brink of collapse. Violence lay just beneath the surface. The Hoover administration had deployed tanks and tear gas to drive a bedraggled remnant of World War I veterans (the Bonus Marchers) from Washington but otherwise appeared incapable of responding to the crisis.

Roosevelt seized the opportunity. He galvanized the nation with an inaugural address (“the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”) that ranks with Lincoln’s Second Inaugural, declared a banking holiday to restore confidence in the nation’s banks, and initiated a flurry of legislative proposals to put the country back on its feet. Under FDR’s energetic leadership the government became an active participant in the economic life of the nation. More important, he restored the country’s confidence. Roosevelt revolutionized the art of political campaigning, revitalized the Democratic party, and created a new national majority that included those previously cast aside. His fireside chats brought the presidency into every living room in America. And what may be more remarkable, he did this while paralyzed from the waist down. For the last twenty-three years of his life, Franklin Roosevelt could not stand unassisted.

The literature on the Roosevelt era is immense. Virtually every major participant has written his or her memoirs, scholars have filled library shelves with analytic studies, and the nation’s most prolific writers have addressed the New Deal, the Second World War, and the outsize personalities who dominated American life in the 1930s and ’40s. Biographies of Franklin Roosevelt are only slightly less numerous than those of Washington or Lincoln, and there is little that has not been said, somewhere, about the president. These works are easily accessible to the student of history, yet are seldom consulted by the general public. In recent years, biographies of lesser figures—Truman, MacArthur, Eisenhower, the numerous Kennedys—have shaped popular perceptions of the period. Rummaging through the life of Eleanor Roosevelt has become a cottage industry. As a result, Roosevelt himself has become a mythic figure, looming indistinctly out of the mist of the past.

The riddle for a biographer is to explain how this Hudson River aristocrat, a son of privilege who never depended on a paycheck, became the champion of the common man. The answer most frequently suggested is that the misfortune of polio changed Roosevelt. By conquering adversity he gained insight into the nature of suffering and found new sources of strength within himself. That is undoubtedly true. But it does not go far enough. FDR’s effort to recover from polio took him to Warm Springs, Georgia. Year after year at Warm Springs he was exposed to the brutal reality of rural poverty. All around him he saw hardworking people who were “ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.” Roosevelt’s patrician instincts rebelled, and he began to formulate the economic ideas that came to fruition in the New Deal. As governor of New York when the Great Depression hit, FDR was the only state chief executive to organize extensive relief efforts. “Modern society, acting through its government,” he said, “owes the definite obligation to prevent the starvation or the dire want of any of its fellow men and women who try to maintain themselves but cannot.”

Roosevelt was too talented to be confined by the circumstances of his birth. His devotion to his career and his conviction that he was a man of destiny far outweighed any tribal loyalty. A social conservative by instinct and upbringing, he did more to alter the relationship between ordinary citizens and their government than any other American. And he shaped our notion of the modern presidency. In that sense Roosevelt was a natural. He was not especially gifted in any field except politics. But in politics he had no equal.

Roosevelt knew the Democratic party better than anyone. It was said he could draw a line on a map from the East Coast to the West Coast and name every county the line intersected. In most counties he knew the Democratic leader and one or two officeholders as well. And he kept close watch on party patronage. His appointments were calculated not only to reward, but co-opt. As his first secretary of war, he appointed Utah isolationist George Dern. For secretary of state he chose conservative Tennessee senator Cordell Hull—a sheet anchor to protect the administration from carping redneck legislators. His vice president, hard-drinking John Nance Garner of Texas, former Speaker of the House, solidified southern support. To dole out federal money at the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, FDR chose conservative Texas banker Jesse Jones. When the Securities and Exchange Commission came into being, he appointed Joseph Kennedy to head it. “It takes a thief to catch a thief,” The Washington Post chortled.

FDR’s administrative style was a legendary mixture of straightforward delegation, flowchart responsibility, Machiavellian cunning, and crafty deception. James MacGregor Burns called him a lion and a fox. Frances Perkins, FDR’s long-serving secretary of labor, said Roosevelt was “the most complicated human being I have ever known.” He kept major decisions in his own hands, played his cards close to his chest, and enjoyed the consternation of opponents when his maneuvers were revealed. “I’m a juggler,” Roosevelt told Treasury secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr. “I never let my right hand know what my left hand is doing.” Occasionally he overreached. His wrongheaded 1937 Court-packing scheme boomeranged badly, as did his ill-considered intervention in Democratic senatorial primaries in 1938. He made mistakes. Some were catastrophic, such as his 1937 decision to slash federal expenditures, precipitating the “Roosevelt recession” of 1938–39.

Roosevelt expected cabinet officers to run their own shows, but did not hesitate to enter the arena when an issue interested him. He handled the nation’s diplomacy largely through Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles, a fellow Grotonian, and often ignored Secretary Hull. The Navy he ran through the chief of naval operations, Admiral William D. Leahy, who had skippered FDR’s yacht when Roosevelt was assistant secretary of the Navy. When he decided to replace Douglas MacArthur as Army chief of staff in 1934, he sent the general on an inspection tour of Hawaii and then announced his successor while MacArthur was en route.

Roosevelt relished being president. His buoyant energy and unshakable optimism transmitted itself to everyone he met. After the lusterless Warren G. Harding, the dour Coolidge, and stuffy Herbert Hoover, FDR seemed like a breath of fresh air in the White House. His self-assurance was exactly what the country needed. With the possible exception of Ronald Reagan (who voted for FDR four times), no president has been more serene in the conviction that whatever happened, everything would turn out all right. “Take a method and try it,” he once said. “If it fails, admit it and try another. But above all, try something.” Social Security, unemployment compensation, stock market regulation, the federal guarantee of bank deposits, wages and hours legislation, labor’s right to bargain collectively, agricultural price supports, rural electrification—all of which we take for granted—did not exist before FDR.

As commander in chief, Roosevelt was better prepared than any president before him, save Washington and Grant. For eight years under Woodrow Wilson he had been the number two man in the Navy Department. He understood how the services operated and did not hesitate to assert presidential authority. When war clouds gathered in 1939, he passed over the Army’s senior leadership and named George C. Marshall chief of staff. As the situation grew tense in 1940, he reached out to the Republican party and named the redoubtable Henry L. Stimson secretary of war and Frank Knox of the Chicago Daily News, who had been Alf Landon’s running mate in 1936, secretary of the Navy. When war came, he turned to hard-bitten Admiral Ernest J. King to fight the fleet and recalled Admiral William Leahy to be his own chief of staff. To manage military procurement, it seemed natural to select Army engineers who had worked closely with Harry Hopkins and the WPA: Brehon Somervell and Lucius Clay.

Roosevelt nudged the nation toward a war footing. He pressed passage of the Lend-Lease Act to provide aid for embattled Britain, reestablished the draft (its extension carried by only one vote in the House of Representatives), and, probably in violation of the Constitution (and certainly contrary to statute), traded fifty seaworthy destroyers to Great Britain for base rights in the Western Hemisphere. What he did not do is connive with the Japanese in the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Roosevelt did not pay as much attention as he should have to the deteriorating situation in the Pacific in 1941; he allowed hawkish subordinates too much leeway, and he muffed a possible summit meeting with the Japanese prime minister. The administration recognized that Japan might attack in December 1941, but it did not expect the assault to come at Pearl Harbor, which the military believed to be impregnable.

FDR can be criticized on a number of issues. He ignored racial segregation, he did not rush to admit the victims of fascism to America’s shores, and he could be cavalier about the protection of civil liberties in wartime. But there is absolutely no evidence that he was complicit in the events of December 7, 1941.

Roosevelt’s wartime leadership resembles that of Lincoln. As in 1933, he restored the nation’s confidence. Under FDR’s hands-on direction, the United States became “the arsenal of democracy.” Britain was saved from defeat, the Soviet Union was provided the materiel it required, and by 1943 American armed forces had assumed the offensive. Roosevelt’s wartime diplomacy paved the way for the defeat of the Axis powers and the establishment of a world order based on the rule of law. His relations with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin suggest statecraft at its finest. On the other hand, his treatment of Charles de Gaulle was petulant and continues to roil Franco-American relations. It would also be fair to say that FDR did not fully comprehend the difficulties that would arise in containing communism in postwar Europe, nor did he fathom the sea change at work in China. The United States was a third-rate military power when World War II began. When it ended, America was the most powerful nation in history.

Roosevelt’s personal life has been obscured by his accomplishments. The “children’s hour” every evening at which the president mixed martinis for his guests, the poker games with cabinet cronies, the weekly sojourns on the presidential yacht Potomac, and his personal relations with family and friends warrant extended treatment. Roosevelt enjoyed life to the full, and his unquenchable optimism never faded.

Not to be overlooked are the four women who played crucial roles in FDR’s life: his mother, Sara; Lucy Mercer, the woman he loved; Missy LeHand, the woman who loved him; and his wife, Eleanor. After Eleanor discovered FDR’s affair with Lucy in 1918, their relationship became more professional than personal—an armed truce, in the words of their son James. They remained together for a variety of reasons, and Eleanor became a national personality in her own right. But her impact on the president’s life was tangential. She and FDR moved in different circles, each with a separate entourage, and only at formal levels did their paths converge. I say this as an unabashed admirer of Mrs. Roosevelt. She has been deservedly canonized because of what she stood for, yet we overlook the fact that she was a political liability for the president in the 1930s and ’40s. FDR did not need reinforcement among liberal and minority voters, where Eleanor was most highly regarded; he needed the votes of the white South, the Middle West, and the Great Plains, where for many she was anathema. Eleanor Roosevelt is a truly great American, not least because she was her own person. But she did not flourish until after the president’s death.

The most important figure in Roosevelt’s life was his mother, Sara. As an only child, Franklin grew to maturity in the warmth and security of single-minded maternal devotion. Sara shaped him, supported him, and transmitted to him the unshakable confidence that characterized his presidential leadership. Seven of Sara’s ancestors landed with the Mayflower. Unlike the cautious Hudson River Roosevelts, the Delanos were swashbuckling sea captains, global traders, and risk takers. Her father, Warren Delano, made a fortune in China in the 1840s exporting tea, then a much larger one in the 1860s in the opium trade. Sara lived two years in China, was educated in France and Germany, and as a young woman was courted assiduously by New York’s most eligible bachelors, including the irrepressible Stanford White. As a friend remarked, “she had a gift for saying the right thing at the right time, and she could say it in several languages.” Sara gloried in her Delano heritage and molded FDR in that tradition. “My son Franklin is a Delano,” she often said. “He is not a Roosevelt at all.”

Sara held the purse strings. She supported Franklin generously, bestowed on him and Eleanor an elegant New York town house (which she staffed and furnished), remodeled and enlarged the Hyde Park residence to accommodate her son’s political ambitions, and, when Franklin thought of leaving Eleanor for Lucy in 1918, intervened decisively to keep the couple together. Sara’s wealth freed Franklin from earning a living and allowed him the luxury of pursuing a political career unencumbered by financial worry. “Nothing,” said Eleanor, “ever seemed to disturb the deep, underlying affection they had for each other.”^*

Like Sara, Lucy Mercer has not been given her due. “Every man who ever knew her fell in love with her,” wrote Jonathan Daniels, a keen observer of the Washington scene. Lucy was everything Eleanor was not. Beautiful, warm, affectionate, she gave Franklin the attention he craved. Her voice had “the quality of dark velvet” and her impeccable manners made her a most agreeable listener. Lucy’s mother was once described by the Washington Mirror as “easily the most beautiful woman in Washington society,” and her father, a founder of the Chevy Chase Country Club, was descended from Charles Carroll of Carrollton, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. The family had fallen on hard times, and Lucy was working as Eleanor’s social secretary when Franklin met her in 1914. Their relationship blossomed slowly. By the summer of 1917, with Eleanor at Campobello, the two had become an item of Washington gossip. Alice Roosevelt Longworth, the tart-tongued daughter of TR (and Eleanor’s cousin), encouraged the romance and sometimes invited the pair for dinner. “Franklin deserved a good time,” she was quoted as saying. “He was married to Eleanor.”

The affair broke off in 1918, but Lucy and Franklin remained close throughout the president’s life. She surreptitiously attended each of his inaugurals in a closed White House limousine provided by the Secret Service, met with FDR often in the 1940s, and was with him when he died at Warm Springs.

Missy (Marguerite) LeHand, a quietly competent, attractive young woman of twenty-three, joined FDR’s team during his vice presidential campaign in 1920 and remained at his side until she suffered a debilitating stroke in June 1941. She was not only Roosevelt’s personal secretary (“F.D.” as she and only she addressed him) but his constant companion and attendant—a surrogate for both Eleanor and Lucy. When Roosevelt cruised off the Florida coast for months at a time in the 1920s in an attempt to regain his health, it was Missy who accompanied him. It was Missy, not Eleanor, who went with him to Warm Springs; it was Missy who presided over his office; and it was Missy who served as hostess when FDR entertained. Neither Eleanor nor Sara objected to the arrangement, and Roosevelt’s friends took it in stride. Missy was deeply in love with FDR, and the president, if not in love, certainly preferred her company to all others’. She died without knowing that the president had made her the beneficiary of one half of his estate in gratitude for her commitment.^*

Sixty years after his death, it is high time Roosevelt be revisited. The Great Depression, the New Deal, the Second World War are fading memories. The extent to which the United States was threatened is scarcely remembered. The national sacrifice is forgotten. All the more reason to recall that cheerful man who could not walk, who could not stand unassisted, yet who remained serenely confident as he calmly guided the nation into a prosperous, peaceful future.

JEAN EDWARD SMITH
Huntington, West Virginia

^* A close parallel to Sara’s role vis-à-vis Franklin is that of her contemporary Mrs. Arthur MacArthur and her son Douglas. Military scholars are well aware that when Douglas was a cadet at West Point, Mrs. MacArthur took an apartment nearby to be with him. Less well known is that for two years during FDR’s time at Harvard, Sara took an apartment in Boston to be near him.

^* FDR’s will, dated November 12, 1941, provided that his papers, personal property (paintings, china, furniture, silver), and the house at Hyde Park be given to the United States government. The balance of his estate (investments, land, inheritance from Sara) was to be placed in trust, one half of the income to be paid to Eleanor, the other half to Missy, with the children and grandchildren enjoying remainder interests. Missy died in July 1944 and did not benefit from the president’s bequest, but the will was never amended. When it was probated and made public in June 1945, the press reported the financial details minutely but chose not to mention the provision pertaining to Missy. Last Will and Testament of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park; The New York Times, June 7, 1945; United States News, October 4, 1946.

Contents

Cover

Other Books by This Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

PREFACE

            ONE | HERITAGE

           TWO | MY SON FRANKLIN

         THREE | KEEPING THE NAME IN THE FAMILY

          FOUR | ALBANY

           FIVE | AWAKENING

            SIX | ANCHORS AWEIGH

        SEVEN | WAR

        EIGHT | LUCY

         NINE | THE CAMPAIGN OF 1920

          TEN | POLIO

      ELEVEN | GOVERNOR

     TWELVE | ALBANY REDUX

   THIRTEEN | NOMINATION

  FOURTEEN | NOTHING TO FEAR

     FIFTEEN | ONE HUNDRED DAYS

     SIXTEEN | NEW DEAL ASCENDANT

 SEVENTEEN | HUBRIS

   EIGHTEEN | LOW TIDE

   NINETEEN | ON THE BRINK

    TWENTY | STAB IN THE BACK

   TWENTY-ONE | FOUR MORE YEARS

  TWENTY-TWO | ARSENAL OF DEMOCRACY

TWENTY-THREE | DAY OF INFAMY

 TWENTY-FOUR | COMMANDER IN CHIEF

  TWENTY-FIVE | D-DAY

   TWENTY-SIX | LAST POST

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

About the Author

ONE
HERITAGE

Some thought the Roosevelts were entitled to coats of arms. Others thought they were two steps ahead of the bailiffs from an island in the Zuider Zee.

—ALICE ROOSEVELT LONGWORTH

THE ROOSEVELTS WERE an old but relatively inconspicuous New York family. Their wealth derived from Manhattan real estate, the West Indian sugar trade, and thrifty investment. The men in the family married well: indeed, much of the Roosevelt inheritance descended on the maternal side. Yet for six generations the family had produced no one of significant stature. Suddenly, in the seventh generation, this “dynasty of the mediocre” (in the words of the New York Herald Tribune) erupted with not one but two of the most remarkable men in American history.¹

The common ancestor of Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt—“our very common ancestor,” as TR phrased it—was Claes van Rosenvelt, an obscure Dutchman who landed in New Amsterdam in the 1650s.² His only son, Nicholas, was a prosperous miller. He in turn fathered two sons: Johannes, the progenitor of the Long Island branch of the family that produced Theodore; and Jacobus, founder of the Hudson River strain from which Franklin descended. Johannes’s heirs were merchants and traders. The descendants of Jacobus—James in English—remained closer to the soil, farming initially in upper Manhattan, then living the life of gentleman farmers along the Hudson.

James’s son Isaac (Franklin’s great-great-grandfather), a sugar refiner, was briefly active in the Revolutionary cause, helped draft New York’s first constitution, and proved a solid but silent member of the Federalist phalanx led by Alexander Hamilton at the state convention that ratified the United States Constitution. With Hamilton he founded the Bank of New York and served as its president from 1786 to 1791.

The Roosevelts avoided flamboyance, moved cautiously, and did not become involved in public affairs unless they had to. As charter members of the city’s original elite they enjoyed inherited social status, a self-contained lifestyle, and a profound sense of entitlement. Isaac’s son James (1760–1847) went to Princeton, followed his father into the sugar-refining business, dabbled at banking, bred horses, and in 1819 purchased a substantial tract of land fronting the Hudson north of Poughkeepsie. There he built a large house, which he called Mount Hope, and assumed the life of a country squire. His son, another Isaac (1790–1863), also went to Princeton, trained as a physician at Columbia, but declined to practice medicine. The sight of blood was unbearable to him, and he could not tolerate the sound of suffering.³ Instead, Isaac turned inward. He lived with his parents at Mount Hope, where he devoted himself to raising exotic plants and breeding horses. A charitable relative described him as having “a delicate constitution and refined tastes.” The fact is, Dr. Isaac was a recluse, a hypochondriac paralyzed with fear of the everyday world.⁴

To the family’s surprise, Dr. Isaac, at the age of thirty-seven, announced his intention to marry Mary Rebecca Aspinwall, the sprightly eighteen-year-old daughter of their neighbors, the John Aspinwalls. For three generations, the Hudson River Roosevelts had been a family of declining enterprise, content to husband the money they inherited. That was not the case with the Aspinwalls, a hearty, acquisitive, seafaring family from New England. Together with their partners, the Howlands, the Aspinwalls dominated the shipping industry in New York. Their clipper ships, including the record-breaking Rainbow, were familiar in the ports of every continent, and the firm easily adjusted to the advent of steam. The discovery of gold in California in 1848 proved an even greater bonanza for the company, which held a monopoly carrying passengers and freight between the East and West coasts via its steamship lines and the Panama Railroad—which it had pioneered.

Rebecca Aspinwall brought Yankee vigor to the sluggish Roosevelt gene pool. “Thus the stock kept virile and abreast of the times,” FDR wrote in a Harvard essay on the family.⁵ The infusion was overdue. Dr. Isaac had no house of his own, and it was to his parents’ home at Mount Hope that he took his bride in 1827. The following year a son was born, christened James in the Roosevelt tradition of alternating “James” and “Isaac” for the firstborn son from generation to generation. James, the president’s father, was the third of that name in the line. Not until four years after James’s birth did Dr. Isaac establish a home of his own. At Rebecca’s insistence, and with a generous dollop of Aspinwall money, he purchased a large plot of land immediately across the Albany Post Road from Mount Hope and constructed a rambling gabled house with deep verandas. He named it Rosedale and planted shrubbery so thickly that the house was forever shrouded in shade. As one chronicler of the family has written, “it was a quiet place, quietly furnished, quietly lived in,” and it was here that James grew up, an only child for the first twelve years of his life.⁶

Franklin’s father was not only a Roosevelt but an Aspinwall. After graduating from Union College in 1847 and before matriculating at Harvard Law School, he asked his parents’ permission to undertake a European grand tour. Dr. Isaac objected. Wandering through Europe would be dangerous, he told James. Sickness and disease lurked everywhere, and there were unmistakable signs of political unrest. But Rebecca supported the idea, and eventually Dr. Isaac yielded. From November 1847 until May 1849, Franklin’s father traveled through western Europe and the Holy Land. Family legend has it that while in Italy he briefly joined the redshirted legion of Giuseppe Garibaldi, fighting for Italian unification. FDR was fond of reciting the tale:

He became close friends with a mendicant priest—spoke only Latin with him—and the two of them proceeded on a walking tour in Italy. They came to Naples and found the city besieged by Garibaldi’s army. They both enlisted in this army, wore a red shirt for a month or so, and tiring of it, as there seemed to be little action, went to Garibaldi’s tent and asked if they could receive their discharge. Garibaldi thanked the old priest and my father and the walking tour was resumed by them.⁷

Upon his return from Europe, James entered Harvard Law School, graduated in 1851, was admitted to the New York bar, and for two years clerked with the prosperous Wall Street firm of Benjamin Douglas Silliman.⁸ In the meantime Grandfather James died, leaving the bulk of his estate, including Mount Hope and a fashionable New York brownstone, to his young namesake. Wealthy now in his own right, James chose not to practice law but devote himself to managing his investments and living the life of a Hudson River grandee. On April 23, 1853, at the age of twenty-five, he married Rebecca Brien Howland, a daughter of his mother’s first cousin and an heiress to another shipping fortune. They set up house at Mount Hope and later in the year sailed for England, establishing a pattern they would follow for the remainder of their lives. Slightly less than two years later a son was born, James Roosevelt Roosevelt, inevitably known as “Rosy,” the president’s half brother.

James Roosevelt was a cautious investor who deployed his inheritance skillfully. But the Aspinwall spirit of adventure was not completely extinguished. He bet heavily on what West Virginians call the dark industries—coal and railroads—and for a few years his investments prospered. James became a director of the Consolidated Coal Company, the largest bituminous coal enterprise in the country, and the Delaware and Hudson Railroad and briefly served as president of the Southern Railway Security Company, a holding company that controlled most of the railroads south of the Potomac. But the Panic of 1873 intervened, the consortiums to which James belonged lost heavily, and he was soon shunted into the role of a passive investor.

Exactly what James did during the Civil War remains a mystery. He was only thirty-two when General Pierre G. T. Beauregard fired on Fort Sumter, yet he made no effort to join the struggle. FDR claimed his father served as a member of the Sanitary Commission, providing aid for wounded soldiers, yet documentary evidence is lacking.⁹ Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., James’s cousin and contemporary (and TR’s father), did not serve either, and was embarrassed by it for the rest of his life. James never gave it a second thought.¹⁰

In the summer of 1865, while the Roosevelts were touring the Swiss Alps, Mount Hope burned to the ground. The cause remains unclear. Tenants blamed a faulty flue, yet there was a suspicion of arson. With the exception of an antique tea service and several Roosevelt heirlooms, all the family papers and possessions were destroyed. James and Rebecca were devastated but could do nothing. Rather than return immediately, they chose to remain in Europe for another year, wintering in the Saxon capital of Dresden. The richness of the city’s art treasures, its musical tradition, and its cosmopolitan sophistication attracted a large colony of foreign residents. In 1865, more than two hundred English and American families called Dresden their home.

Around the corner from the Roosevelts lived General and Mrs. George B. McClellan, the young Napoleon who had met his political Waterloo the year before, running as the Democratic candidate against Abraham Lincoln. The general had gone into what he called winter quarters in Dresden and would remain abroad for the next three years. At thirty-nine, McClellan was just two years older than James, and the two hit it off from the start. A common interest in railroading broke the ice. As superintendent of the Illinois Central, McClellan had been the highest-paid railroad executive in the United States when the Civil War began.¹¹ And they were both Democrats. Originally, the Roosevelts had been Federalists, then Whigs. When the Whig party fell apart over the issue of slavery, TR’s branch of the family, staunchly abolitionist, went Republican. The Hudson River clan preferred the moderation of James Buchanan and became Democrats.¹² James voted for Stephen A. Douglas in 1860 and backed McClellan in 1864. Party loyalty was something the Roosevelts took seriously, and James found special pleasure discussing politics with the party’s most recent nominee. For the next eight months they managed to take a stroll or have a smoke almost every day. “I see a good deal of General McClellan, and like him very much,” James wrote his brother, John, at Christmastime.¹³

The Roosevelts left Dresden May 17, 1866, a year to the day after they had departed from New York. Five months later, after meandering from Karlsbad to St. Moritz to Paris, London, and Liverpool, they were home. James chose not to rebuild Mount Hope and sold the land to the State of New York as the site for the state mental institution. With the proceeds he hoped to buy the opulent estate of John Jacob Astor III at Rhinebeck, but when the price proved more than he could afford, James settled for a lesser property just over the boundary from Poughkeepsie in Hyde Park.

This was Brierstone, a 110-acre estate that belonged to railroad executive Josiah Wheeler. The property was partially wooded and sloped to the river bank. The house was not large as Hudson River manors went—there were only seventeen rooms—and it was in poor repair. But the view of the river was majestic. And there was a lovely rose garden surrounded by a tall hemlock hedge. Wheeler had never taken to farming, and the fields had been neglected. The fences were down, and the outbuildings required immediate attention.

James was in his element. Within less than a year the manor house, renamed Springwood, had been put in order. Indoor plumbing was installed, new carpets laid, draperies hung, and furniture purchased to replace that lost at Mount Hope. James placed great store on restoring the fields to productivity and eventually would expand the farm to almost a thousand acres. To maintain a monthly cash flow, he purchased a sizable herd of dairy cattle from the Channel Islands—Jersey, Guernsey, and Alderney—but his primary interest was trotting horses. By the 1870s Springwood had become one of the leading stables in the East. In 1873 James’s magnificent gelding Gloster, foaled at Springwood, set a new trotting record for the mile at two minutes, seventeen and a quarter seconds. That autumn, former governor Leland Stanford of California, president of the Central Pacific Railroad and founder of Stanford University, bought Gloster from James for $15,000. The horse was shipped west, but before it could race again it was killed in a train wreck. (Gloster’s tail, mounted on a wooden plaque, hung in FDR’s White House bedroom.)¹⁴ After the Panic of 1873 James withdrew from the trotting world, although he continued to maintain a stable of horses at Springwood and rode daily until shortly before his death.

Life at Springwood took on the affectations of an English country manor. A none-too-kind acquaintance observed that James patterned himself on the Whig leader Lord Lansdowne “but what he really looked like was Lord Lansdowne’s coachman.”¹⁵ James prided himself that the estate broke even and undertook a modest role in community affairs—commodore of the local yacht club, vestryman at St. James’ Episcopal Church, the Hyde Park school board, the board at the state mental hospital. In 1871 he was elected as a Democrat to a two-year term as one of the town supervisors. Three years later party officials asked him to run for the State Senate. “James went to a political meeting,” Rebecca wrote in her diary on October 18, 1874. “I was dreadfully afraid he would be nominated … but he got home safely.” In an autobiographical sketch written toward the end of his life, James said, “I have always refused to accept any nomination for Public Office, repeatedly refused nomination for Congress, State Senate and Assembly.”¹⁶

The Roosevelts divided their time between Springwood, an elegant town house at 15 Washington Square in New York City, and long vacations abroad. When in the city, whether on business or for the social season, James frequented the Union League, the Metropolitan, the Century, and the University clubs. Travel was facilitated by a private railroad car, the Monon, which stood on a siding off the main Hudson River line, a few hundred yards from Springwood.^* The outside world rarely intruded. As a reflective biographer has written, James “seems to have enjoyed business much as he had enjoyed trotting. It was a challenge and worth working at, but it never ran his life.”¹⁷

Sorrow came gradually. In 1875 Rebecca’s health began to fail. The symptoms of heart disease were unmistakable. Doctors ordered her to stop climbing stairs. James installed elevators at Springwood and the house in New York, but the symptoms grew worse. In August 1876 James took Rebecca aboard his yacht for a cruise on Long Island Sound, hoping the sea air would ease her cough. Shortly after they got under way, she suffered a massive heart attack. James put in at New York harbor and carried her home to Washington Square. She died there on the twenty-first of August and was interred at Hyde Park.

Two years after his mother’s death, Rosy was graduated with honors from Columbia. Following the path laid out by his father and grandfather, he became engaged to the debutante of the year, Helen Schermerhorn Astor, the daughter of Mrs. William Astor, the fabled arbiter of New York society.¹⁸ Rosy was enormously attractive, exceedingly sociable, and utterly without ambition, save to live a life of privilege. Insofar as the Astors were concerned, he represented unassailable Knickerbocker lineage and the prestige that attached to the families of original settlers. Regardless of their lack of accomplishment, the Roosevelts were prominent members of New York’s old guard, and a Dutch pedigree still counted for much among the city’s social elite.

Rosy and Helen were married in the autumn of 1877. Helen brought with her a trust fund of $400,000 (roughly $7 million today) and a mansion on Fifth Avenue.¹⁹ Rosy shelved plans to study law and like father and grandfather settled in to manage the matrimonial estate. He and Helen bought a smaller property adjacent to Springwood, where betwixt the social season in New York and annual pilgrimages to Europe, the couple enjoyed the leisure their wealth permitted.

James had been forty-eight when Rebecca died. After a suitable period of mourning he commenced a one-sided courtship of his favorite cousin, Anna “Bamie” Roosevelt, TR’s older sister. Bamie was just twenty-two and by all odds the most talented of the Long Island tribe. Alice Roosevelt Longworth insisted that if Bamie had been born a man, she, not Theodore, would have become president. Bamie was fond of James, appreciated his company, but never considered him a romantic interest. When he proposed marriage in early 1880, she was stunned. Not wishing to hurt him directly, she passed the proposal to her mother, Mittie, who, being an old friend of James, let him down gently.²⁰

Perhaps because she felt sympathy for James, Mittie now played matchmaker. Two months after his proposal to Bamie had been rejected, she invited James to a small dinner party at the Roosevelt home on West Fifty-seventh Street. Bamie and her sister Corinne were there, along with an old family friend, Richard Crowninshield of Boston. So was a young woman whom Bamie introduced as one of her closest friends, Sara Delano. James was captivated. Sara was twenty-six, one of five spirited daughters of Warren Delano of Newburgh known to New York society as “the beautiful Delano sisters.” Tall at five feet ten, slender, with a sophisticated manner and a regal carriage, Sara was the very image of the ideal American beauty popularized by Charles Dana Gibson. Her expressive eyes and chiseled features set her apart from those who were merely pretty. A strong chin suggested substance and determination. In a word, Sara had what the English called “presence.”

James responded as Mittie had anticipated. “He talked to her the whole time,” she told Bamie after the guests departed. “He never took his eyes off her.”²¹ Whether James had met Sara before is unclear. The Delanos were every bit as grand, much richer, and far more accomplished than the Roosevelts.²² Like the Aspinwalls and Howlands, they were an adventurous seafaring family and traced their lineage to the Mayflower. The Pilgrim who chartered the ship, seven of its passengers, and three signers of the Mayflower Compact were Delano forebears.²³ Sara’s paternal ancestor Philippe de la Noye was reputedly the first Huguenot to land on American soil, arriving in Plymouth in 1621.²⁴

Sara’s grandfather, the first Warren Delano, went to sea at nineteen, became a merchant captain in his early twenties, pioneered clipper ship trade with the Orient, and retired to the whaling industry in New Bedford. Her father, Warren II, born in 1809, apprenticed himself to importing firms in Boston and New York, and at the age of twenty-four sailed for China as supercargo aboard the clipper Commerce. At Canton he secured a junior position in the tea-exporting firm of Russell, Sturgis and Company, later Russell and Company, the largest American firm in the China trade. At thirty-one he was a senior partner, heading the firm’s operations in Macao, Canton, and Hong Kong. Two years later, having been in China nine years and amassing a considerable fortune, he returned to the United States on home leave, where he met, courted, and married Catherine Robbins Lyman, the eighteen-year-old daughter of Judge and Mrs. Joseph Lyman of Northampton, Massachusetts.

The bride and groom sailed for China on December 4, 1843, and remained there another three years. Warren continued to run Russell and Company, increasing its profits with each successive season. At the end of 1846 he resigned his post and returned to America to stay. His twelve years in China had netted a fortune of more than a million dollars. With that, he entered an exclusive circle of not more than a dozen Americans.²⁵

In New York, Warren threw himself into business with the same force and vigor that had paved the way for success in the Orient. He invested heavily in New York waterfront property, railroads, Tennessee copper mines, and coal in Pennsylvania, where a mining town near Wilkes-Barre was named Delano in his honor. He owned clipper ships and paddle steamers, including the first boat on the Sacramento River servicing the California goldfields. By the early 1850s he was well on his way to earning another million.

Befitting their wealth, Warren and Catherine lived at Colonnade Row on Lafayette Place, nine unusual Greek Revival houses linked by a common portico.²⁶ Washington Irving lived in one, as did John Jacob Astor, the founding father, widely regarded as the richest man in America. So did Warren’s younger brother Franklin, who had recently married Mr. Astor’s granddaughter Laura. Franklin Delano, “Uncle Frank” as Sara called him, and for whom FDR was named, was also in the shipping business but had recently retired to manage his wife’s immense trust fund.

Warren and Catherine summered annually at Danskammer Point, six miles above Newburgh on the west bank of the Hudson. In 1851, after much looking, they purchased a sixty-acre estate four miles downstream. The brick and stucco house was modest, but had a commanding view of the river and the Hudson Highlands. Warren named it Algonac and immediately set to convert it into a rural sanctuary for his growing family. Already there had been five children, and eventually there would be eleven, of whom Sara, born September 21, 1854, would be the seventh.²⁷

To redesign Algonac, Warren engaged Andrew Jackson Downing, the premier landscape architect in America, who was then laying out the grounds of the White House, the Capitol, and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. Downing converted the house at Newburgh into an Italianate villa of forty rooms and added a large square tower and deep verandas, as well as a compatible gatehouse, several barns, greenhouses, and stables. Plantings were designed to provide bloom or greenery year-round, and at Warren’s direction a broad lawn was constructed, sloping down to the river. The house was furnished with equal attention to detail, emphasizing Warren’s years in China. To tend the estate required a permanent staff of ten, with temporary help hired as needed.²⁸

The Delanos prospered at Algonac, and Warren’s business affairs flourished.^* That is, until the summer of 1857, when without warning the giant Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company, the second largest bank east of the Mississippi, abruptly closed its doors. Panic struck the nation’s financial community. Years of wild speculation in railroads, coal mines, and real estate had vastly inflated stock prices. The market dropped 50 percent overnight. Banks suspended specie payment, thousands of businesses closed, commodity prices plummeted. Federal troops were called out to protect government buildings. In San Francisco, the fledgling banker William Tecumseh Sherman went under. In Missouri, Ulysses S. Grant was driven off his farm. Across America prosperity turned sour. Tens of thousands of people lost everything they had.

Warren Delano was caught in the downdraft. He was always an aggressive investor, and the collapse in stock prices found him dangerously overextended. For two years he fought to remain solvent as one after another of his investments failed. He cut back spending, sold the townhouse on Colonnade Row, and even tried to sell Algonac. All to no avail. In January 1860, at the age of fifty, Warren Delano faced bankruptcy.

“Warren has various projects, mostly impractical,” wrote his brother Ned. “One is to go to China to do business five years and return with a fortune.”²⁹ Which is precisely what he did. Leaving his family at Algonac, Warren sailed for Hong Kong, where he organized another trading empire. This time it was not tea but opium—open, notorious, and far more profitable—a business not strictly legal, but nevertheless one conducted with the acquiescence and cooperation of Chinese authorities.³⁰ Warren supplied medicinal opium to the War Department to alleviate the suffering of Union wounded, but that was scarcely his only market. “I do not pretend to justify the prosecution of the opium trade in a moral or philanthropic point of view,” he wrote his brothers from China. “But as a merchant I insist that it has been a fair, honorable and legitimate trade; and to say the worst of it, liable to no further or weightier objections than is the importation of wines, Brandies, and spirits into the UStates, England & c.”³¹

By 1862 Warren’s fortunes had improved to such an extent that he brought his family to join him. “I suppose it was altogether terrifying to my mother to give up her beautiful home and its peaceful security,” Sara observed, but if so, her mother said nothing about it.³² Warren leased Algonac to Abbot Low, the patriarch of another great mercantile family, and from Low chartered the Surprise, one of the sleekest, fastest clippers on the China run, to transport his family. For seven-year-old Sara it was the journey of a lifetime: four months at sea on a 183-foot square rigger with only her family and the crew. It was more like a yacht than a ship, Sara recalled. Seventy-five years later, she would entertain her great-grandchildren at Springwood by singing sea chanteys she learned from the sailors.³³

Down the river hauled a Yankee clipper,
And it’s blow, my bully boys, blow!
She’s a Yankee mate and a Yankee skipper,
And it’s blow, my bully boys, blow!

For FDR, his mother’s trip to China was another family legend he could not resist embellishing. Two days out of New York, Surprise sighted a steamer to leeward that the captain feared might be a Confederate privateer. It proved to be a British mail packet bound for Bermuda. For the president, it was the dreaded Alabama. “I have a copy of the log of the clipper ship my Mother and her Mother went to China on,” he wrote to Felix Frankfurter in April 1942. “They passed the Confederate commerce destroyer Alabama in the night but were not seen.”³⁴ The fact is, the Alabama was lying unfinished in a shipyard near Liverpool when Surprise set sail from New York and did not put to sea until July 1862, by which time the Surprise had rounded the Cape of Good Hope and was in the Indian Ocean. The president often told the story of his mother’s narrow escape from the Alabama, and none of his friends corrected him. It was part of FDR’s charm: a good story was sometimes preferable to an accurate one. The president kept a wooden model of the Surprise on the table behind his desk, and two paintings of the ship hung on the wall of his study.

In 1864 Sara and three older children were sent home to resume their schooling. Two years later they rejoined the family in Paris. Warren Delano had succeeded far beyond his expectations in China and toyed with the idea of residing permanently in Europe, perhaps on an estate in the Pyrenees. “I should want it to be isolated from our countrymen or others who would speak English habitually, and I should want to organize my household as to combine the real comforts and proper luxuries of life with a system of order and regularity of studies, duties, exercise and recreation.”³⁵ Finding nothing to suit him, Warren settled for an opulent Right Bank apartment in Paris overlooking the Avenue de l’Impératrice (now the Avenue Foch). It was the time of the great Paris Exposition and construction of the Eiffel Tower. Sara recalled seeing the crowned heads of Europe as they passed her balcony. Even more impressive was the sight of Count Otto von Bismarck, the German chancellor, walking alone and unattended from exhibit to exhibit.³⁶

From Paris the Delanos moved to Dresden and took a commodious apartment on the Christianstrasse, near where the Roosevelts wintered the year before. Sara attended a local school, where she studied German and music, and formed a lasting appreciation for the masterpieces at the Dresdner Gemäldegalerie. In the summer of 1868 most of the family went home to Algonac while the older children remained in Germany to complete their studies. Sara attended finishing school in Celle, a medieval city north of Hannover, where she lived with the mayor’s family. Summers were spent on the island of Rügen in the Baltic and the Harz Mountains. In June 1870, as hostilities threatened, the children returned to Algonac aboard the Westphalia, the last passenger vessel to leave a German port before the Franco-Prussian War. Sara had been away from home for almost eight years, and abroad for six.

Under Warren’s tutelage, life at Algonac was a disciplined round of reading, letter writing, and entertaining, interlaced with the New York social season, archery, boating, and riding. From the age of eighteen, Sara was a regular at the balls, cotillions, and dinners of the city’s most fashionable families. Rita Halle Kleeman, Sara’s friend and biographer, reports that she was an avid dancer and could waltz an evening away to the Vienna melodies of Johann Strauss or experiment with popular new steps such as the Galop and the Boston.

If Sara fell in love, it was with the young Stanford White, whose aunt lived nearby. “Stanny” was a frequent visitor at Algonac and apparently fascinated Sara. In 1876 he commenced to court her seriously, and Sara responded. White was one year older, but at twenty-three his prospects looked dismal. Boastful, boisterous, and irreverent, he had been working for five years as one of several underpaid draftsmen for the great Boston architect Henry Hobson Richardson. Yet, as White’s biographer noted, beneath the offputting exterior lay a gargantuan capacity for work and a contagious obsession with beauty.³⁷ Aside from Sara, few recognized it. Warren Delano despised White, called him “the red-headed trial,” and found nothing that would recommend him as a son-in-law. When Sara persisted, Warren urged her to go abroad and reconsider. Ever dutiful, Sara agreed to visit her sister Dora in Hong Kong, where Dora’s husband was now the senior representative of Russell and Company. Sara was away nine months. When she returned to Algonac in September 1877, she had come around. White called once more, but whether he was received by Mr. Delano or saw Sara is unclear. The romance was over. But as one member of the Delano family later recorded, “Sara loved only one man in her life, and that man was Stanford White.”^*

It was three years after Stanford White that Sara met James. For James it was love at first sight, and he set out on a resolute courtship. Sara’s motives are less clear. James was fifty-two, she was twenty-six—the same age as James’s son, Rosy. She was also two inches taller. Her father had objected to Stanford White, but James satisfied basic Delano requirements: sufficient wealth so as not to be suspected of fortune hunting, demonstrated maturity, and impeccable lineage. He was also kind, considerate, handsome in an elderly way, and, unlike White, very much a gentleman. That settled it for Sara. The age difference would take care of itself. So too the height. Above all, at twenty-six—old by Victorian standards—she might never have another opportunity. It required someone as bold as Stanford White, or as secure as James, not to be intimidated by Sara. Writing to her son on the eve of his first run for the presidency, she acknowledged as much. If not for James, Sara wrote, “I should now be the ‘old Miss Delano’ after a rather sad life.”³⁸

Having made her decision (Warren reluctantly approved), Sara was steadfast in her devotion. The couple were married in an understated ceremony at Algonac on October 7, 1880. After vows were exchanged and a brief reception, the bride and groom departed in the Delano carriage for Hyde Park. At Milton, roughly halfway, the Roosevelt coach awaited. The wedding couple took their seats, and James grasped the reins and drove the remaining distance to Springwood.

The Roosevelts spent the next month together at Hyde Park before embarking on an extended honeymoon in Europe. Twice when James went to New York on business, Sara returned to Algonac, and twice the Delanos visited Springwood. Throughout their married life, James and Sara always journeyed to Algonac for family celebrations: Christmas, Thanksgiving, birthdays, and anniversaries. In that respect, the Delano tie prevailed.

On November 7, 1880, the Roosevelts sailed for Europe aboard the White Star liner Germanic, the newest ship on the Atlantic run. They spent the next ten months abroad, visiting friends and relatives, enjoying the leisure of first-class travel as they slowly toured Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland, the Low Countries, and the British Isles. On Sunday morning, August 21, 1881, the Roosevelts attended services at Saint Peter’s Cathedral in York. Sara reported in her diary that she nearly fainted, “giving James a little fright.” She was already four months pregnant, and it was time to return to Springwood. On September 1 they boarded the Germanic again, and ten days later they were back in the United States. It had been a perfect honeymoon. “James was wonderful in the way he did it all and we have had such happy days,” wrote Sara. “He has been untiring and thoughtful of everything.”³⁹

^* TR’s daughter Alice often joked that the difference between the Oyster Bay Roosevelts and those from Hyde Park was that her family traveled in a borrowed railroad car while the Hyde Park clan owned one. Linda Donn, The Roosevelt Cousins 88 (New York: Knopf, 2001).

^* Throughout his life, FDR used “Algonac” as a code word to mean that everything was all right, “superfine, splendid et pas cher.” See FDR to SDR, June 7, 1905, 2 The Roosevelt Letters 21, Elliott Roosevelt, ed. (London: George G. Harrap, 1950).

^* Seven years later White married Bessie Springs Smith of Smithtown, Long Island. By then McKim, Mead and White had become the leading architectural firm in America, setting the pace in both public and private building, and driven by the manic energy of Stanford White. Warren Delano’s forebodings to the contrary, White became exceedingly wealthy. But on one point Warren may have been correct: White was probably unsuitable as a husband. His philandering was notorious, and in 1906 he was shot and killed by a jealous husband, Harry Thaw, while watching the floor show at the rooftop restaurant at Madison Square Garden—which White had designed. Paul R. Baker, Stanny: The Gilded Life of Stanford White 33–34, 372–373 (New York: Free Press, 1989).

TWO
MY SON FRANKLIN

I have always been a great believer in heredity.

—SARA DELANO ROOSEVELT

FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT was born late in the evening of January 30, 1882. Sara was in labor twenty-six hours and narrowly survived an overdose of chloroform administered by a solicitous country doctor. That night, in the diary Sara kept, James wrote, “At quarter to nine my Sallie had a splendid large baby boy. He weighs 10 lbs., without clothes.”¹ For the next two months the baby went unnamed as James and Sara delicately struggled for control. Roosevelt tradition dictated the boy be named Isaac. By naming Rosy after himself twenty-eight years earlier, James had disrupted that tradition. He now wished to restore it by naming the baby in honor of his father. Sara, who was expected to defer to her husband’s wishes, declined to do so in naming her son. She detested the name Isaac. Before the child was born she had decided that if it were a boy, he would be named for her father: Warren Delano Roosevelt. The toing and froing continued through February. Eventually James gave way. His commitment to Roosevelt tradition was no match for Sara’s determination.²

Sara’s father was delighted. The baby, he wrote, was “a beautiful little fellow—well and strong and well-behaved—with a good-shaped head of the Delano type.”³ But there was a problem. A brother of Sara’s had recently lost a young son who had been named Warren Delano IV. Out of sympathy, Sara agreed it would be untimely to name her baby Warren as well. “We are disappointed, and so is Papa,” she wrote, “but of course there is nothing to say.”⁴ As an alternative, Sara proposed to name the baby for her favorite uncle, Franklin Delano, who had married Laura Astor and lived a few miles north at a baronial estate known as Steen Valetje in Barrytown. Her father worried that some might think the name was selected “with an idea of possible advantage” since Uncle Frank and Aunt Laura were childless, but Sara brushed the objection aside.⁵

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was christened on March 20, 1882, at a small family ceremony in the chapel of Hyde Park’s St. James’ Episcopal Church. Nelly Blodgett, one of Sara’s closest friends since childhood, was godmother. There were two godfathers: Will Forbes, Sara’s brother-in-law (Dora’s husband), and Elliott Roosevelt, the younger brother of Sara’s friend Bamie and TR, and soon to be the father of Eleanor. Had he lived, Elliott, in addition to being Franklin’s godfather, would also have become his father-in-law.

The world appeared remarkably peaceful when FDR was christened. The “Concert of Europe,” in place since the Napoleonic wars, provided unprecedented international stability. Christianity, capitalism, and colonialism cemented the cohesion of the Great Powers. German unity had been achieved by Bismarck without rending the fabric of consensus, and few shed a tear for the demise of the papacy’s temporal authority in Italy. In Britain, Queen Victoria ruled majestically in the fifth decade of her seemingly endless reign. Emperor Franz Josef was well into his fourth decade on the Hapsburg throne; Republican France appeared to have found its footing; and north of the U.S. border a newly autonomous Dominion of Canada greeted the United States as a full-fledged North American partner.

Beneath the veneer of calm, passions stirred uneasily—a dangerous portent of what lay ahead. In 1881 President James Garfield and Czar Alexander II of Russia were both victims of political violence: Garfield slain at the hand of a madman in Washington; Alexander killed by a terrorist bomb on the streets of Saint Petersburg. The rapid pace of industrialization, the dislocation of families from rural to urban settings, massive immigration, unspeakable working conditions, labor unrest, and pestilential slums darkened the horizon.

This was a time of enormous growth in the United States. The population, which stood at 35 million at the close of the Civil War, had jumped to 53 million—a 51 percent increase in little more than fifteen years. The American birthrate, 39.8 per thousand in 1882, was almost twice that of Great Britain and three times that of France. Immigration had soared to 800,000 people annually. In the year of FDR’s birth, more than a quarter of a million potential new citizens arrived from Germany and an almost equal number from Scandinavia and the British Isles.⁶

America’s gross domestic product (GDP) had doubled since 1865 and was now the largest in the world: one third larger than Britain’s, twice that of France, and three times as great as Germany.⁷ The production of steel, less than twenty thousand tons in 1867, totaled almost 2 million tons in 1882. Coal production had tripled. On the negative side, more than five hundred miners lost their lives in deep-pit accidents each year.⁸

Within a decade of FDR’s birth, the electric light, the telephone, and the automobile were invented. The continent would be spanned by not one but six transcontinental railroads. This was the age of Social Darwinism and robber barons: Jay Gould, Collis P. Huntington, and William Vanderbilt in transportation; the steel trust of Andrew Carnegie; John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil; and the mother of all trusts, the great sugar trust of Henry Havemeyer. Chester Arthur was in the White House, the Republicans controlled the House, the Democrats the Senate, and civil service reform, a belated reaction to the assassination of President Garfield, was just around the corner.

Few of the worries of American life intruded at Springwood. FDR grew up in a privileged, carefree environment of comfort and security. “In thinking back to my earliest days,” he said many years later, “I am impressed by the peacefulness and regularity of things both in respect to places and people. Up to the age of seven, Hyde Park was the center of the world.”⁹

Families as wealthy as the Roosevelts usually entrusted newborn babies to the care of experienced nurses and old family retainers. Not Sara. As soon as she recovered from childbirth, she insisted on doing everything herself: “Every mother ought to learn to care for her own baby, whether she can afford to delegate the task to someone or not.” And although a wet nurse was available, Sara nursed Franklin for almost a year.¹⁰

Mittie Roosevelt, who had introduced James to Sara two years before, spent a week at Hyde Park in June 1882. To her son Elliott she wrote, “I held your dear little godson and enjoyed him intensely. He is such a fair, sweet, cunning little bright five-months-old darling baby.… Sallie [is] devoted and looks so very lovely with him, like a Murillo Madonna and infant.”¹¹

Sara was determined to raise Franklin as a Delano—which meant to raise him as she had been raised under the benign discipline of her father. When the Roosevelts made their first pilgrimage to the Delano ancestral home in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, FDR was placed in the same hooded cradle in which his grandfather had slept seventy-three years earlier. Warren Delano eventually had seventeen grandchildren, yet none of the others was ever permitted such indulgence.¹²

Because of Franklin’s difficult birth, Sara was advised to avoid a second and possibly fatal pregnancy. The Roosevelts, like many couples in the nineteenth century faced with a similar problem, adopted abstinence as a remedy, and from time to time that led to marital tension.¹³ Sara, still young and energetic, found solace arranging and organizing the life of her little son. No moment of Franklin’s day was unscheduled or unsupervised. Awake at seven. Breakfast at eight. Lessons until eleven. Lunch at noon. More lessons until four. Two hours of play followed by supper at six and bed by eight. It was the formula her father had imposed on the large Delano brood, and Sara instinctively adopted it. It was a loving regimen but a regimen nonetheless. A less tractable child might have rebelled, but Franklin never did.¹⁴

Initially, FDR was schooled at home by Sara. At six he attended an impromptu kindergarten on a neighboring estate. Then began a series of governesses and tutors at home. FDR was drilled in Latin, French, German, penmanship, arithmetic, and history. Sara organized the study plan, and a tutor either deferred to her wishes or departed. One of the most gifted tutors was a young Swiss woman named Jeanne Rosat-Sandoz, who, in addition to drilling Franklin in modern languages, attempted to instill a sense of social responsibility. Mlle. Sandoz believed in economic reform and the Social Gospel; she did her utmost to arouse in FDR a concern for those less fortunate. Years later Roosevelt wrote her from the White House, “I have often thought that it was you, more than anyone else, who laid the foundation for my education.”¹⁵

Learning at home deprived FDR of the rough-and-tumble of public school, but it saved him from inept or mediocre teaching. His mind was continually challenged. While public school children his age were learning their ABCs in English, he was mastering them simultaneously in French and German. At the age of six his German was such that he could write his mother auf Deutsch:

[TRANSLATION]

Dear Mama!

I will show you, that I can already write in German. But I shall try always to improve it, so that you will be really pleased. Now I want to ask you to write me in German script and language.

Your loving son Franklin D.R.¹⁶

Sara was determined to keep her son from being spoiled by too much attention yet at the same time wanted to show her affection. “We never subjected the boy to a lot of don’ts,” she wrote. “While certain rules established for his well being had to be rigidly observed, we were never strict merely for the sake of being strict. In fact, we took a secret pride in the fact that Franklin instinctively never seemed to require that kind of handling.”¹⁷

James, already in his mid-fifties when FDR was born, was content to leave the disciplining to his wife. Little Franklin was his partner, his inseparable companion with whom he rode, hunted, and sailed. Looking back at her own childhood, Sara noted that “Franklin never knew what it meant to have the kind of respect for his father that is composed of equal parts of awe and fear. The regard in which he held him, amounting to worship, grew out of a companionship that was based on his ability to see things eye to eye, and his father’s never-failing understanding of the little problems that seem so grave to a child.”¹⁸

Like many an only child, FDR spent most of his time in the company of adults, and it was assumed he would act like an adult. Sara believed that children “had pretty much the same thoughts as adults” but lacked the vocabulary to express them. To remedy that she read aloud to Franklin daily. Robinson Crusoe, The Swiss Family Robinson, and Little Lord Fauntleroy were favorites. The downside of being captivated by Little Lord Fauntleroy was that Sara kept Franklin in dresses and long curls until he was five. Then he graduated to kilts and full Scottish regalia. Not until he was nearly eight did he wear pants in the form of miniature sailor suits Sara purchased in London. Staying at Algonac one weekend, he proudly wrote his father, “Mama left this morning, and I am to have my bath alone.” He was then almost nine and evidently had never taken a bath by himself before.¹⁹

Another consequence of living on a rural estate under the close supervision of his parents was that FDR had few playmates. Occasionally small visitors were invited for the day, but none was permitted to stay overnight. The young, well-bred Whitney sisters were invited several times. Many years later, when both sisters had grown old, their parents died within weeks of each other, subjecting them to a double inheritance tax. The sisters had long since lost touch with their former playmate, but Isabel, the older, a stouthearted Republican, swallowed her pride and wrote to FDR in the White House, asking for an appointment. The president, who relished meeting old acquaintances, agreed to see her and listened patiently to her grievance. Roosevelt said he was terribly sorry, but it was a New York law and even the president could not change it. Isabel rose angrily and shook her cane. “You were always a nasty little boy, and now you are a nasty old man.”²⁰

The birth of a son did not deflect the Roosevelts from their annual journey to Europe. On Easter morning 1885 the family, including three-year-old Franklin, were returning from England on their favorite White Star liner, the Germanic. Suddenly a violent storm arose, plunging the ship into total darkness. As wave after wave broke over the bow, the vessel began to founder. In their cabin on the main deck, the Roosevelts feared the worst.

“We seem to be going down,” said Sara.

“It does look like it,” James replied.

When the water in their cabin became ankle-deep, they prepared to abandon ship. “I never get frightened and I was not then,” Sara remembered. She took her fur coat from its hook and wrapped it around Franklin. “Poor little boy,” she told James. “If he must go down, he is going down warm.” Miraculously, Germanic remained afloat. The water never reached its boilers, the storm subsided, and the ship limped back to Liverpool for repairs.²¹

Travel was an integral part of FDR’s childhood. In 1887, when he was five, his parents spent the winter in Washington, D.C. James was heavily invested in a syndicate to construct a sea-level canal across Nicaragua linking the Atlantic and Pacific, in direct competition with the French effort of Ferdinand de Lesseps in Panama. The purpose of the trip was to enlist the support of Congress and the Cleveland administration in negotiations with Nicaragua. The Roosevelts rented the fashionable town house of the Belgian minister at 1211 K Street N.W. and entered the Washington scene with gusto. “Every one is charming to us,” wrote Sara. “Even Franklin knows everybody.”²²

Several times the Roosevelts visited the Clevelands in the White House. James had contributed generously to Cleveland’s gubernatorial campaign in New York and even more lavishly to his 1884 presidential run. The president pressed James to accept a diplomatic post, preferably as minister to Holland, but James declined. He did, however, secure for Rosy an appointment as first secretary to the American legation in Vienna. Rosy too was a loyal Democrat, had given handsomely to the Cleveland campaign, and could pay most embassy expenses from his wife’s fortune. James objected to Rosy’s frivolous lifestyle in New York and convinced Cleveland that an appointment overseas would be beneficial.

Before leaving Washington in the spring, James and five-year-old Franklin called on the president to say good-bye. James found Cleveland more careworn than ever. At the close of the interview the massive Cleveland, a great walrus of a man, put his hand on FDR’s tiny head: “My little man, I am making a strange wish for you. It is that you may never be president of the United States.”²³

Many years later Sara was asked if she had thought her son would ever become president. “Never,” she answered. “The highest ideal I could hold up before our boy [was] to grow to be like his father: straight and honorable, just and kind.”²⁴

In addition to their annual sojourns in Europe, the Roosevelts spent almost every summer on Campobello, a slender, rockbound island in Canadian waters off the coast of Maine. James and Sara were so taken with the invigorating sea air and the congenial social life that in 1883, a year and a half after Franklin was born, they bought four acres and built a summer home. “Sometimes,” Sara wrote, “James sails with some of the gentlemen and then I work or read German or French aloud with several people here who care for these languages.”²⁵ Franklin learned to sail at Campobello, navigating the rocks and tides and treacherous currents of the Bay of Fundy. And it was at Campobello that he began to dream of Annapolis and a naval career. “I’ve always liked the navy,” he said shortly after becoming assistant secretary of the Navy in 1913. “In fact I only missed by a week going to Annapolis. I would have done so, only my parents objected.”²⁶ It was James, not Sara, who objected. For Sara, FDR’s love of the sea was natural. “The Delanos have always been associated with the sea, and I have always been a great believer in heredity,” she said.²⁷ The Roosevelts, on the other hand, were a landlocked clan, and James wanted Franklin trained to take over the family’s business affairs.

As country gentry had done for generations, FDR learned to ride at an early age. At two he was sitting atop a pet donkey in the Roosevelt paddock; at four he was riding out each morning with his father to oversee the estate; at six he was given his own Welsh pony, Debby, on the understanding he care for her himself. He was also held responsible for the care for his dog: initially a spitz puppy; then a huge St. Bernard named Nardo, followed by an even larger Newfoundland called Monk, and finally a red Irish Setter whose full name was Mr. Marksman. Caring for the pets was designed to instill responsibility, but as Roosevelt remembered, it was a herculean task.²⁸

As a child Roosevelt collected stamps and developed a passionate interest in ornithology. At the age of ten he was given his mother’s already formidable postage stamp collection, which she had started when she was five and her father was in China. Over the years FDR would tend it meticulously, eventually amassing a collection of well over a million stamps mounted in 150 matching albums. Admiral Ross McIntire, the White House physician, estimated that Roosevelt spent well over two thousand hours while he was president tending his collection.²⁹ Franklin’s impressive collection of stuffed birds, all of which he shot himself, is still displayed in glass cases in the entrance hall at Hyde Park. His grandfather Delano rewarded his attainments as an ornithologist with a life membership in the Natural History Museum of New York. FDR often referred to the occasion on which the certificate was presented to him as the greatest thrill of his early life.³⁰

The Roosevelts were serious about religion but took the Episcopal faith for granted. Young Franklin was expected to attend Sunday service at St. James’, and he did so without objection. In that sense his belief was instinctive. Nevertheless, he remained committed to his boyhood church until his death, serving first as junior vestryman, then as vestryman, and finally as senior warden. After he became president, vestry meetings were usually held at Springwood and would often extend into the early morning hours.³¹

Religious faith provided one of the sources of FDR’s unflagging optimism. Deep down he possessed serene confidence in the divine purpose of the universe. He was convinced that however bad things might be at the moment, they were bound to come out all right if he remained patient and put his faith in God. Once asked by Eleanor whether he believed everything he had learned in church, Roosevelt replied that he had never really thought about it. “I think it is just as well not to think about things like that too much.”³²

On November 1, 1890, James suffered a mild heart attack. He lived ten more years but became increasingly frail. The impact on Franklin was severe. James had always been his active companion, but less and less would that be the case. Instead, he was someone to care for and look after. That brought Franklin and Sara even closer together. Before 1890, European travel had been a pleasant diversion for the Roosevelts. After James’s heart attack they considered it a necessity. The warm mineral baths at Bad Nauheim were thought to be particularly beneficial for heart patients. James and Sara first went there in 1891; they returned five times in the next seven years. James believed intently in the healing powers of the baths, and Sara and Franklin came to share his enthusiasm—which may help explain FDR’s subsequent attachment to the mineral waters at Warm Springs.

It was in Bad Nauheim that FDR attended school for the first time. Remembering her own experience in Dresden and Celle, Sara insisted that nine-year-old Franklin be enrolled in the local Volksschule to improve his German. Proud of his ability to cope in a foreign setting, Roosevelt enjoyed it immensely. “I go to the public school with a lot of little mickies,” he wrote his young cousins in America. “We have German reading, German dictation, the history of Siegfried, and arithmetic … and I like it very much.”³³ His German schoolmaster, Christian Bommersheim, remembered FDR as a child in a blue sailor suit. “His parents put him in my class [and] he impressed me very quickly as an unusually bright young fellow. He had such an engaging manner, and he was always so polite that he was soon one of the most popular children in the school.”³⁴

In the summer of 1896, in Bad Nauheim with his parents once again, FDR went on a cycling tour of Germany with his tutor. Each of them had an allowance of four marks a day, which meant they lived largely on bread and cheese and slept in small country inns or farmers’ houses. Several times the pair were arrested for minor traffic infractions, and each time Franklin, whose command of German was excellent, talked their way out of a fine. In the autumn FDR would be entering Groton, and as a final treat his parents took him to Bayreuth for Wagner’s Ring Festival. “Franklin really appreciated it far more than I thought he would,” Sara wrote her sister Dora. “He was most attentive and rapt during the long acts and always sorry to leave, never for a moment bored or tired.”³⁵

America’s confidence in FDR depended on Roosevelt’s incredible confidence in himself, and that traced in large measure to the comfort and security of his childhood. As his daughter, Anna, put it, “Granny [Sara] was a martinet, but she gave father the assurance he needed to prevail over adversity. Seldom has a young child been more constantly attended and incessantly approved by his mother.”³⁶

FDR’s mind was developing. He read rapidly and retained facts easily, a trait that would become more pronounced in the years ahead. He was fluent in French and German and already possessed an uncanny ability to assimilate what he observed. But Roosevelt was not a reflective thinker, nor an original thinker. He learned by doing. And the extensive traveling he did with his parents—he went to Europe eight times in his first fourteen years—exposed him to a wider range of experience than most boys his age. He was small for his age—five feet three, 105 pounds—but his physical growth had yet to begin. All in all, he looked forward to entering Groton—two years late, as it were, most boys entering at the age of twelve.

After the safe harbor of Springwood, Groton was a challenge for Roosevelt. For fourteen years he had been the center of attention of two doting parents. Now he was one of 110 adolescent boys living in an almost monastic setting. Each new boy faced such problems, but for Franklin they were compounded, entering as he was in third year, without any real experience of organized schooling. If he was concerned, he did not show it. “I am getting on finely both mentally and physically,” he reported in his first letter home.³⁷

The founder and headmaster of Groton was the Reverend Endicott Peabody, a man of immense personal magnetism, who had studied for the ministry in England and the Episcopal Theological Seminary at Cambridge, Massachusetts. His first church was at Tombstone in the Arizona Territory at the time of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, just after the shoot-out at the OK Corral. A large, vigorous, uncomplicated man with the build of an athlete, Peabody fit right in on the frontier. “Our parson,” clucked the Tombstone Epitaph, “doesn’t flirt with the girls, doesn’t drink beer behind the door, and when it comes to baseball, he’s a daisy.”³⁸

But Peabody’s overriding desire was to create a church-affiliated boarding school for the sons of America’s establishment. In 1883, with the financial assistance of family friends, including J. P. Morgan, Peabody realized his dream and founded Groton on ninety acres of donated farmland thirty-five miles north of Boston. The school was small: six classes of not more than twenty boys each. Tuition was $500 a year. That was about twice what the average American family had to live on.³⁹ And there were no scholarships. Morgan served on the board of trustees, as did Phillips Brooks, the Episcopal Bishop of Massachusetts, and William Lawrence, dean of the Episcopal Theological Seminary. The contrast between the rawness of Tombstone and the refinement of Groton seems extreme, yet there is no better measure of the breadth of Peabody’s character.

Groton’s purpose, as the rector saw it, was to cultivate “manly Christian character, having regard to moral and physical as well as intellectual development.” He believed in religion, character, athletics, and scholarship—roughly in that order. And character was formed by discipline and obedience. Especially obedience. “You know,” Averell Harriman (Groton ’09) once said to his father, the rector “would be an awful bully if he weren’t such a terrible Christian.”⁴⁰

Groton was an immediate success and within ten years had become the most exclusive school in America. Wealthy fathers, disgusted with the soft living their offspring enjoyed, flocked to send their sons to a school where boys would be trained not only intellectually but morally and physically as well. Some of the most successful men in the country had never been to college, but they were good judges of character, and they recognized that Peabody was their type of man. They welcomed the opportunity to place their sons under his care.

Life at Groton was Spartan. Each boy lived in a six-by-ten-foot cubicle with a bed, bureau, rug, and chair. All were standard issue. There was no closet, wall hangings were prohibited, and there was a curtain instead of a door because Peabody frowned upon too much privacy. Mornings began at 6:45 with an icy shower in a communal washroom. Breakfast, chapel, and three morning classes followed with clockwork precision. Dinner, the main meal, was served at noon, followed by two afternoon classes and athletics. Another frigid shower, the evening meal (for which official school dress was required), chapel, and study hall, following which the Rector and Mrs. Peabody shook the hand of each boy and wished him good night.

Despite his pampered upbringing, FDR adjusted handily to the rigor of Groton. Twice a week for the next four years he wrote to his parents, and never once did he complain about his experience. In a sense, except for the cold showers, he was substituting one disciplined regime for another. Autumns were filled with football excitement, edging on to the Christmas season, culminating in the unforgettable reading of Dickens’s Christmas Carol by the rector’s father.⁴¹ In winter, skating and sledding substituted for team sports; with spring came baseball, tennis, swimming, and golf. At vacation time most boys reacted like sailors on shore leave. Franklin was an exception. If he got into mischief, there is no record of it. School vacations were invariably spent at Hyde Park. Summers he usually went to Campobello, where he enjoyed nothing so much as sailing his twenty-one-foot knockabout, New Moon, which his father had given him.

Groton’s curriculum was classical, taught with great attention to detail. Peabody himself taught sacred studies and set the tone of the school. He saw Groton as a large family with the rector as paterfamilias. Leading the school athletic teams, Peabody personified the muscular Christianity in which he believed. Football was his favorite. To Yale coach Walter Camp he wrote, “I am convinced that football is of profound importance for the moral even more than for the physical development of the boys.”⁴² As one graduate put it, the boys loved him and feared him, and from him they learned determination and to be unafraid. Roosevelt said the influence of Peabody and his wife meant more to him than that of any other people, “next to my father and mother.”⁴³

FDR had little difficulty academically. He had been well prepared and within a month of his arrival stood fourth in a class of nineteen, a position he more or less maintained. As Peabody recalled, Roosevelt “was a quiet, satisfactory boy of more than ordinary intelligence, taking a good position in his form but not brilliant. Athletically he was too slight for success. We all liked him.”⁴⁴ Athletic success was central to real distinction at Groton, and, as Peabody noted, FDR was too small. He was also inexperienced, never having played a team sport before. He was assigned to the second worst of eight football teams and the worst baseball squad, but his enthusiasm never wilted. When hit in the stomach by a line drive, he wrote his parents that it was “to the great annoyance of that intricate organ, and to the great delight of all present.”⁴⁵ In his final year Roosevelt won a school letter as equipment manager of the baseball team. He also won the Latin and Punctuality Prizes and was a dormitory prefect and a member of the school choir and the debating society.

FDR’s four years at Groton provided a transition from the snuggery of familial warmth at Hyde Park. He accepted Peabody’s premises and made them his own: competition is healthy, success comes from effort, reward is based on performance, religious observance and moral probity are indispensable to a productive life. “Playing the game” came naturally to FDR. When graduation came, he was sorry to leave. “What a joyful yet sad day this has been,” Franklin wrote his parents. “Scarce a boy but wishes he were a 1st former again.”⁴⁶

In one sense, Roosevelt never left Groton. The experience was indelible. “More than forty years ago,” he wrote to the old rector in 1940, “you said, in a sermon in the Old Chapel, something about not losing boyhood ideals in later life. Those were Groton ideals—taught by you—I try not to forget—and your words are still with me and with hundreds of others of ‘us boys.’ ”⁴⁷

FDR entered Harvard in the autumn of 1900, along with sixteen of his eighteen Groton classmates. The university was rigidly stratified in those years. Students from socially prestigious families, most of whom had attended East Coast private schools, lived off campus in sumptuous residence halls on Mt. Auburn Street known as the Gold Coast. Young men who were less well-off, usually high school graduates from middle- and working-class backgrounds, made do with considerably more modest accommodations in university housing within the Yard. Roosevelt, together with his Groton classmate Lathrop Brown, took a three-room corner suite in Westmorly Court, the newest of the Gold Coast edifices, and with Sara’s help furnished it in an opulent style so firmly prohibited by Rector Peabody. By Harvard standards, FDR’s $400-a-year suite was luxurious. He and Brown lived there for the next four years, surrounded by fellow Grotonians and other preppies.

Only rarely did men from the Gold Coast and the Yard interact. Except for friendships that grew out of common interests in the classroom or on the athletic field, there were few opportunities for students of different backgrounds to come into social contact. Professors decried the division of the campus, and Endicott Peabody railed against “the gap between Mt. Auburn Street and the Yard,” yet not until the development of the house system in the mid-1920s did Harvard achieve anything approaching social integration of the student body.⁴⁸

Under President Charles W. Eliot, appointed in 1869 and still in firm control when Roosevelt entered, Harvard stood in the vanguard of university reform. Scholarship, not “teaching,” became the order of the day. Education was defined exclusively in intellectual terms and had little concern for character development or the protection of private morality. Faculty were appointed on the basis of their research, and students, after a few required courses in the first year, were free to enroll in whatever they wished. Eliot believed a student could choose his courses better than anyone else and that all nonvocational subjects had equal value. He also believed students should make their choice based on the professor teaching the course, not the course description.⁴⁹

Harvard’s emphasis on intellectual advancement attracted brilliant scholars. William James, Hugo Münsterberg, and Josiah Royce held chairs in philosophy; the great Shakespearean scholar George Lyman Kittredge adorned the English Department along with George Pierce Baker, founder of the “47 Workshop” for playwrights, and Charles Townsend Copeland, the matchless “Copey” for generations of Harvardians. In the newly established Government Department, A. Lawrence Lowell held forth; Frank W. Taussig lectured in economics; Nathaniel Shaler, the nation’s preeminent geologist, headed the Lawrence Scientific School; and Christopher Columbus Langdell was dean of law.

For students, the elective system and its corollary, voluntary attendance at classes, were enormously liberating. FDR and his Groton classmates had taken the equivalent of the required freshman courses during their sixth-form year and therefore were allowed to skip the mandatory curriculum entirely. Not only did that mean they could graduate in three years instead of four, but they could choose whatever courses they wished. Roosevelt hewed closely to fact-heavy courses in economics, government, and history. “I took economics courses in college for four years and everything I was taught was wrong,” the president quipped in 1941.⁵⁰ FDR took his studies seriously—unlike many Gold Coast habitués he took no “football courses”—and though he won no honors, he was never in academic difficulty. Thanks to the elective system, he avoided courses in philosophy and theory, which might have meant trouble. Throughout his life Roosevelt remained mystified by abstract thought, and Harvard did nothing to lessen that.

In late autumn of his first year, FDR received disturbing news from Hyde Park. His father had suffered a severe heart attack. Then a second one. Sara took James to their New York apartment so he might be nearer his doctors, but his health continued to deteriorate. On December 8, with his family at his bedside, James died. “All is over,” Sara wrote in her diary. “At 2:20 he merely slept away. Dr. Ely was in the apartment and called, but it was too late. As I write these words I wonder how I lived when he left me.”⁵¹ James left an estate of roughly $600,000, or slightly less than $14 million in today’s currency. Franklin and Rosy were each provided a trust fund, with Springwood passing to Sara. Two years before, on the death of her own father, Sara and her siblings had each inherited $1.3 million from the Delano fortune. That would amount to more than $28 million now, and it became the primary source of FDR’s family wealth.

Roosevelt spent the spring of 1901 in close touch with Sara. That summer, with the memory of James hanging heavily, they chose not to return to Campobello but to travel to Europe. The Roosevelts spent ten weeks abroad, returning in late September just in time for FDR to return to college. First, it was off to the fjords of Norway on the Hamburg-Amerika Line’s elegant cruise ship Princessin Victoria Luise—and a chance encounter near the Arctic Circle with the kaiser, William II, who invited them aboard his yacht. Sara found the emperor impressive and energetic but not so kind as she remembered his grandfather, William I, whom she had once seen in Paris. Later they visited Dresden so Sara might show Franklin where she had lived and gone to school as a child. They spent a week with Aunt Laura Astor Delano, Uncle Frank’s widow, at the Beau Rivage on the shore of Lake Geneva. In Zurich they stayed at the same hotel in which Sara had stayed on her honeymoon. In Paris, their last stop, they learned that President William McKinley had been shot while visiting the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo. Twelve days later, as they passed the Nantucket lightship on their way home, they received the news by megaphone: “President McKinley died last Saturday.” Cousin Theodore was president of the United States.⁵²

Back at Cambridge, FDR threw himself into a round of frenetic activity. After a grueling competition in freshman year, he had been elected to the editorial board of The Harvard Crimson, the undergraduate newspaper. For the next three years, the Crimson would be his central interest, often requiring four to six hours a day to ready the paper for publication. Along with membership on the editorial board went prestige and responsibility. Franklin gloried in both. He represented the paper at the Yale bicentennial celebration, an occasion notable in retrospect for the presence on the platform of President Theodore Roosevelt, Princeton president Woodrow Wilson, and FDR. In his third year, Roosevelt was elected managing editor of the Crimson and worked even harder. Administrative responsibility came naturally. He handled the staff adroitly and was always able to cajole crusty Cambridge printers into opening the forms and remaking a page for last-minute submissions by tardy college journalists. “In his geniality was a kind of frictionless command,” his co-editor, W. Russell Bowie, recalled.⁵³

At the end of his third year, Roosevelt was elected editor-in-chief (president) of the Crimson. He took his degree in June, but remained for a fourth year to discharge his editorial responsibilities. His professors advised him to enter graduate school. “Great fight in my mind between it and Law School, but latter too much with outside duties,” FDR recorded in his diary.⁵⁴ That fall he enrolled as a graduate student in history but had no intention of pursuing a degree. “The paper takes every moment of time,” he informed his mother in early October.⁵⁵ As Arthur Schlesinger noted, editing the Crimson crowned FDR’s Harvard career. Both at the time and in retrospect, it was extremely important to him.⁵⁶ In later years he enjoyed joking with reporters that he was a former newspaperman. Visiting Portland, Oregon, as the assistant secretary of the Navy in 1914, he told a press photographer that he too had been “a reporter in Boston ten or twelve years” before and had often lined folks up for the camera.⁵⁷

Sara, meanwhile, found life at Springwood oppressive without James. “I try to keep busy, but it is all hard,” she confided to her diary the following spring.⁵⁸ Sara stepped into James’s role—managing the estate, supervising the workmen, handling business affairs—and for the most part made do. FDR returned to Springwood for Christmas, but in contrast to previous years the celebration was muted. In January the social season accelerated. On the first weekend in the new year, Franklin journeyed to Washington to attend the gala coming-out party given by TR and his wife, Edith, for their daughter, Alice, at the White House. It was the premier social event of the season. FDR spent three crowded days in Washington attending formal dinners, a reception at the Austrian Embassy, and the dance itself, held in the East Room. There was also tea with Cousin Theodore, lunch at Cousin Bamie’s house on N Street, and a second private talk with the president. “One of the most interesting and enjoyable three days I have ever had,” Franklin wrote Sara.⁵⁹

FDR returned to Cambridge, and soon afterward Sara joined him. The winter at Hyde Park had become too melancholy. She took an apartment in Boston and discreetly joined the social and cultural life of the city. Sara wanted to be “near enough to the University to be on hand should [Franklin] want me and far enough removed not to interfere with his college life.”⁶⁰ Franklin seemed delighted. He came frequently to dine and sometimes spent the night. The following winter Sara returned to Boston for another three months. She participated vicariously in FDR’s success and cushioned whatever disappointment came his way. “His father and I always expected a great deal of Franklin,” she once said. “After all, he had many advantages that other boys did not have.”⁶¹

Socially, FDR’s dance card at Harvard was fuller than most. He kept a horse and a runabout, and there was scarcely a weekend when he was not attending a dinner or a party somewhere in the Boston area.⁶² He was not admitted to Porcellian, the most prestigious of the final clubs, but he did make Fly (Alpha Delta Phi) and Hasty Pudding, served as librarian of each, and began his lifelong habit of collecting naval Americana. Years later, with typical hyperbole, he told a distant relative that his failure to make Porcellian was “the greatest disappointment he ever had.”⁶³ Yet, as his roommate, Lathrop Brown, noted, “Franklin was not a typical club man of his generation. He had more on his mind than sitting in the Club’s front window, doing nothing but criticizing the passers-by. His not ‘making’ the Porcellian meant only that he was free of any possible restraining influences of a lot of delightful people who thought that the world belonged to them and who did not want to change anything in it.”⁶⁴

Roosevelt received his degree from Harvard in 1903. But in the tradition of the Ivy League he was always a member of the Class of ’04. At graduation he was elected permanent chairman of the class committee, the linchpin of alumni affairs. Roosevelt won no prizes and did not make Phi Beta Kappa, yet he had prospered intellectually. His university experience imparted renewed confidence and enhanced the innate optimism that James and Sara had so carefully nourished. As one biographer has written, “At Groton, Roosevelt learned to get along with his contemporaries; at Harvard he learned to lead them.”⁶⁵

THREE
KEEPING THE NAME IN THE FAMILY

Nothing is more pleasing to the eye than a good-looking lady, nothing more refreshing to the spirit than the company of one, nothing more flattering to the ego than the affection of one.

—FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT

LESS THAN A YEAR after graduating from Harvard, FDR married Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, his fifth cousin once removed, the orphaned daughter of his godfather, Elliott—a tall, striking young woman variously described by an adoring New York press as “beautiful,” “regal,” and “magnificent,” with “greater claim to good looks than any of the Roosevelts.”¹ Franklin was an impressionable twenty-three. Eleanor was twenty: the same age her mother had been, yet still innocent of the birds and the bees. As she later informed her son James, the kiss she and Franklin exchanged at the close of the wedding ceremony was their first in more than two years of courtship.^2*

Throughout his adult life FDR relished female companionship. Yet he was late discovering it. At Springwood for fourteen years his contact with the opposite sex was limited. At Groton he relied on his mother to organize his social life: “I wish you would think up some decent partner for me for the N.Y. dance, so that I can get someone early, and not get palmed off on some ice-cart.”³ At Harvard he was on his own but hesitated to take an unguided step. “What do you think of my taking M.D.R. [Muriel Delano Robbins], Helen [Roosevelt], and Mary Newbold to see the Harvard–West Point game Saturday afternoon?” he asked Sara. “If you approve make arrangements as to trains.”⁴

Gradually, his diffidence faded. By the end of sophomore year FDR was charming and relaxed, eager to ingratiate himself with the eligible young women of upper class Boston and their families. This was 1902—the apogee of Victorian restraint. Unlike John F. Kennedy and his classmates in the 1930s, who took a direct approach, the men of FDR’s generation were oblique. In refined circles contact with the opposite sex was strictly chaperoned. Touching was risqué, kissing stretched the limit, and premarital sex was absolutely prohibited. There were two outlets: the company of loose women who traded in sex, or marriage. For someone of FDR’s straitlaced upbringing, the former was unthinkable.^* As a consequence Franklin proposed not once but three times to young women who caught his attention at Harvard.

FDR’s first love in Cambridge was Frances Dana, granddaughter of both Richard Henry Dana (Two Years Before the Mast) and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Reportedly, Sara talked her son out of marriage because Miss Dana was Catholic and thus unacceptable to the Protestant Delanos and Roosevelts.⁵ After Frances, FDR was smitten with Dorothy Quincy, daughter of an equally prominent Brahmin family. Then Alice Sohier, the exceptionally beautiful daughter of an old North Shore family. Alice’s mother was an Alden, a Massachusetts clan that predated the Delanos, and her father was an astute New England businessman with a town house in Boston, an estate in Beverly, and summer homes in Maine and New Hampshire. At some point in 1902 Alice and Franklin discussed marriage. FDR was twenty; Alice just seventeen. Having been an only child, Roosevelt told Alice he wanted a large family—at least six children. That evidently alarmed Alice, who later told a friend she had decided not to marry Franklin because “I did not wish to be a cow.”⁶ The bond between FDR and Alice was not severed that easily, however. They continued to see each other, and in the autumn of 1902 Alice’s parents sent her to Europe—an insurance policy against teenage infatuation. Many years later, FDR put a different gloss on their breakup:

Once upon a time when I was in Cambridge, I had serious thoughts about marrying a Boston girl and settling down in the Back Bay.… By the grace of God I took a trip at that time, meeting a number of real Americans, i.e. those from the west and south. I was saved, but it was an awfully narrow escape.⁷

As with many of FDR’s stories, fact and fiction mingle freely. It was Alice, not he, who backed away from marriage, and it was she who undertook the decisive trip in 1902.⁸

In the wake of Alice Sohier’s departure for Europe, Franklin met Eleanor. Each autumn, New York society launched the social season with a gala horse show at Madison Square Garden. For so long as there had been a horse show, the Hudson River Roosevelts had been prominent participants, sometimes showing, sometimes judging, but always in attendance. November 17, 1902, was no exception. The family box, now maintained by FDR’s half brother, Rosy—a connoisseur of coachmanship and fine carriages—literally bulged with Roosevelts: Franklin, Rosy’s daughter Helen, her cousin Eleanor, Helen’s fiancé, Theodore Robinson (another cousin), Mary Newbold, a neighbor from Hyde Park, and assorted uncles and aunts from Long Island and Connecticut. After the show, Rosy took the young people to dinner at Sherry’s, New York’s most fashionable restaurant. “Dinner with James Roosevelt Roosevelt, Helen Roosevelt Roosevelt, Mary Newbold and Eleanor Roosevelt at Sherry’s,” FDR recorded in his diary—his first reference to Eleanor.⁹ Two weeks later he lunched with Eleanor and his niece Helen in New York, and two weeks after that, in the city with Sara for last-minute Christmas shopping, he slipped away for tea with Eleanor.

The two were together again in Washington for the nation’s New Year’s festivities. FDR stayed with Cousin Bamie on N Street; Eleanor with TR’s daughter Alice in the White House. On New Year’s Day they stood in the “inner circle” to watch Cousin Theodore shake hands with thousands of well-wishers who filed through the East Room. They took tea with Alice and Mrs. Roosevelt, dined with the president in the state dining room, then attended the theater, where, Franklin noted, he “sat near Eleanor. Very interesting day.”

A month later, Eleanor was among those Rosy invited to celebrate Franklin’s twenty-first birthday at Sherry’s, an affair FDR described as “very jolly.” In late June, Eleanor came to Springwood for a four-day weekend, one of a group of six young people and accompanied by her maid. Three weeks later there was another house party, which Eleanor attended, again accompanied by her maid. On Saturday, July 7, after a quiet afternoon lounging on the lawn, Franklin took the group for a dinner cruise aboard the Half Moon, the family’s motorized sailing yacht. “Franklin was at his best aboard his boat,” his cousin Corinne Robinson remembered—“handsome at the tiller, a splendid sailor and completely confident.”¹⁰ That evening, after the others had gone to bed, Franklin wrote in his diary that the day had been great fun. “E is an angel.” Once again FDR was in love.

Whether this was vouchsafed to Eleanor is unclear. Franklin may have written and she may have replied, but no early letters survive. In 1937, when she was at work on the first volume of her autobiography, Eleanor burned all of Franklin’s letters, finding his youthful avowals of constancy too painful to reread.¹¹ FDR carefully preserved Eleanor’s letters to him, but none date from this period. In the Victorian era correspondence between a young man and a young woman was not undertaken lightly. As Eleanor later recorded, “It was understood that no girl was interested in a man or showed any liking for him until he had made all the advances. You knew a man very well before you wrote or received a letter from him … and to have signed one in any other way than ‘very sincerely yours’ would have been not only a breach of good manners but an admission of feeling which was entirely inadmissible.”¹²

Eleanor’s cramped view reflected an upbringing even more sheltered than FDR’s. Her mother, Anna Rebecca Hall, died of diphtheria when Eleanor was only eight. Less than two years later her father, Elliott, succumbed to alcoholism. From the death of her mother until her marriage to Franklin, Eleanor was in the care of her maternal grandmother, first at the Hall estate at Tivoli on the Hudson, then at boarding school in England. Apart from vacations, when she occasionally met a Roosevelt cousin, she was virtually removed from the company of men. In material terms, Eleanor was well provided for. But a nunnery novitiate would have met more men than she did.

Franklin saw Eleanor off and on during the summer of 1903, always well chaperoned, and that autumn he invited her to Cambridge for the Yale game, traditionally the last football game of the season. After the game, Eleanor went to Groton to visit her younger brother. FDR followed the next morning and spent Sunday with Eleanor. As they strolled along the bank of the Nashua River, Franklin proposed and Eleanor accepted: “A never to be forgotten walk,” FDR noted that evening. Eleanor said, “It seemed entirely natural.”¹³

The next weekend Franklin journeyed to Fairhaven, Massachusetts, to observe Thanksgiving with the Delanos. When he took his mother aside and broke the news, Sara was stunned. “Franklin gave me quite a startling announcement,” she wrote in her journal. Sara did not object to Eleanor, whom she knew well and had often entertained at Springwood. She simply believed Franklin too young. Her father had been thirty-three when he married and had already established himself as a major player in the China trade. He could offer something to his wife. FDR was still in college. He would not enter law school until the following fall. He was largely dependent upon his mother for support, and had she wished, Sara very likely could have forbidden the marriage. Instead, she extracted a commitment from Franklin and Eleanor that they would keep their engagement secret for a year, not see each other unless properly chaperoned, and keep sufficient distance so as not to arouse suspicion. Sara played for time. She knew from experience how fragile young love could be. Twenty-seven years before, her own romance with Stanford White had dissolved when they were kept apart, and a year now might cool the couple’s ardor. For their part, Franklin and Eleanor believed the interval of a year would erode Sara’s resistance. They accepted the arrangement and resolved to make the best of it.

Franklin and Eleanor shared a common heritage. Both were Roosevelts. But Eleanor’s maternal forebears placed her in a celestial constellation of Livingstons and Ludlows, Ver Plancks and Stuyvesants—families who traced their provenance to letters patent from either the monarchs of Restoration England or the Dutch East India Company. Eleanor’s grandmother, many generations removed, was Amy Stuyvesant, sister of Peter Stuyvesant, Director General of the New Netherland colony.¹⁴

In the struggle for American independence, few families, save perhaps the Adamses of Massachusetts and the Lees of Virginia, could duplicate the patriotic contribution of the Livingstons of New York, whose ranks included signers of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, a U.S. Supreme Court justice, and two secretaries of state.¹⁵ Chancellor Robert Livingston, one of the nation’s most distinguished jurists, administered the presidential oath of office to George Washington in 1789. His granddaughter Elizabeth (Eleanor’s great-grandmother) eloped to marry Edward Ludlow, scion of an equally prominent Hudson River family, Tory rather than patriot, and among the wealthiest in America. Edward Ludlow founded New York City’s premier real estate holding company, and in 1861 his daughter, Mary Livingston Ludlow (Eleanor’s grandmother), married Valentine Hall, Jr., heir to an even larger commercial fortune. The Halls had six children, of whom Eleanor’s mother, Anna, was the eldest.¹⁶

On the paternal side, Eleanor’s father, Elliott, was the younger sibling of Bamie and TR, children of Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., and his wife, Mittie.^* Just as the Aspinwalls and Delanos had infused new vigor into the Hyde Park bloodline, so Mittie, an enchanting southern belle from Cobb County, Georgia, added more than a soupçon of spice to the Long Island clan. One of fourteen children and stepchildren of Martha and James Stephens Bulloch, Mittie was a vivacious hostess and daring horsewoman who enchanted New York society. Her friends in Georgia later claimed that TR inherited “his splendid dash and energy” from his southern mother.

Eleanor’s parents enjoyed a fairy-tale romance: Elliott, the playboy prince charming; Anna, the beautiful maiden swept off her feet. Yet this fairy tale ended tragically. Unlike his brother and sisters, Elliott was fatally flawed. To this day the pathology is uncertain. Whether Elliott suffered from epilepsy or mental illness, or was driven to excess by unbridled self-indulgence, cannot be positively determined.¹⁷ What is clear is that he could not handle the rigors of formal education, dropped out of St. Paul’s at sixteen, spent a year or so out West hunting and fishing, and returned to New York just before the death of his father in 1878. The elder Roosevelt left each of his four children approximately $125,000, which would have provided an annual income of about $8,000—more than twenty times that of the average American family. When their mother, Mittie, died in 1884, each received an additional $65,000. That afforded each child an annual income of about $14,000. A simple monetary conversion equates that with an income of roughly a quarter of a million dollars today, but the money went much further in the 1880s because there was no income tax.^18*

Elliott remained in New York for two years after his father’s death, playing polo, drinking heavily, and leading the sporting life of a well-connected bon vivant. A note from TR to their mother, written during a hunting trip with Elliott in 1880, provides a glimpse:

As soon as we got here he took some ale to get the dust out of his throat; then a milk punch because he was thirsty; a mint julep because he was hot; a brandy mash “to keep the cold out of his stomach;” and then sherry and bitters to give him an appetite. He took a very simple dinner—soup, fish, salmi de grouse, sweetbread, mutton, venison, corn, macaroni, various vegetables and some puddings and pies, together with beer, later claret and in the evening, shandigaff.¹⁹

In the autumn of 1880 Elliott set out on a leisurely world tour, highlighted by several months of big-game hunting in India.²⁰ He returned to New York in March 1882, tried his hand halfheartedly at real estate, and within months met and fell in love with Anna Rebecca Hall, widely acclaimed as the most glamorous debutante of the year. They became engaged the following Memorial Day at a house party given in their honor by Laura Delano (Sara’s youngest sister) at Algonac, and were married December 1, 1883. The New York Herald described the wedding as “one of the most brilliant social events of the season.” Percy R. King, a childhood friend, was Elliott’s best man; James and Sara were among the guests.²¹

The Long Island Roosevelts were delighted. Anna, they hoped, would provide Elliott with the motivation to make something of himself. And for two years the couple prospered. Elliott went to work for the Ludlow real estate firm on Lower Broadway, Anna ordered her dresses from Palmer in London and Worth in Paris, and the couple maintained a well-staffed brownstone in New York’s fashionable Thirties. Repeatedly Anna was singled out in the city’s society pages for her classic, captivating beauty.²²

Elliott, like FDR’s half brother, Rosy, was a mainstay of the hard-drinking horsey set: polo at Meadowbrook, riding with the hounds in cross-country steeplechase, the annual hunt ball, tennis and sailing at Bar Harbor and Newport. A keen observer of the New York scene called Elliott “the most loveable Roosevelt I ever knew,” adding that “if personal popularity could have bestowed public honors on any man there was nothing beyond the reach of Elliott Roosevelt.”²³

On October 11, 1884, a daughter was born, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, named after both mother and father. For Elliott, his daughter was “a miracle from heaven.” In 1889 she was joined by a brother, Elliott, Jr., and two years later by a second brother, Hall, named for his maternal ancestors.²⁴

By then the marriage had all but collapsed. Always prone to excess, Elliott’s drinking was out of control, compounded by frequent recourse to laudanum and morphine—painkillers to thwart whatever demons stalked him. Unable to handle even the most routine assignments, he resigned from his uncle’s firm. An extended sojourn in Europe ended with Elliott confined to a Paris sanitarium to dry out. His mental deterioration was so great that TR and Bamie, with Anna’s reluctant approval, brought suit in New York court to have him adjudged insane and place his remaining property, estimated at $170,000, in trust for his wife and children. “It is all horrible beyond belief,” said TR.²⁵

News of the Roosevelt family squabble splashed across the front pages of New York’s press. ELLIOTT ROOSEVELT INSANE, bannered the Sun. demented by excesses, said the Herald.²⁶ Elliott fought back with a letter to the editor of the European edition of the Herald, asserting he was in Paris merely for the “cure at an establishment hydrotherapeutique.”²⁷ In January 1892 Theodore traveled to Paris to confront Elliott. He and Bamie would drop the suit, he said, if Elliott would place most of his assets in trust, submit to additional treatment for alcoholism in the United States, return to work, and spend two years on probation apart from his family. It was a Spartan regimen for someone as undisciplined as Elliott, yet TR was relentless. After a week of browbeating and intimidation, Elliott yielded. “Thank heaven I came over,” Theodore wrote Bamie. Elliott, he said, was “utterly broken, submissive, and repentant. He signed the deed for two-thirds of all his property, and agreed to the probation.… He was in a mood that was terribly touching. How long it will last of course no one can say.”²⁸

Elliott’s philandering did little to improve matters. Three months after he left New York for Europe, Katy Mann, a young servant girl employed by Anna at their Long Island estate, informed the family she was pregnant with Elliott’s child. When Elliott denied the accusation, Katy threatened legal action and public scandal. The Roosevelts initially sided with Elliott. “Of course she is lying,” said TR. But when they met with Katy and saw the baby, they gave up the fight.²⁹ The Roosevelt lawyers initially offered $4,000; Katy demanded $10,000; and eventually that sum was placed in trust for her son, defiantly named Elliott Roosevelt Mann. According to the Manns, the child never received a dime, the money apparently looted by Katy’s lawyers.³⁰ Whatever may have happened to the funds, there is no doubt that Elliott Roosevelt Mann was Eleanor’s half brother.^*

While in Paris, Elliott, unknown to Anna, took up with a sophisticated American expatriate, Mrs. Frances Bagley Sherman of Detroit. They lived intimately for six months, and when TR forced Elliott to leave France, Mrs. Sherman was heartbroken. “How could they treat so noble and generous a man as they have?” she asked.³¹

Elliott returned to the United States in February 1892, underwent treatment for alcoholism in Chicago, then moved to Abingdon, Virginia, to manage the vast Appalachian estate of his brother-in-law, Douglas Robinson. Anna meanwhile moved the family uptown to a new and more comfortable mansion in the East Sixties and did the utmost to provide her children a normal life. She declined to sue for divorce, hoping that Elliott would recover. But she was frequently depressed, and shattering migraines immobilized her for days at a time. “I know now that life must have been hard and bitter and a very great strain on her,” Eleanor wrote many years later. “I would often sit at the head of her bed and stroke her head.… As with all children, the feeling I was useful was perhaps the greatest joy I experienced.”³²

In early November, Anna entered the hospital for surgery to relieve her headaches. She recovered from the operation but soon contracted diphtheria. On December 3, she lost consciousness. Four days later she died, her health broken by two years of anguish and disappointment.³³ Six months after Anna’s death, Eleanor’s three-year-old brother, Elliott, Jr., also died from diphtheria.

In Abingdon, Elliott fell off the wagon almost immediately. One evening, drunk and naked, he toppled a kerosene lamp and burned himself badly. Friends in Abingdon urged TR to come down, but he refused. “It would be absolutely useless,” he said.³⁴ Elliott attended Anna’s funeral, drank immoderately, sang bawdy songs, and was quickly ushered out of town. He returned to New York surreptitiously in the autumn of 1893, rented a house near Riverside Park under the name of Maxwell Eliot, and took up with another married woman, a Mrs. Evans, who, like Mrs. Sherman in Paris, found him irresistible. He was now consuming half a dozen bottles of hard liquor daily. In May he spent the night in a police lockup, too drunk to tell his cabbie where he lived. “He can’t be helped,” TR wrote Bamie. “He must simply be let go his own gait.”³⁵ On August 13, 1894, seized by delirium tremens, Elliott attempted to jump from his parlor window, fell back in convulsions, and lost consciousness. He died the next evening.

Eleanor’s autobiographical writings depict a lovable, caring father and an austere, self-absorbed mother. Those were the memories of an impressionable young child. But as Blanche Wiesen Cook, ER’s preeminent biographer, points out, Eleanor was off the mark: “She did not relate to her mother’s bitter situation, even in adulthood, after she knew the facts. And she never acknowledged the sacrifice her mother had made for her, an act of love that allowed Eleanor to maintain her romantic image of her father.”³⁶

Unlike FDR, Eleanor was a solemn child. As a youthful relative remembered, she “took everything—most of all herself—so tremendously seriously.”³⁷ After Anna’s death, Eleanor and her brother went to live with Grandmother Hall, dividing their time between the Halls’ stately brownstone on West Thirty-seventh Street and the estate at Tivoli in upstate New York. “Our household,” said Eleanor, “consisted of a cook, a butler, a housemaid, and a laundress.” In the country, there were additional coachmen, servants, and tutors. Grandmother Hall was only forty-eight at the time, and, as Eleanor remembers, discipline was strict. “We were brought up on the principle that ‘no’ was easier to say than ‘yes.’ ”³⁸

Eleanor was tutored in French, German, and music. She studied piano, attended classes in dancing and ballet, and was taken regularly to the theater. Her uncles taught her riding, jumping, lawn tennis, and how to shoot. As one biographer has noted, the six years Eleanor spent with Grandmother Hall were a time of healing. She became the center of attention. From her grandmother Eleanor derived “a new sense of belonging. Out of the chaos of her parental home, Eleanor felt for the first time secure and wanted.”³⁹

Isolated as she was at Tivoli, there was little opportunity for Eleanor to meet or play with other children. One exception was Alice Roosevelt, TR’s daughter, whose mother had died after giving birth and who was being raised by Bamie. “I saw a lot of Eleanor as a child,” said Alice. “We both suffered from being deprived of a parent. But whereas she responded to her insecurity by being do-goody and virtuous, I did by being boisterous and showing off.”⁴⁰ Alice agreed that many aspects of Eleanor’s childhood were unhappy. “But she had a tendency to make out she was unattractive and rejected as a child, which just wasn’t true. She made a big thing about having long legs and having to wear short skirts. Well, as far as I was concerned, I envied her long legs and didn’t notice her short skirts, if indeed they were short. She was always making herself out to be an ugly duckling but she was really rather attractive. Tall, rather coltish looking, with masses of pale, gold hair rippling to below her waist, and really lovely blue eyes.”^41*

When Eleanor turned fifteen, Grandmother Hall sent her to boarding school in England. Anna, before she died, had asked that Eleanor be sent abroad, preferably to Allenwood; and Bamie, who had studied under the school’s headmistress in France, strongly supported the choice. Located in Wimbledon Park on the outskirts of London, Allenwood was in some respects the female equivalent of Groton: a pioneering school that offered the daughters of England’s elite a liberal education emphasizing social responsibility and personal independence. Marie Souvestre, the founder and headmistress, was the daughter of the French philosopher and novelist Émile Souvestre. A committed feminist, she believed passionately in educating women to think for themselves, to challenge accepted wisdom, and to assert themselves. These were subversive doctrines to patriarchal Victorians, yet Allenwood succeeded, in no small measure because of the sparkling erudition of Mlle. Souvestre. Liberal intellectuals—Joseph Chamberlain, Henry James, the Stracheys and the Webbs—considered her a soul mate. Beatrice Webb said her intellectual rigor forged the future for a generation of young women.⁴² Like Endicott Peabody at Groton, Marie Souvestre was Allenwood. And for the thirty-five girls enrolled, Allenwood was Marie Souvestre.

Eleanor flourished at Allenwood. The school was conducted entirely in French, and Eleanor was perfectly bilingual. “I remember the day she arrived at school,” said one classmate. “She was so much more grown up than we were, and at her first meal, when we hardly dared open our mouths, she sat opposite Mlle. Souvestre, chatting away in French.”⁴³ Eleanor quickly became the most popular girl in school. She excelled in French, German, and Italian, wrote superb essays, and made the first team in field hockey. Marie Souvestre wrote Mrs. Hall, “She is the most amiable girl I have ever met; she is nice to everybody, very eager to learn and highly interested in her work.”⁴⁴

For the next three years Eleanor continued to sit opposite Mlle. Souvestre.^* During school breaks she traveled with her to Europe: “One of the most momentous things that happened in my education,” said Eleanor.⁴⁵ Other times she toured the continent with her Aunt Tissie, Anna’s younger sister. Tissie was married to the wealthy art collector and portrait painter Stanley Mortimer, lived most of the year in Paris, and introduced Eleanor to a style of living enjoyed only by Europe’s most affluent.⁴⁶ Photographs of Eleanor at the time show a tall, slender young woman with soft brown hair coiffed in a pompadour and dressed in current Paris fashions. “Entirely sophisticated, and full of self-confidence and savoir-faire,” said an admiring classmate.⁴⁷

Marie Souvestre’s goal was to make her students “cultivated women of the world,” and Eleanor blossomed under her tutelage. If ER had a fault, it was her seriousness. “Totty [as Eleanor was known] is so intelligent, so charming, so good,” said Mlle. Souvestre. “Mais pas gaie, pas gaie.”⁴⁸ For her part, Eleanor was despondent when at eighteen it was time to return to New York to make her social debut. “Mlle Souvestre had become one of the people I cared for most in the world and … I would have given a great deal to have spent another year on my education.”⁴⁹ Later Eleanor said, “Whatever I have become had its seed in those three years of contact with a liberal mind and a strong personality.”⁵⁰ Throughout the remainder of her life, ER kept a framed portrait of Marie Souvestre on her desk. And when the headmistress died in 1905, Eleanor and Bamie served on her memorial committee.

Allenwood ranked as the most emancipated women’s school of the era. Yet it was totally deficient in preparing young ladies to deal with a world of men. Marie Souvestre and Aunt Tissie taught Eleanor the finer points of cosmopolitan behavior, how to present herself, how to dress. Yet her three years at Allenwood were as cloistered as the previous five with Grandmother Hall at Tivoli. At the age of eighteen, Eleanor had never dated, had rarely talked to a young man alone, and as a practical matter had seldom been in mixed company. Her mind had been finely honed, she brimmed with self-esteem, but she was naive beyond despair.

Eleanor’s lack of worldly experience appealed to Franklin. “A more sophisticated woman would have scared the daylights out of him,” said his son Elliott.⁵¹ It is not surprising Franklin was drawn to Eleanor. Aside from being young, attractive, and smartly dressed (ER’s wardrobe was meticulously put together by Aunt Tissie), Eleanor had an air of serious intelligence about her: a genuine interest in what took place around her. Her years at Allenwood imparted a maturity that FDR adored.⁵² She was also a Roosevelt and the favorite niece of Cousin Theodore, who was not only president of the United States but Eleanor’s godfather. By marrying Eleanor, FDR would acquire even greater access to the man he most admired. Her financial endowment was taken for granted. Eleanor was not rich like the Astors, but her trust fund provided an annual income of about $8,000 ($160,000 today), which was considerably more than Franklin’s, the principal of which was still administered by Sara.

The Roosevelt children, Anna and Elliott, believed that Eleanor “set out to win Father more than he tried to woo her.… She was stunned by the thought that here was a handsome man who would not only look at her but seek her companionship. She poured her heart out to him, undoubtedly the best listener she had ever met.”⁵³ Eleanor wrote Franklin every evening to ensure that he did not forget her. “Oh! Darling I miss you so and I long for the happy hours which we have together. I am so happy. So very happy in your love dearest, that all the world has changed for me.”⁵⁴ Eleanor often signed herself “Little Nell,” the nickname her father had bestowed, and she addressed Franklin as “Boy Darling,” “Dearest Boy,” and occasionally, “Franklin Dearest.” For the most part, Eleanor’s nightly letters during their secret engagement were reports on the day’s happenings, but, as one biographer notes, they “were as full of love as any letters she would ever write.”⁵⁵

In September 1904 Franklin entered Columbia Law School. He lived with Sara in an imposing town house his mother rented at 200 Madison Avenue, directly across from the marble mansion of J. P. Morgan. “I am anxious to hear about the first day [at Columbia],” Eleanor wrote from Tivoli, “and whether you found any old acquaintances or had only Jew Gentlemen to work with!” Ethnic identity was delineated more sharply at the time, and Eleanor shared the traditional prejudices of Knickerbocker society. Her friend and biographer Joseph Lash reports that FDR’s class at Columbia “showed 21 Jewish names in a class of 74.” Lash also notes that ER’s comment did not prevent her from teaching part-time at Rivington Street Settlement House on the Lower East Side, where most of her pupils were recent Jewish and Italian immigrants, nor did it “inhibit her solicitude for them.”⁵⁶ FDR sometimes met Eleanor at Rivington House and once, when a child in her class became ill, accompanied her to the tenement in which the child lived. “My God,” Franklin said, “I didn’t know anyone lived like this.”⁵⁷

On October 11, Eleanor’s twentieth birthday, FDR presented her with a gift he had chosen at Tiffany’s “after much inspection and deliberation”: a large diamond engagement ring. It suited Eleanor perfectly. “You could not have found a ring I would have liked better,” she wrote. “I love it so I know I shall find it hard to keep from wearing it.”⁵⁸ After eleven months, the subterfuge was wearing thin. Later that month Eleanor and Franklin were houseguests at a family party given by Aunt Corinne and Douglas Robinson in Orange, New Jersey. “E. and F. are comic,” noted young Corinne, Jr. “They avoided each other like the black plague and told beautifully concocted lies and deceived us sweetly in every direction.… I would bet they are engaged.” FDR played the scene with such aplomb that Corinne told him he had a very deceitful nature. Eleanor was equally opaque. Three days later she and Corinne, Jr., went driving. “Neither of us mentioned Franklin,” Corinne wrote, “but I think he was on both our minds.”⁵⁹

The engagement was announced on December 1 and was followed by a blizzard of congratulatory letters. “I never saw the family so enthusiastic in my life,” wrote Lyman Delano. Grandmother Hall was thankful Eleanor was “going to marry such a fine man.” Alice Roosevelt, who would be Eleanor’s maid of honor, thought the news “too good to be true.” Bamie said she loved Franklin not only on his own account but because “his character is like his father’s [who was] the most absolutely honorable upright gentleman we ever knew.”⁶⁰

From the White House, Uncle Theodore wrote Eleanor that only in married life is “the highest and finest happiness to be found. I know you and Franklin will face all that comes bravely and lovingly.” To FDR he wrote:

Dear Franklin,

We are greatly rejoiced over the good news. I am as fond of Eleanor as if she were my daughter; and I like you, and trust you, and believe in you. No other success in life—not the Presidency, or anything else—begins to compare with the joy and happiness that come in and from the love of the true man and the true woman, the love which never sinks lover and sweetheart in man and wife. You and Eleanor are true and brave, and I believe you love each other unselfishly; and golden years open before you. May all good fortune attend you both, ever. Give my love to your dear mother.

Your aff. cousin Theodore Roosevelt⁶¹

The wedding was set for March 17, 1905, and Franklin asked Endicott Peabody to preside. “It would not be the same without you,” he told the rector. Eleanor requested Uncle Theodore stand in for her father and give the bride away. TR was delighted. He suggested that the wedding be held “under his roof” at the White House and insisted on handling all the arrangements. That was TR’s style, but it was more than Eleanor and Franklin had bargained for. It was eventually agreed that the wedding would be held in New York under Grandmother Hall’s auspices on a date when the president could attend. March 17—Saint Patrick’s Day—was the first available.

Before the wedding, Franklin and Eleanor took time to attend Uncle Theodore’s inauguration. In November 1904 TR had defeated his Democratic opponent, the conservative Alton B. Parker, chief judge of the New York Court of Appeals, by 2.5 million votes—a landslide in which Franklin cast his ballot for the Republican ticket.⁶² Addressing the annual Jackson Day Dinner of the Democratic Party in 1938, FDR said, “My father and grandfather were Democrats and I was born and brought up as a Democrat. But in 1904, when I cast my first vote for president, I voted for the Republican candidate, Theodore Roosevelt, because I thought he was a better Democrat than the Democratic candidates. If I had to do it all over again, I would not alter that vote.”⁶³

On March 4, 1904, Franklin and Eleanor sat just behind the president and his family at the east front of the Capitol and heard TR’s characteristic call for vigor and effort, “without which the manlier and hardier virtues wither away.”⁶⁴ Afterward they went to the White House for lunch with the president, watched the parade with him, and went to the inaugural ball that evening in the atrium of the old pension building.

The wedding was held in the twin town houses of Eleanor’s great-aunt, Elizabeth Livingston Ludlow, and her daughter, Cousin Susie (Mrs. Henry) Parish, at 6–8 East Seventy-sixth Street. The formal drawing rooms of the two houses opened into each other and could accommodate two hundred guests, an elegant yet understated New York setting often used by the family on ceremonial occasions. Outside, on Fifth Avenue, the Saint Patrick’s Day parade wound its way northward, the Ancient Order of Hibernians filling the air with “The Wearing of the Green.” Moments before 3:30, the clatter of carriage horses signaled the arrival of the president, top-hatted and buoyant, a shamrock in his lapel, to give the bride away. As the orchestra commenced the wedding march from Lohengrin, Eleanor’s six bridesmaids descended the circular staircase. Each wore a white silk gown, its sleeves embroidered with silver roses, with a demiveil and three silver-tipped ostrich feathers (the Roosevelt crest) in her hair. The six ushers wore tie pins with three Roosevelt feathers depicted in diamonds. Franklin and Lathrop Brown, his Harvard roommate who was standing in for Rosy as best man, wore formal morning attire.⁶⁵ The bride’s satin wedding gown was covered with Grandmother Hall’s rose-point Brussels lace, which Eleanor’s mother had worn at her wedding. Her veil was secured with a diamond crescent that had belonged to her mother as well. As fate would have it, March 17 was also Anna’s birthday.

When Reverend Peabody asked, “Who giveth this woman in marriage?,” TR answered emphatically, “I do!” Hands were joined, rings and vows exchanged, and the rector pronounced Franklin and Eleanor man and wife. The president reached out to kiss the bride. “Well, Franklin,” he exclaimed, “there’s nothing like keeping the name in the family.” TR then strode off to find the refreshments and the guests followed in his wake. Franklin and Eleanor trailed along. “We simply followed the crowd and listened with the rest,” said Eleanor.⁶⁶ TR had upstaged the stars of the wedding and stolen the audience. Even the cutting of the wedding cake failed to attract many onlookers until the president was persuaded to come and get a slice. As TR’s daughter Alice observed, “Father always wanted to be the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral.”⁶⁷

^* Eleanor’s cousin Alice, who was the same age yet far more worldly, reports trying to impart the facts of life to Eleanor, but “I almost came to grief.… She suddenly leapt on me and tried to smother me with a pillow, saying I was being blasphemous. So I shut up and I think she probably went to her wedding not knowing anything about the subject.” Michael Teague, Mrs. L: Conversations with Alice Roosevelt Longworth 57 (New York: Doubleday, 1981).

Eleanor was not alone in her naiveté. Corinne Robinson Alsop, ER’s younger cousin, remembered having once been kissed by a boy in the stable of her family’s home in Orange, New Jersey. “It frightened me to death, and I discussed with my intimate friends whether I would immediately have a baby.” Alsop Family Papers, Harvard University.

^* FDR’s resolve was reinforced by the behavior of his nephew Taddy (James Roosevelt Roosevelt, Jr.), the son of Rosy and Helen Astor. Almost three years older than Franklin, Taddy dropped out of Harvard in 1900 to marry Sadie Messinger, a habitué of the Haymarket Dance Hall in New York, better known by her trade names, “Dutch Sadie” and “Sadie of the Tenderloin.” The press had a field day (to the chagrin of the Roosevelts and Astors); Rosy tried to have the marriage annulled, but Taddy, who had just turned twenty-one and come into half ownership of his late mother’s Astor legacy, held tight. After a brief stay in Florida, Taddy and Sadie returned to New York, where they took two rooms over a garage in which he repaired automobiles. They remained together until Sadie’s death in 1940. Taddy never touched his legacy and on his death in 1958 left his millions to the Salvation Army. FDR blamed Taddy for bringing on James’s fatal heart attack in 1900. “One can never again consider him a true Roosevelt,” he wrote Sara. “It would be well for him not only to go to parts unknown, but to stay there and begin life anew.” FDR did not see or speak with Taddy again. Letter, FDR to SDR, October 23, 1900, FDRL.

^* Bamie, whose real name was Anna (Bamie was short for “bambino”) was born in 1855; TR in 1858; Elliott in 1860; and a fourth child, Corinne, in 1861.

^* With the exception of a brief period during the Civil War, there was no federal income tax until 1894, when a Democratic Congress amended the Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act to provide for a general tax of 2 percent on incomes above $4,000 (28 Stat. 509, 553 [1894]).

The following year, a sharply divided (5–4) Supreme Court struck down the income tax as unconstitutional. Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan and Trust, 157 U.S. 429 (1895). “We are reversing one hundred years of error,” said Chief Justice Melville Fuller, speaking for the Court. Fuller’s reference was to the Supreme Court’s earlier decisions in Hylton v. United States, 3 Dallas (3 U.S.) 171 (1796), and Springer v. United States, 102 U.S. 586 (1881), both of which would have sustained the tax. As a result of the Court’s decision in Pollock a federal income tax was not instituted until after adoption of the Sixteenth (“Income Tax”) Amendment to the Constitution in 1913.

^* After FDR was elected president in 1932, Elliott Roosevelt Mann and Katy wrote Eleanor to congratulate her. ER replied, “I was very interested to receive your letter and to learn that you were named after my father.… I shall hope sometime to see both you and your mother.” No invitation was ever extended, nor was any further correspondence from the Manns answered by ER. Blanche Wiesen Cook, 1 Eleanor Roosevelt 65n. (New York: Viking Penguin, 1992).

^* James Kearney, an early biographer, suggested that when Eleanor wrote This Is My Story in 1937 she deliberately emphasized the unhappy aspects of her childhood because she wished to identify with the “agonizing insecurity and aspirations of American youth in the thirties.” Anna Eleanor Roosevelt: The Evolution of a Reformer 6 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1968).

^* Sitting opposite the formidable Marie Souvestre, then in her seventies, was considered the place of honor. According to ER, “The girl who occupied this place received [the headmistress’s] nod at the end of the meal and gave the signal, by rising, for the rest of the girls to rise and leave the dining room.” Eleanor Roosevelt, Autobiography 26 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961).

FOUR
ALBANY

Frank, the men that are looking out of that window are waiting for your answer. They won’t like to hear that you had to ask your mother.

—ED PERKINS (DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN OF
DUTCHESS COUNTY) TO FDR, 1910

FDR LED A PERILOUS LIFE as a first-year law student. His classmate General William Donovan, who headed the Office of Strategic Services during World War II, later said that Roosevelt’s most prominent characteristic at Columbia was his “daring”—a remarkable observation from a man who won the Medal of Honor leading New York’s “Fighting Sixty-Ninth” in the Meuse-Argonne.¹ What Donovan meant was that after Groton and Harvard, Franklin had enormous confidence in himself—perhaps overconfidence—and he never let law school interfere with his personal life.

Following his wedding on Saint Patrick’s Day, he and Eleanor departed for Springwood and a week’s honeymoon. That contributed to the seventy-three absences FDR recorded his first year and helps explain why he initially failed two of his seven courses (contracts and civil procedure). “It certainly shows the uncertainty of marks,” he wrote Sara. “I expected much lower marks in some of the others and failures in one, and thought I had done as well on the two I failed as in those I passed with B.”² A Columbia professor saw it differently. Franklin, he said, had little aptitude for the law and “made no effort to overcome that handicap by hard work.”³ After studying haphazardly over the summer, FDR took makeup exams in contracts and civil procedure and easily passed both. His final grades were three Bs, three Cs, and a D, which placed him roughly in the middle of his class.⁴

FDR’s attitude toward law school was similar to Ulysses S. Grant’s view of West Point: it was a hurdle but should not be taken too seriously. At West Point, Grant—who also had enormous confidence in himself—read novels instead of field manuals and spent his free time painting in the studio of his art professor. At Columbia, FDR led an exhausting social life and wrote doggerel about his instructors:

REDFIELD ON BLEATING^*
BAH! BAH! BAH!
We are little bored sheep
That have lost their way
     Bah! Bah! Bah!
Gentlemen lawyers off on a spree
Wrong from here to eternity
God ha’ mercy on such as Redfield
     Bah! Bah! Bah!

During the summer between first and second year, Franklin and Eleanor undertook a second honeymoon in Europe, much as James and Sara had done twenty-five years earlier. In England they dined with Whitelaw Reid, a longtime Hudson River neighbor and publisher of the New York Tribune, who had just taken up his duties as ambassador to the Court of St. James. In Scotland, visiting friends of Eleanor’s parents, they had dinner with Sidney and Beatrice Webb. “They write books on sociology,” Eleanor wrote Sara. “Franklin discussed the methods of learning at Harvard with the husband while I discussed the servant problem with the wife.”⁵ While in Scotland the honeymooners were asked to open a village flower show. Franklin did the honors. He was fortunate, he said, “in having had a Highland nurse, so that I passed my early years with kilts on the outside and oatmeal and scones on the interior.” With a perfectly straight face FDR went on to tout the advantages of American vegetables: “Instead of water, we cook them nearly always in milk, and this, of course, makes them more nutritious, besides bringing out the flavor.”⁶

From Scotland the couple went briefly to Paris, and from there to Milan, Verona, and Venice. Then the Dolomites, Switzerland, and the Black Forest. Their continental excursion lasted more than three months: Eleanor, Baedeker in hand, resolutely examining the monuments and masterpieces of Europe; Franklin, enjoying himself at the expense of one and all. In Venice, Eleanor pronounced the Titians on display “not among his best.” Franklin loped ahead through the galleries of what he called the “Academica de Belly Arty” (Accademia dei Belle Arti) briefly perusing the paintings—“chiefly indecent infants sitting or falling off clouds—or sacred apostles trying to keep the sun out of their eyes.”⁷ In Cortina, Eleanor went to bed early and FDR attended the hotel dance alone. To Sara he wrote, “The hotel maids, cooks, and some of the villagers did a Schuhplattler—the native dance. It beats a cake walk and a court quadrille all to pieces.… I danced with Mme. Menardi [the proprietress], and talked to the cook and smoked with a porter and had the time of my life.”⁸

In St. Moritz they stayed with Aunt Tissie and her husband, Stanley Mortimer, who summered there regularly. Then back to Paris for an extended stay with Aunt Dora (Sara’s sister) and Uncle Paul Forbes, who had made the City of Light their permanent home.⁹ They were entertained by Cousin Hortense Howland, a sparkling Parisian who was the sister-in-law of FDR’s father, James, by his first marriage, and whose salon was described by Marcel Proust in Remembrance of Things Past. “You would have laughed if you could have heard Mrs. Howland flatter Franklin,” wrote Eleanor.¹⁰ While in Paris, Franklin and Eleanor had their fortunes told by a French clairvoyant. “E. is to inherit a fortune,” FDR wrote Sara, “and I am to be President of the U.S. or the Equitable, I couldn’t make out which.”¹¹ Harvard friends seemed to be everywhere. One evening Franklin and his classmates took Eleanor and Aunt Dora to a naughty French farce. Eleanor was shocked. “I confess my Anglo-Saxon sense of humor was somewhat strained,” she remembered.¹²

Throughout the trip Franklin teased Sara about his and Eleanor’s purchases and the money they were spending. From London he wrote that they stayed in the Royal Suite at Brown’s Hotel for £1,000 a night (actual cost £36). In Paris he reported buying “thousands of dollars worth of linen.… Eleanor got a dozen dresses.… I am getting Eleanor a long sable coat and a silver fox coat for myself.” From Venice, “3 or 4 old tapestries and a Tintoretto—the latter in his best style.… Also an old library—about 3000 books—and had them shipped to London.” Back in Paris, “I got some Rembrandt engravings and a cunning little sketch by Claude Lorraine.” At one point he suggested they were planning to expand the trip into a tour around the world—“It is only a step or two.” At another he suggested buying the woodwork and mosaic floor tiles from an old Venetian palace: “It can be got for about $60,000. If you care to have it cable me.”¹³

From Europe the newlyweds pressed Sara to find a house for them, preferably the rental property of their Dutchess County friends the Drapers, at 125 East Thirty-sixth Street—just three blocks from Sara’s Madison Avenue address. “It is just the right situation and size for us,” wrote Franklin. “Our one hope is to hear very soon that you have got it for us. It would be so nice to feel that all is settled before we return.”¹⁴ Eleanor wrote Sara, “you are an angel to take so much trouble about the house, but I am glad you are going to see it and I do hope you will take it if it is possible.”¹⁵ When Sara replied that she had taken the house for two years, Eleanor was delighted. “We are so glad and think you have done wonders for us. It is very nice that the work can be begun before we get home … and we will get settled so much sooner than if we waited to choose a house on our return.”¹⁶

The Draper house was temporary. At Christmas 1905, Sara informed Franklin and Eleanor that she was building a town house for them. “A Christmas present from Mama—number and street not yet quite decided.” The following year Sara bought an expensive plot on East Sixty-fifth Street just off Park Avenue and hired a well-known architect, Charles A. Platt, to draw plans for two adjoining houses—one for herself and one for Franklin and Eleanor—similar to the Ludlow-Parish houses on East Seventy-sixth Street. The drawing rooms and dining rooms of the two houses opened into each other, there were connecting doors on the upper floors, and a common vestibule. Construction began in the spring of 1907 and was completed the following year. Sara retained title to both houses, and upon her death in 1941 FDR sold them to the Hillel Foundation of Hunter College for a modest price.¹⁷

Franklin, who loved to design things, immersed himself in the construction of the houses and worked constantly with the architect, the builder, and the decorators. Eleanor was consulted but chose not to become involved. “Instead of taking an interest in these houses, one of which I was to live in, I left everything to my mother-in-law and my husband.”¹⁸ One evening shortly after they moved in, Franklin found his wife in tears. This was not her home, she sobbed. She had not helped plan it, and it was not the way she wanted to live. FDR was bewildered. Why hadn’t she said something before? he asked. They had gone over the plans together—why hadn’t she spoken up?¹⁹

As Eleanor recalled the incident, “he thought I was quite mad and told me so gently, and said I would feel different in a little while and left me alone until I should become calmer.”²⁰ FDR avoided further friction simply by refusing to recognize that a problem existed. That was a trait he would hone to an art form in public life. “If something was unpleasant and he didn’t want to know about it, he just ignored it and never talked about it,” said Eleanor. “I think he always thought that if you ignored a thing long enough it would settle itself.”²¹

In the summer of 1909 Sara gave Eleanor and Franklin a second house—a thirty-four-room, three-story, seaside “cottage” nestled on ten acres of prime Campobello shoreline. The expansive house, constructed along the lines of the Arts and Crafts Movement, had been built in 1898 by the Hartman Kuhn family of Boston and stood next to the Roosevelt house, separated by a tall hemlock hedge. This time Sara transferred full title to Franklin: “a belated wedding gift,” as she expressed it. For Eleanor the house was a godsend, the first dwelling she felt she owned. Mrs. Kuhn had left all the furnishings, linen, crystal, and silver, and ER spent weeks rearranging things. “I have moved every room in the house around,” she wrote Franklin, “and I hope you will like the change.” Eleanor never tired of the place. “There was no telephone … no electricity,” she remembered. “There was a little coal stove on which you did all your cooking, and the lamps sometimes smoked, and you went to bed by candlelight. But it had great charm.”^22*

Financially, Franklin and Eleanor were well provided for. Between them, they had trust-fund income of a little over $12,000—the rough equivalent of $240,000 after-tax dollars one hundred years later.^* Yet their combined incomes were insufficient to support their lifestyle. Eleanor and Franklin were not members of the fastest, richest set in New York, but they lived in three different houses at various seasons of the year, always employed at least five servants, maintained a large yacht and numerous smaller boats, automobiles, and carriages, dressed in fashion, belonged to expensive clubs, traveled extensively, and gave generously to political and charitable causes. Sara subsidized the shortfall. As her grandson Elliott recalled, “Granny was generous to a fault. Whenever Father needed help, he had only to ask for it, and he usually had no need to ask, because Granny anticipated what he or Mother wanted and was ready with a check, cash or a gift in kind.”²³

Midway through his third year at Columbia, Franklin took the grueling eight-hour New York bar examination and passed handily. He was immediately admitted to practice and at that point dropped his courses at Columbia and never took a degree. Twenty-two years later, Roosevelt, then governor of New York, was invited to address the Columbia Law School Alumni Dinner. Columbia’s president, Nicholas Murray Butler, sat next to him, chatting affably. At some point Butler was overheard joking with FDR on his failure to obtain an LL.B. “You will never be able to call yourself an intellectual until you come back to Columbia and pass your law exams.” Franklin flashed his famous grin: “That just shows how unimportant the law really is.”²⁴

The young Roosevelts spent the summer of 1907 relaxing at Campobello and Hyde Park. Anna, their firstborn, was a one-year-old toddler. Eleanor was pregnant once more, and their second child, James, named for FDR’s father, would be born in December. In their first ten years of marriage, Franklin and Eleanor would have six children, one of whom would die in infancy.^† Later, Eleanor would write, “For ten years I was always just getting over having a baby or about to have one, and so my occupations were considerably restricted.”²⁵

Unlike Sara, who handled every detail of FDR’s childhood, Eleanor delegated the raising of her children to a succession of nurses and caregivers. “I had never any interest in dolls or little children,” she wrote, “and I knew absolutely nothing about handling or feeding a baby.” Having heard that fresh air was good for babies, Eleanor ordered a small chicken wire cage constructed and, placing Anna in it, hung the contraption out a rear window at the town house in New York. It was on the north side of the building, cold and shady, and the baby often cried, but Eleanor paid no attention. Finally, an irate neighbor threatened to report the Roosevelts to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. “This was rather a shock for me,” Eleanor recalled, “for I thought I was being a very modern mother.”²⁶

Years later Eleanor acknowledged that she had been completely unprepared to be a practical housekeeper, wife, or mother. “If I had it to do over again, I know now that what we should have done was to have no servants in those first few years.… However, my bringing-up had been such that this never occurred to me, and neither did it occur to any of the older people who were closest to me. Had I done this, my subsequent troubles would have been avoided and my children would have had far happier childhoods.”²⁷

For his part, Franklin, like his father, left the child rearing to his wife. “Father’s attitude on nurses and other household affairs was strictly hands off,” said his son James.²⁸ When the children were older, FDR enjoyed roughhousing with his “chicks,” taking them riding at Hyde Park, and sailing at Campobello. “Father was fun,” said Anna. “He would sometimes romp with me on the floor or carry me around on his shoulders.”²⁹ The children adored “Pa,” who seemed much warmer than their straitlaced mother. He was like a favorite uncle who entertained them, while Eleanor was the disciplinarian.^*

In September 1907 Franklin joined the distinguished Wall Street firm of Carter, Ledyard and Milburn as one of five unsalaried apprentices. “I know you will be glad to start,” wrote Sara. “Try to arrange for systematic air and exercise and keep away from brokers’ offices, this advice free gratis for nothing.”³⁰

Carter, Ledyard and Milburn was one of the most prestigious law firms in the nation. It had a large general practice and was executor of the Astor estate, but its major source of income was corporate law, at which it had few equals. James Carter, the firm’s founder, was so highly respected at the appellate bar that the attorney general of the United States engaged him to argue the government’s case before the Supreme Court in Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan and Trust in 1894, the great income tax case.³¹ Louis Cass Ledyard, an intimate of J. P. Morgan, played a vital role in arresting the Wall Street Panic of 1907, served as counsel for both the Morgan Bank and United States Steel, and later represented the American Tobacco Company in antitrust litigation before the Supreme Court.³² John G. Milburn, the third senior partner, was counsel for John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil cartel in an equally well publicized antitrust suit in 1911.³³ Milburn himself had clerked for Grover Cleveland in his Buffalo law office, and it was at Milburn’s home in Buffalo that William McKinley died after being shot by an anarchist in 1901.³⁴

FDR had little passion for the law, but he was a fast learner blessed with an avuncular, ingratiating personality. “He had a sanguine temperament, almost adolescent in its buoyancy,” a fellow clerk recalled.³⁵ Franklin wrote Sara that he was a “full-fledged office boy.” Like his fellow apprentices, he kept dockets for the partners, looked up cases for them, answered calendar calls, recorded deeds, and ran all manner of errands. After a while he took on minor cases in the municipal courts, and during his second year he was made managing clerk in charge of municipal cases.^* The following year he moved on to the firm’s admiralty division, one of the nation’s most lustrous. As numerous observers have noted, there was always a whiff of the sea at Carter, Ledyard. Cass Ledyard succeeded J. P. Morgan as commodore of the exclusive New York Yacht Club, and Edmund L. Baylies, head of the admiralty section, was president of and principal fund-raiser for the Seamen’s Church Institute. Franklin became a director of the institute and a member of the Yacht Club. But even the laws of the sea had little appeal for FDR. He was perpetually good-humored and energetic but made little secret of his desire to move on.

Grenville Clark, a Harvard classmate who was a fellow clerk at the firm, recalled FDR in those early years. “We were a small group,” said Clark, “and in our leisure hours sometimes fell into discussions of our hopes and ambitions. I remember him saying with engaging frankness that he wasn’t going to practice law forever, that he intended to run for office at the first opportunity, and that he wanted to be and thought he had a real chance to be President. I remember that he described very accurately the steps which he thought could lead to this goal. They were: first, a seat in the State Assembly, then an appointment as Assistant Secretary of the Navy … and finally the governorship of New York. ‘Anyone who is governor of New York has a good chance to be president,’ he said.^* I do not recall that even then, in 1907, any of us deprecated his ambition or even smiled at it as we might have done. It seemed proper and sincere and moreover, as he put it, entirely reasonable.”

Clark went on to say that FDR not only had made politics his profession for thirty-five years “but had adopted that profession deliberately and constantly enjoyed it, just as one enjoys a game that one has always liked and learned to play well.”³⁶ FDR’s friend Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr., made the same point somewhat differently. Had Franklin not gone into politics, said Vanderbilt, he would have been “just another corporate lawyer, summering in Newport and hibernating on Wall Street.”³⁷

Political lightning struck in the summer of 1910. As FDR remembered it, he was kidnapped off the streets of Poughkeepsie—“one of the first cases of deliberate kidnapping on record”—and taken to the Dutchess County policemen’s picnic. “On that joyous occasion of clams and sauerkraut and real beer I made my first speech, and I have been apologizing for it ever since.”³⁸

Hyperbole aside, the Democratic leadership of Dutchess County did indeed make the initial overture to FDR. But never was a victim more eager to accompany his abductors. Because of the large working-class vote in Poughkeepsie, Dutchess County was one of the few Democratic strongholds in upstate New York.^* And for a political novice seeking entry to the state legislature, there were few opportunities so golden.

The first feelers were extended by Judge John E. Mack, the district attorney of Dutchess County and one of three members of the Democratic party’s executive committee. Mack had been a friend of FDR’s father, James, and owned a 100-acre farm in Clove Valley where he raised prizewinning peonies. In the folksy manner of upstate New York he called himself “a Dutchess County farmer who does a little lawyering on the side.” Beneath the folksiness lay cunning political instinct. Mack was virtually unbeatable at the polls. He endeared himself to his Irish and Italian constituents in Poughkeepsie by not prosecuting public drunks provided they sign a release asking him to lock them up for six months should they be arrested again. Mack’s rationale was based on the theory “All dogs get one bite.” And it was a surefire winner in the immigrant community. He courted the rural vote equally assiduously by prosecuting chicken thieves for the more serious crime of burglary rather than petty larceny. Mack prided himself on being able to hear the political grass grow beneath the soil, and in the early summer of 1910 he engineered an excuse to call on FDR at Carter, Ledyard and Milburn. Some documents, it seems, needed Sara’s signature. Rather than mail them, he thought he’d drop them by personally.

FDR received Mack warmly. When their business was completed, the talk turned to politics. The Democrats were in trouble in Dutchess County, Mack told Franklin. The incumbent Democratic assemblyman, Lewis Stuyvesant Chanler of Barrytown, wanted to retire. A descendent of John Jacob Astor on his maternal side, Chanler had been elected lieutenant governor in 1906. In 1908 he won the party’s gubernatorial nomination, only to lose the election to Charles Evans Hughes. After exposure to statewide politics, Chanler was bored with being a mere assemblyman and was thinking of stepping down. If he did, would Franklin consider running? FDR could scarcely believe his good fortune. The Second Assembly District was as safe a Democratic seat as any outside the Solid South. Nothing would please him more, he told the judge. Mack casually suggested that FDR spend some time on weekends in Poughkeepsie getting to know local Democrats and let it go at that. There was no offer, merely an inquiry.^*

Two weeks later, Edward E. Perkins, president of the First National Bank of Poughkeepsie, who was also the Democratic state committeeman for Dutchess County, invited Franklin to a dispersal sale of high-grade Guernseys on the Reece farm in Wappinger Falls. They could run down and pick up some good ones, said Perkins. On the way home, after inspecting the cattle, Perkins confirmed to FDR that Lewis Chanler did not wish to run again. Would Franklin be interested? “I’d like to talk to my mother first,” Roosevelt replied.

They drove on to Poughkeepsie and pulled into a parking spot in front of Perkins’s bank. “Frank,” he said, “the men that are looking out that window are waiting for your answer. They won’t like to hear that you had to ask your mother.”

“I’ll take it,” said Franklin.³⁹

If the New York legislative seat was certain for the Democrats, why was the party leadership so eager to bestow it on a neophyte like FDR? The decision was not as bizarre as it might appear. For the men who ran the county, a seat in the New York Assembly was small potatoes. The important offices were sheriff, tax assessor, county clerk, the various town supervisors, the judges and prosecuting attorneys—positions that levied taxes, spent money, and enforced the law. The assembly seat was a low-paying, part-time job in Albany. Second, while Poughkeepsie was safely Democratic, the rural areas of the county tilted Republican. It was useful to have someone on the ticket who could appeal to conservative voters in the countryside. In 1910, all New York counties employed the party-column ballot. Straight-ticket voting was the rule, and successful party leaders always sought a balanced ticket: a name or two on the ballot that would reassure the district’s farmers and small-town residents. At the national level, that traditionally dictated the choice of presidential running mates (FDR’s 1932 selection of John Nance Garner, for example), and the same calculus applied at county level. The Roosevelt name was a tremendous drawing card, and a Democratic Roosevelt on the ticket might galvanize the rural voters of Dutchess County. Finally, electoral campaigns were expensive—even in 1910. And FDR (or at least Sara) had deep pockets. “I guess several people thought that I would be a gold mine,” Franklin said later, “but unfortunately the gold was not there.” Not quite true. When party fund-raisers came calling, the Roosevelts eventually coughed up $2,500—about $50,000 in current value, a substantial sum for a seat in the state legislature.⁴⁰

Sara had little difficulty with Franklin’s decision. Her father had gone to China twice with nothing in his pocket, and twice he had returned with a fortune. The risks of political life, the winner-take-all aspect of a campaign, and the high-stakes rewards appealed to her Delano instincts. TR had started small and made it to the White House. Sara had no doubt that her son was as gifted as his Oyster Bay cousin, and she understood the advantage her personal fortune gave to FDR. She would have preferred that he make a brilliant career at the law; she would have been even more pleased if he had chosen to be a country squire like James; but if Franklin wanted politics, she resolved to make the best of it. As her friend Rita Halle Kleeman put it, “All her life Sara had been accustomed to accepting the decisions of the men in the family whom she loved and respected. From the moment she heard Franklin make his simple, sincere declaration of principles, she accepted his decision and knew that it was wise.”⁴¹ And when Sara embraced a decision, she did so without reservation. Within days she was referring to the surrounding countryside as “Franklin’s district.”⁴²

Many years later, sitting at Springwood on election night awaiting the presidential returns, Sara reflected on that first campaign. “I shall never forget it,” she said. “I was one of the few sympathizers Franklin had among his own people. Many of our friends said it was a shame for so fine a young man to associate with ‘dirty’ politicians. Some of them hoped he would be defeated for his own sake and learn a lesson. I knew only that I would always be proud of him [and] I was indeed happy when he won.”^43*

Franklin discussed the matter with Eleanor, and she too was delighted.⁴⁴ But he did not ask her approval. “I listened to all his plans with interest,” she said later. “It never occurred to me that I had any part to play. I felt I must acquiesce in whatever he might decide and be willing to go to Albany if he should be elected.”⁴⁵

A greater question mark for FDR was cousin Theodore. TR had just returned from a twelve-month safari in East Africa (“I hope every lion will do his duty,” J. P. Morgan quipped on the eve of TR’s departure) and was beginning to thrash around in the politics of the Empire State. If he should campaign in Dutchess County and say anything remotely disparaging about his Democratic kinsman, it would end Franklin’s political career before it began. FDR hesitated to approach the former president directly but with Sara’s encouragement laid the problem before Bamie, who visited Campobello that summer. As FDR hoped, Bamie wrote to her brother immediately. “Franklin ought to go into politics without the least regard as to where I speak or don’t speak,” TR replied on August 10. “Franklin is a fine fellow,” he told Bamie, although he wished he were a Republican.⁴⁶ FDR correctly interpreted the former president’s reply as a green light. When TR spoke before a throng of 40,000 well-wishers at the Dutchess County Fair later that autumn, he refrained from mentioning either Franklin or his Republican opponent.

FDR’s fledgling campaign ended before it began. In mid-September, three weeks before the Democrats held their nominating caucus, Lewis Chanler announced for reelection. He was not stepping down. The Assembly might be dull, but it was far livelier than no office at all. Franklin felt snakebitten. He went to Mack and Perkins and threatened to run as an independent. Mack knew Roosevelt was serious. “Why not run for the Senate?” he asked. For a second time, FDR could scarcely believe his good fortune. The State Senate seemed far more attractive than the Assembly, although the odds of winning were slight: Mack put them at one chance in five. The Senate seat comprised Dutchess, Putnam, and Columbia counties, the three counties stacked one above the other along the east bank of the Hudson. The district was thirty miles wide and ninety miles long, and, with one exception, no Democrat had won the seat since 1856.⁴⁷ The Republican incumbent, Senator John F. Schlosser of Fishkill Landing, was a well-known lawyer, seasoned campaigner, and president of the State Volunteer Firemen’s Association. His 2-to-1 margin of victory in 1908 made him appear invincible. Roosevelt was undeterred. Youth and inexperience melded with the patrician confidence instilled at Springwood, Groton, and Harvard. Franklin exuded confidence in victory from the first day of the campaign.

“I accept this nomination with absolute independence,” FDR told the Democratic caucus in Poughkeepsie on October 6. “I am pledged to no man; I am influenced by no special interests.… In the coming campaign, I need not tell you that I do not intend to stand still. We are going to have a very strenuous month [and] we have little to fear from the result on November eighth.”⁴⁸

Roosevelt opened the campaign with a rally on Bank Square in the center of Fishkill Landing, the home of Senator Schlosser, the idea being to cause as much consternation as possible. The Democratic organization could be counted upon to deliver the votes in Poughkeepsie and the other towns in the district, so Roosevelt carried his fight to the countryside. Election day was only a month away, and to cover the three counties he rented a fire-engine red, open-top Maxwell touring car. To drive the car, which had two cylinders and no windshield, FDR engaged Harry Hawkey, an itinerant Poughkeepsie piano tuner with an encyclopedic knowledge of backcountry roads gleaned from years of calling on customers. The cost for car and driver was $20 a day, a fee few legislative candidates could afford.

The idea of campaigning by automobile was risky. Cars were still luxury items in rural New York, and to use one might remind voters unnecessarily of Franklin’s silk-stocking pedigree. Far more serious was the possibility of an accident. Farmers didn’t like automobiles because they frightened their horses. In fact, New York law gave the right-of-way to horse-drawn vehicles. “When we met a horse or a team—and that was about every half mile or so,” said FDR, “we had to stop, not only the car but the engine as well.”⁴⁹ But the experiment proved a whopping success. Wheezing along at the dazzling speed of twenty miles an hour, Roosevelt crisscrossed the district as no candidate had done before. The flag-draped little car soon caught people’s attention.^* Even the mandatory horse stops worked to FDR’s advantage. Farmers were duly impressed with the candidate’s deference, and Franklin used the halts to chat up the teamsters and anyone else in the vicinity.

For companionship, and to learn the tricks of the campaign trail, Franklin invited Richard E. Connell, the editor of the Poughkeepsie News-Press and perennial Democratic nominee for Congress, to accompany him. Connell was a gifted stump speaker in the florid style of William Jennings Bryan and began each of his orations by referring to his audience as “My Friends”—a phrase Roosevelt quickly adopted as his own. It was also Connell who advised FDR to discard the pince-nez he had worn since Groton. Made him look snooty, said Connell.

For four exhausting weeks, Franklin, Connell, and Hawkey spent day after day on the dusty back roads of Dutchess, Putnam, and Columbia counties, giving the same speeches as often as ten times a day. They spoke from the porches of general stores, atop hay wagons, in dairy barns, at village crossroads, sometimes standing on the backseat of the old Maxwell itself—any place where a group of farmers could be brought together. “I think I worked harder with Franklin than I ever have in my life,” said Hawkey afterward.⁵⁰

FDR was having the time of his life. Nothing seemed to lessen his enthusiasm for jumping into a crowd, pumping hands, and making friends. He was “a top-notch salesman,” a Hyde Park housepainter, Tom Leonard, remembered. “He wouldn’t immediately enter into the topic of politics when he met a group. He would approach them as a friend and would lead up to that … with that smile of his.”⁵¹

No roadside gathering was too small for Franklin. He startled a gang of Italian railroad workers repairing track near Brewster by leaping from his car into their midst, chattering away in what they slowly realized was his own version of Italian—a cross between textbook French and the Latin he had learned at Groton.⁵²

Occasionally Roosevelt’s enthusiasm got the best of him. Campaigning in the Harlem Valley on the eastern edge of the district late one afternoon, he stopped in front of a small-town saloon, rushed inside, and invited everyone to have a drink. “What town is this?” he asked the bartender. “Sharon, Connecticut,” said the man pouring drinks. FDR paid up, passed out campaign buttons, and told the story on himself for years.⁵³

As the campaign wore on, Judge Mack recognized that FDR was a natural. His speech making was still awkward, but he had an uncanny ability to persuade his audience. Women’s suffrage did not come to New York until 1917, but an increasing number of ladies began to attend Franklin’s rallies, especially those in the evening. “They came to see as well as hear the handsomest candidate that ever asked for votes in their district,” said Mack. “Franklin was so good looking he might have stepped out of a magazine cover.”⁵⁴

Roosevelt was his own campaign manager. He ordered up 2,500 campaign buttons, designed 500 posters for storefront windows throughout the district, and personally wrote checks to pay for advertisements he placed in each of the twenty-four county newspapers, ranging from the Amenia Times to the Wappinger Chronicle. His platform was entirely personal and avoided substantive issues that might trigger opposition. “I want to represent you, the people of these counties, and no one else,” he told an October rally in Hudson. “I am pledged to no man, to no special interest, to no boss. I want to stay on the job representing you twelve months of the year.”⁵⁵ Later, he would write with disarming candor, “During the campaign … I made no promises in regard to particular legislation.”⁵⁶ Instead, he identified himself with good government and blasted away at the “rotten corruption of the New York legislature and the extravagant mismanagement of the State administration.”⁵⁷

Nineteen-ten proved to be a banner year for the Democrats. Riding a wave of protest against the complacency of the Taft administration in Washington, the party picked up ten seats in the United States Senate and more than half the governorships (including Princeton president Woodrow Wilson in New Jersey) and won a majority in the House of Representatives for the first time since 1892. The GOP debacle was greatest in New York, where the party lost the governorship, both houses of the legislature, and two thirds of the seats in Congress.

FDR was a direct beneficiary of the Democratic landslide, which, in New York at least, was partially attributable to Cousin Theodore’s reentry into political life. In a preview of the 1912 presidential election, TR took up the cudgels for reform, lambasted the party’s old guard, and split the GOP down the middle. The issues were tailor-made for TR. Governor Charles Evans Hughes had been locked in a bitter struggle with Republican regulars and old-line Democrats over electoral reform. Hughes sought to introduce direct primaries for party nominations to state office—an innovation that threatened the power of both the GOP bosses in Albany and the Tammany leadership in New York City. But Hughes was elevated to the Supreme Court before the battle was won. When the bosses combined to defeat the measure, Teddy jumped into the fight. At the Republican state convention in Saratoga on September 27, TR wrested control of the party apparatus from the old guard, forced the nomination of his friend Henry L. Stimson for governor, and dictated a reformist platform. Party regulars responded by sitting on their hands during the election.

Franklin capitalized on the Republican split. He lashed out at political bosses in both parties, fighting alongside his illustrious cousin against graft, privilege, and corruption. Asked at a farm rally whether he supported Governor Hughes’s policies, FDR replied, “You bet I do. I think he is one of the best governors the State has ever had.”⁵⁸ Since his opponent, Schlosser, had voted against the election reform bill, the lines were drawn. The cadences of political rhetoric came naturally to Roosevelt: “I don’t know who Senator Schlosser represents,” he told a gathering at the Quaker meetinghouse in Clinton Corners. “But I do know that he hasn’t represented me and I do know that he hasn’t represented you.”⁵⁹

The Republicans initially paid no attention to FDR. But as the campaign drew to a close, panic set in. In the final week, Hamilton Fish, who represented Dutchess County in Congress,^* attacked Franklin as a carpetbagger who lived in Manhattan, not Hyde Park. His automobile campaign, said Fish, was nothing more than a cheap “vaudeville tour for the benefit of the farmers.”⁶⁰ The Poughkeepsie Eagle, which had otherwise ignored FDR, now railed against his ties to big business: “Franklin D. Roosevelt represents just the opposite of what Theodore Roosevelt stands for. The News-Press reports him as managing clerk of the firm of Carter, Ledyard and Milburn of 54 Wall Street. It is well for the electors of this Senatorial District to bear in mind that this firm are the lawyers for some of the great trusts which are being prosecuted by President Taft’s administration, such as the Standard Oil Co., and the Sugar Trust.”⁶¹ Schlosser, who had conducted what amounted to a front-porch campaign, joined the fray with a vituperative attack on FDR’s patrician origins and dandified appearance. Roosevelt responded by renewing his attack on Schlosser’s subservience to the GOP bosses in Albany. “I had a particularly disagreeable opponent,” FDR remembered years later. “He called me names … and I answered in kind. And the names I called him were worse than the names he called me. So we had a joyous campaign.”⁶²

FDR closed out the race with an election-eve rally in Hyde Park. With Eleanor and Sara at his side, he told his fellow townsmen, “You have known what my father stood for before me, you have known how close he was to the life of this town, and I do not need to tell you that it is my desire always to follow in his footsteps.”⁶³

November 8, election day, dawned gray and rainy—a good omen for Democrats, who always prayed for bad weather upstate to keep the Republican faithful indoors. FDR voted early and returned to Springwood to await the results. As the returns trickled in that evening, it quickly became apparent that the state and the nation were undergoing one of those defining moments when political power passes from one party to the other. The Democrats swept everything in sight. Republican Henry Stimson suffered a crushing defeat for governor, Richard Connell upset Hamilton Fish in the race for Congress, and Roosevelt carried more than two thirds of the precincts in the Twenty-sixth Senatorial District, defeating Schlosser 15,708 to 14,568—an unprecedented Democratic majority.

But it was not just the Democratic avalanche that propelled FDR into office. He outspent Schlosser five to one; he outcampaigned and outorganized him by an even greater margin; and he led the entire Democratic ticket.⁶⁴ He ran almost as well in the countryside as he did in Poughkeepsie, carried Hyde Park 406–258, and defeated Schlosser on his home turf in Fishkill.

Sara watched the returns as avidly as Franklin, proudly noting the results in her firm Delano hand on a sheet of personal stationery: “Franklin carried Poughkeepsie by 927 … carried Hudson by 499 … Fishkill 128 … Second Assembly district of Dutchess 900.” Sara was not surprised. “I have always thought Franklin perfectly extraordinary,” she once said, “and, as I look back, I don’t think he has ever disappointed me.”⁶⁵

At the age of twenty-eight, Roosevelt had found his calling. He passed out two dozen expensive cigars to friends and relatives and settled in to savor his victory. It was a singular personal triumph. He had run strongly in the rural reaches of the district, where party professionals had thought he had little chance. And the pros took notice. When “Big Tim” Sullivan, the Tammany wheelhorse who represented the Bowery in the Senate, heard that TR’s cousin was going to be a colleague, he told friends, “If we’ve caught a Roosevelt, we’d better take him down and drop him off the dock. The Roosevelts run true to form, and this kid is likely to do for us what the Colonel is going to do for the Republican party, split it wide open.”⁶⁶

New York legislators earned $1,500 a year. The session rarely lasted more than ten weeks, and most members either commuted or stayed in one of the half-dozen tourist-class hotels and boardinghouses that catered to transient lawmakers. Hyde Park was sixty-five miles from Albany on the main Delaware & Hudson rail line and FDR might have easily commuted, yet he chose to convert his election victory into a full-time career as a state senator. Skeptics might argue it was a rich man’s hobby: Franklin could not have established himself in the capital without his trust-fund income and Sara’s largesse. But FDR was committed. As he told the voters in Hudson, he intended to stay on the job in Albany “twelve months of the year.”

In mid-November Franklin went to Albany to find a suitable house. “I suppose I must have gone [with Franklin] and looked at the house which we took, though I have no recollection of doing so,” Eleanor said many years later.⁶⁷ What the Roosevelts found was a massive three-story brownstone in the Flemish Renaissance style favored by wealthy moguls living upstate. The house was situated on a one-acre lot at 248 State Street, virtually in the shadow of the capitol. “It is quite a big house with a piazza and a big yard … and built more like a country house,” Eleanor wrote to her friend Isabella Ferguson in Tucson.⁶⁸ Franklin called it “palatial.” Sara said it was “a fine house that could be made comfortable.”⁶⁹ The large downstairs rooms provided ample space for entertaining, and there was an enormous paneled library at the rear and more than enough room on the second and third floors for their three children, the children’s nurses, and a household staff of six. The rent was $400 a month—$4,800 annually, or more than three times FDR’s senatorial salary. Later the Roosevelts moved into even larger quarters at 4 Elk Street, known as “Quality Row” for the affluent Albany families that lived along it. That mansion had been built by Martin Van Buren when he was governor—the first New York governor to reach the White House—and reflected Little Van’s penchant for lavish living.

The legislature convened on January 4, with the Democrats in control of both houses. The Assembly was led by the thirty-seven-year-old Alfred E. Smith, a seven-term veteran from the Lower East Side, son of an Irish mother and an Italian-German father, a vital cog in the Tammany organization who despite an eighth-grade education had demonstrated a political savvy that catapulted him ahead of a legion of better-educated, more seasoned legislators. In the Senate, the organization turned to thirty-three-year-old Robert F. Wagner, son of a Wiesbaden printer, who had landed in New York at the age of nine, not speaking a word of English. Smith and Wagner exemplified the spirit of urban reform that characterized Tammany in 1911, though FDR had yet to recognize it.

The first order of business was the election of a United States senator. The term of Chauncey Depew, the Republican incumbent, expired March 4, 1911. Under the Constitution, U.S. senators were chosen by state legislatures, and in New York it was done in joint session: 150 assemblymen and 50 state senators, a total of 200 votes, of which a majority (101) was required to elect. Since there were 114 Democrats in the legislature, it was a foregone conclusion that Depew’s successor would be named by the Democratic caucus.

Tammany’s candidate was William F. Sheehan, known throughout the state as “Blue-eyed Billy,” the former political boss of Erie County, lieutenant governor, and assembly speaker who was now practicing law in New York City as the partner of Judge Alton B. Parker, the 1904 Democratic presidential nominee. Sheehan had amassed a considerable fortune in and out of politics, and his current legal practice reflected the ultimate in white-shoe respectability. He was director of a dozen or so public utility companies and, with the conservative Judge Parker, embodied the alliance between big business and machine politics. Sheehan raised money from his clients for the Democrats; Tammany spent the money and remembered from whence it came.

But the caucus was far from unanimous. Sheehan was anathema to old Cleveland Democrats—men like Franklin’s father, upstate WASPs who abhorred political bosses in principle yet as a practical matter were far more hidebound and conservative. Their candidate was Brooklyn attorney Edward M. Shepard, counsel for the Pennsylvania Railroad, an intimate of J. P. Morgan who had long been active in the cause of good government but could scarcely be called a liberal crusader. The fact that Sheehan was Irish Catholic and Shepard a Yankee Episcopalian was of more significance than many would openly admit.

Franklin sided with the Cleveland crowd. “Sheehan looks like [Tammany’s] choice,” he noted in his diary in early January. “May the result prove that I am wrong! There is no question in my mind that the Democratic Party is on trial, and having been given control of the government chiefly through up-state votes, cannot afford to surrender its control to the organization in New York City.”⁷⁰ Like Theodore when he first entered the legislature, FDR was itching for a fight. It was a matter of publicity and power, not policy or substance. The issue for Franklin was “bossism,” and the contest for U.S. senator was the first target of opportunity that came into view. Whether Sheehan was more progressive than Shepard was immaterial.

Under party rules the decision of the caucus was binding. A majority of the caucus was fifty-eight votes, and if party discipline prevailed—and it invariably did—those fifty-eight determined how all 114 Democrats would vote on the floor. That gave Tammany the whip hand. The New York City organization controlled far more than the fifty-eight votes required, and Charles F. Murphy, the astute Tammany chieftain, confidently expected to put Sheehan in the Senate come March.^* Yet there was a loophole. When asked by FDR, Al Smith confirmed that only those Democrats who attended the caucus were bound. If a member was absent, he was not bound by the caucus’s decision.⁷¹

Both parties scheduled their caucuses for nine o’clock on the evening of January 16. The Republicans met briefly and unanimously named Depew. But when the Democrats called their meeting to order, twenty-three members were absent. Those present voted sixty-two for Sheehan, twenty-two for Shepard, and seven for D. Cady Herrick, a former candidate for governor. The caucus formally nominated Sheehan, but only ninety-one Democrats had attended—ten fewer than the 101 votes required to elect.

While the Democrats caucused, twenty-one of the absentees convened nearby in the Ten Eyck Hotel. Some favored Shepard, some favored other candidates, but all were agreed that they would not support Sheehan. A brief press release explained they did not wish their individual votes smothered by the caucus. “The people should know just how their representatives voted … and any majority should be credited to the representatives in the Legislature and not someone outside that body”—a blast at Tammany in general and Charles F. Murphy in particular.⁷²

The legislature met in joint session the next morning. When the ballots for U.S. senator were tabulated, Sheehan had ninety-one votes from the Democratic caucus, all eighty-six Republicans voted for Depew, and the remaining Democratic votes were split among a number of sentimental favorites.^* No candidate had received the 101 votes required for election. For the next ten weeks battle lines hardened and the legislature ground to a halt. “Never in the history of Albany have 21 men threatened such total ruin of machine plans,” the veteran newsman Louis Howe reported in The New York Herald.⁷³ The rebels “are the talk of the capital,” said The New York Times. “They are not radicals. They speak with moderation, and have made clear that while they will resist to the last any attempt at coercion, they are keenly alive to the necessary processes of government by party.”⁷⁴

FDR was not the instigator of the insurgency or even its prime organizer. Yet he quickly emerged as its spokesman and informal chairman. He was always available to the press, he had no political baggage from past campaigns, and he was articulate and self-confident. “There is nothing I love as much as a good fight,” he told The New York Times on January 22. “I never had as much fun in my life as I am having right now.”

The name Roosevelt fascinated reporters bored with statehouse routine. Comparisons with TR were inevitable. The New York Post told its readers that Franklin had “the strong insurgent tendencies of the family.”⁷⁵ The American reported, “His face is boyish, but those who remember Theodore Roosevelt when he was an Assemblyman say the Senator bears a striking likeness to the Colonel.”⁷⁶ According to the New York World, FDR was “of spare figure and lean intellectual face, suggesting a student of divinity rather than a practical politician.”⁷⁷ The New York Globe depicted a matinee idol: “Tall, with a well set up figure, he is physically fit to command. His face is a bit long but the features are well modeled, the nose is Grecian, and there is a glow of country health in his cheeks.… It is the chin, though, aggressive and somewhat prominent, that shows what a task the leaders in Albany have if they have thoughts of making this young man change his mind. His lips are firm and part often in a smile over even white teeth—the Roosevelt teeth.”⁷⁸

FDR’s house, just one block from the capitol, became insurgent headquarters. It was our “harbor of refuge,” said Kings County assemblyman Edmund R. Terry.⁷⁹ Every morning the insurgents gathered in the Roosevelts’ library, walked together to the legislature, cast their votes against Sheehan, returned after the session, went out again for supper, and came back for a long evening of drinks and cigars. The sessions were as much social as political. “There is very little business done at our councils of war,” FDR confided to a Times reporter. “We just sit around and swap stories like soldiers at a bivouac fire.”⁸⁰ There were shouts and laughter and a blue haze of cigar smoke that engulfed everyone and everything. The smoke became so pervasive that Eleanor eventually moved the children to the third floor so they might breathe more easily.

The fight against Sheehan gave Eleanor her initial taste of political life. “It was a wife’s duty to be interested in whatever interested her husband, whether it was politics, books or a particular dish for dinner. That was the attitude with which I approached that first winter in Albany,” she said later.⁸¹ Eleanor watched proceedings from the Senate gallery, entertained the insurgents at home, prepared their drinks and snacks, and forged some unlikely friendships. Veteran Tammany pols like Tom Grady and Tim Sullivan—who had little use for Franklin—found Eleanor delightful. “Be with the insurgents, and if needs be with your husband every day in the year but this,” wrote Grady to ER on Saint Patrick’s Day. “But this day be with us.”⁸² Eleanor’s understanding of the personal aspects of politics seemed instinctive. She softened Franklin’s self-righteousness and made him appear less arrogant. When Lord Bryce, Great Britain’s ambassador to the United States, addressed a joint session of the legislature, ER stepped forward and hosted a massive reception where Tammanyites, insurgents, and Old Albany society mingled freely. That first year in the state capital was a seminar in practical politics, and Eleanor enjoyed every minute. As one of her most sympathetic biographers has written, “Franklin’s entrance into politics saved them both from the kind of ordinary upper-class life, vapid and fatuous, that ER associated with society—at least that part of society where she had never felt welcome, comfortable, or understood.”⁸³

Tammany exerted maximum pressure on the insurgents. Pet projects were shelved, patronage dried up, hometown constituents were mobilized, local newspapers counseled against delay, county chairmen, bankers, and prominent businessmen threatened to withdraw support. More than once, FDR had to raise funds for his colleagues to pay off mortgages called suddenly by their banks.⁸⁴ When intimidation failed, the Sheehan forces turned to favors and inducements. Al Smith did not say “to get along, you have to go along,” but the capital was rife with rumors of judicial posts and other perks offered to the rebels. Charles Murphy journeyed to Albany to meet with FDR; Sheehan and his wife had lunch with Franklin and Eleanor—all to no avail. At the end of March the rebels still held out. The legislature had been in session ten weeks, and not one measure of substance had been enacted.

Both sides were becoming restive. Governor John Dix, in despair for the state budget, called for Sheehan to withdraw. A number of compromise candidates emerged, and finally Charles Murphy settled on State Supreme Court justice James Aloysius O’Gorman, a former Tammany sachem (underboss) and longtime president of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick. O’Gorman had been on the bench for ten years and his reputation for integrity was unassailable. Unlike Sheehan and Shepard, he had no ties to the corporate world or big business. Yet he was far more a creature of Tammany than Sheehan had ever been. He would be hard for the rebels to accept, but even harder for them to reject.

When Smith and Wagner promised there would be no reprisals, the insurgents broke ranks. A majority voted to accept O’Gorman. FDR sought to hold out, but with his troops thinning, further resistance was futile. He embraced the inevitable: “We would have taken Justice O’Gorman at the very beginning and been perfectly satisfied,” he later told the Times.⁸⁵

On the afternoon of March 31, 1911, when the rebels filed into the chamber for the final vote, jubilant regulars let out a raucous cheer. There were cheers and more cheers, and then an Irish voice burst into song: the rhythmic anthem of the New York City organization: “Tam-ma-nee … Tam-ma-nee.” The regulars joined in, chorus after chorus, including the improvised

Tam-ma-nee, Tam-ma-nee
Franklin D., like Uncle “The,”
Is no match for Tam-ma-nee;
Tam-ma-nee, Tam-ma-nee

Eventually order was restored and the clerk called the roll—the sixty-fourth ballot for U.S. senator. When his name was called, Roosevelt stood to explain his vote, struggling to make himself heard above an undercurrent of hisses. “We have followed the dictates of our consciences and have done our duty as we saw it. [Hisses.] I believe that as a result the Democratic Party has taken an upward step. [Groans and hisses.] We are Democrats—not irregulars, but regulars. [Silence]. I take pleasure in casting my vote for the Honorable James A. Gorman. [Tepid applause.]”⁸⁶ The results were predictable. One hundred twelve Democrats voted for O’Gorman; eighty Republicans for Depew. The insurgency was broken. All but three of the twenty-one members who had rebelled with FDR would be defeated in upcoming elections.

The fight against Sheehan became another myth Roosevelt could not resist embellishing. Two days after the vote in Albany, Franklin addressed the YMCA of Greater New York and claimed victory. “I have just returned from a big fight,” he announced. “A fight that went sixty-four rounds. This fight was a free-for-all … and many of the other side got good and battered.… The battle ended in harmony, and we have chosen a man for the people who will be dictated to by no one.”⁸⁷

Over the years the public forgot how ignominiously the insurgents had been beaten and remembered only that Sheehan had not been elected. This became gospel for FDR, who never tired of retelling the tale of his first political victory.^* “Do you remember the old Sheehan fight of 1911?” he asked a longtime friend in 1928 when he was running for governor. “When the final Murphy surrender came, the flag of truce was brought to me by Assemblyman Alfred E. Smith and State Senator Bob Wagner. What a change has taken place all along the line.”⁸⁸

FDR harvested a bumper crop of national publicity from the Sheehan fight, and for some he became a youthful symbol of political reform. The Cleveland Plain Dealer tabbed Franklin as TR’s successor: “May it not be possible that this rising star may continue the Roosevelt dynasty? Franklin D. Roosevelt is, to be sure, a Democrat, but this is a difference of small import. In other respects, he seems to be thoroughly Rooseveltian.”⁸⁹ In North Carolina, Josephus Daniels, editor of the Raleigh News & Observer, wrote an editorial praising FDR’s stand against Tammany entitled “A Coming Democratic Leader.”⁹⁰ In Trenton, New Jersey’s reformist governor Woodrow Wilson took notice, and TR wrote his congratulations: “Just a line to say that we are really proud of the way you have handled yourself.”⁹¹

The downside of the Sheehan struggle was that FDR was tagged as anti-Catholic and anti-Irish—a label that proved hard to shake. The Reverend Patrick Ludden, the Roman Catholic bishop of Syracuse, claimed that Franklin and his colleagues reflected a resurgence of “the old spirit of Knownothingism” that prevented Catholics, especially Irish Catholics, from getting ahead.⁹² Daniel O’Connell, political boss of Albany for several generations, put it more pungently. Franklin, he said, “was a bigot. He didn’t like Tammany. He didn’t like poor people. He was a patronizing son of a bitch.”⁹³ FDR’s denials were more fervent than convincing. Both he and Eleanor shared the anti-Irish, anti-Catholic prejudices of their time and class.^* Franklin would learn tolerance, and over the years he and the nation’s Irish pols would use each other for their mutual benefit. But their affection never ran deep. James A. Farley, who served FDR for a dozen years as campaign manager and party chairman, had as one of his tasks to persuade his fellow Irish leaders that they could work with Roosevelt in spite of what they might have heard about his youthful anti-Catholicism. Farley did a superb job, but he was never personally convinced. Later he lamented that his relationship with FDR had been purely professional. “Strange as it may seem, the President never took me into the bosom of his family, although everyone agreed I was more responsible than any other single man for his being in the White House.”⁹⁴

A lasting legacy of the Sheehan fight was the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution, providing for the direct election of U.S. senators by the voters in each state, not the legislatures. In April 1911, the New York legislature took up a bill previously introduced by Roosevelt instructing the state’s congressional delegation to support such an amendment. The direct election of senators was popular with the progressive movement throughout the country and had been one of the planks in the Democratic platform. FDR led the debate in the State Senate, which on April 20 passed the measure 28–15. Four days later the Assembly adopted it 105–30. The Democrats in both houses voted solidly in favor, most Republicans against. The Sheehan battle, taken together with similar struggles in New Jersey and Illinois, launched a groundswell of popular sentiment behind the amendment. Congress adopted it by the required two-thirds vote on May 13, 1912, and upon ratification by three quarters of the states, it became part of the Constitution on May 31, 1913. (New York was the fourth state to ratify, acting January 15, 1913.)

Fighting “bossism” came naturally to FDR. He challenged Tammany over a bill to reorganize the State Highway Commission, pressed for adoption of a direct-primary bill, and struck a puritanical pose against such Tammany-endorsed measures as Sunday baseball, legalized prizefighting, and betting at the racetrack. “Murphy and his kind must, like the noxious weed, be plucked out root and branch,”⁹⁵ he told an audience in Buffalo. These stands were popular with Roosevelt’s churchgoing constituency of upriver farmers and small-town businessmen. But they ignored the economic issues of the day, failed to address the growing problems of industrialization, and tagged Tammany with an out-of-date label more appropriate to the days of the Tweed Ring than the progressive leadership of Murphy, Wagner, and Smith.^* As one legislative veteran put it, FDR’s ideas in 1911 were “the silly conceits of a political prig [devoid] of human sympathy, human interests, human ties,” a characterization with which most members would have agreed.⁹⁶

^* Written in pencil by Roosevelt on the flyleaf of his copy of Professor Henry S. Redfield’s Selected Cases on Code Pleading and Practice in New York. Redfield was one of two professors who failed FDR.

^* Except for the wicker furniture, there was little rustic about the Kuhn-Roosevelt “cottage.” In addition to the extensive manicured lawns extending to the water’s edge, there were four full baths, two butler’s pantries, seven fireplaces, and a full-size laundry. It required a staff of eight to operate. After FDR contracted polio, the cottage was used sparingly. In 1952 the house and all of its furnishings were sold to the financier Armand Hammer. Hammer carefully restored it, installed electricity, and offered Eleanor full use whenever she wished. After ER’s death in 1962 Hammer donated the property to the U.S. and Canadian governments, which jointly established the Roosevelt Campobello International Park. See Jonas Klein, Beloved Island: Franklin and Eleanor and the Legacy of Campobello (Forest Dale, Vt.: Paul S. Eriksson, 2000).

^* FDR received approximately $5,000 annually from the trust fund his father established. ER’s inheritance produced a little over $7,000, the principal invested primarily in New York Central Railroad stocks and bonds, administered by Cousin Henry Parish, vice president of the Chemical Bank.

^† Anna Eleanor (May 3, 1906); James (December 23, 1907); Franklin Delano, Jr. (March 18, 1909–November 8, 1909); Elliott (September 23, 1910); Franklin Delano, Jr. (August 7, 1914); and John Aspinwall (March 13, 1916).

^* Even within the family, FDR kept his feelings largely to himself. After the death of their infant son Franklin, Jr., in 1910, Roosevelt quietly joined the board of the New York Milk Committee, to help combat infant mortality. Franklin, Jr., had been bottle-fed, and the death rate for bottle-fed infants in the city was extremely high—over a thousand babies died in Manhattan alone the summer Franklin, Jr., fell ill. The trouble was traced to unpasteurized or adulterated milk drunk from unsterilized bottles. The Milk Committee ran a chain of storefront milk stations in the poorest sections of the city, which provided pure milk and free medical advice to mothers unable to afford either. See Geoffrey C. Ward, A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt 102–103 (New York: Harper & Row, 1989).

^* FDR proved adept at the law when he chose to apply himself. Legend at Carter, Ledyard and Milburn holds that when Franklin was managing clerk he was one day sent by John Milburn to municipal court to settle eight or nine minor suits against the American Express Company, one of the firm’s principal clients. Milburn instructed FDR to take $1,000 from the cashier and pay what was necessary. Later that afternoon the firm’s cashier reported to Milburn that Roosevelt had just come back and returned the $1,000. Milburn immediately called Franklin into his office and demanded an explanation. “Oh,” said Roosevelt. “When they called the cases, I tried them all and won.” Francis M. Ellis and Edward F. Clark, Jr., A Brief History of Carter, Ledyard & Milburn 115–116 (Portsmouth, N.H.: Peter E. Randall, 1988).

^* At first blush, FDR’s statement appears somewhat grandiose. Until his election in 1932, only three New York governors had been elected president: Martin Van Buren (1836), Grover Cleveland (1884 and 1892), and TR (1904). But from the perspective of 1907, when FDR was speaking, his assertion warrants greater credence. New York cast almost 10 percent of the total electoral vote, and three of the last six presidential victors had indeed been New York governors.

^* In the 1909 election, the Democrats won all countywide offices and twenty of the twenty-seven town supervisors. See Alfred B. Rollins, Jr., Roosevelt and Howe 18 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962).

^* On election eve in November 1932, Roosevelt received a letter from Edwin De Turck Bechtel, a leading partner at Carter, Ledyard, who had been a fellow clerk with FDR at the firm and had been in the bullpen with him when Judge Mack discussed Dutchess County politics. “It thrills me,” Bechtel wrote, “to realize that your decision in 1910 as you sat at your old roll-top desk at 54 Wall Street and the political principles which you chose then and have always followed should have led to such a marvelous goal.” Enclosed with the letter were photostats of two pages from the ledger FDR kept as managing clerk “as a reminder of old times.” Legal Papers, Roosevelt Family Papers, FDRL.

^* Sara, understandably, was never happy with the rough-edged politicians and less-than-couth newsmen FDR brought to Springwood, nor with the mannish social workers Eleanor escorted in the 1920s, but she was always gracious to them. “I have always believed that a mother should be friends with her children’s friends,” she gamely put it. The one exception was Louisiana senator Huey Long, whom she could not abide. In the autumn of 1932, Senator Long visited Hyde Park to discuss campaign strategy with FDR. (The Kingfish had personally intimidated the wavering Arkansas and Mississippi delegations to keep them in line on the crucial third ballot at the Democratic convention, and Roosevelt owed him.) Always a flamboyant dresser, Long was attired in a loud checkered suit, orchid shirt, and a watermelon pink necktie, which was garish even for him. FDR received Long affably and invited him to lunch, where they continued their conversation, leaving the other guests to talk among themselves. During a momentary lull in the conversation, Sara could be heard sotto voce from her end of the table: “Who is that awful man sitting on my son’s right?” When asked later by newsmen about his opinion of FDR, Long said, “I like him. But by God, I feel sorry for him. He’s got even more sonsofbitches in his family than I got in mine.” T. Harry Williams, Huey Long 601–602 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969).

^* Twenty-two years later, FDR would capture the nation’s attention by flying from Albany to Chicago to accept the Democratic nomination for president—the first presidential candidate to use an airplane during a campaign.

^* Hamilton Fish [II] was the son of the Hamilton Fish, who served successively as governor of New York, U.S. senator, and Grant’s secretary of state for eight years. Fish II served in Congress for only one term (1909–1911) and is the father of Hamilton Fish, Jr., who subsequently held the seat from 1920 to 1945 and delighted in tweaking FDR.

^* Charles Murphy, who headed Tammany Hall from 1902 until his death in 1924, was the antithesis of his ham-handed predecessors. Known variously as “The Quiet Chief,” “Silent Charlie,” or simply “Mr. Murphy,” he had a cleansing effect on both the organization and New York politics.

The son of an Irish tenant farmer, Murphy saved enough money driving a Blue Line horse trolley to open a saloon (the first of four) known as Charlie’s Place on Second Avenue, where he learned politics doling out favors to the neighborhood. He rose quickly through the Tammany ranks, attributable in part to his gentlemanly discretion and in part to his innate political instinct, to become the most powerful Democratic leader in the state.

Reform was in the air when Murphy took control of Tammany, and he put the organization at the head of the parade. As he saw it, reform had too many ramifications to be left to the reformers. Under Murphy, Tammany became the most potent force for effecting economic and social change in New York. It supported Republican governor Charles Evans Hughes in the creation of a Public Utilities Commission, as well as laws regulating banking, insurance, and tenement housing. It pioneered legislation for old-age pensions, workman’s compensation, and five-cent transit fares. Robert Wagner would later refer to Murphy’s Tammany as “the cradle of modern liberalism.” Nancy J. Weiss, Charles Francis Murphy, 1858–1924: Respectability and Responsibility in Tammany Politics 27–38 (Northampton, Mass: Smith College, 1968); Alfred Connable and Edward Silberfarb, Tiger of Tammany: Nine Men Who Ran New York (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967); Charles LaCerra, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Tammany Hall of New York 43–46 (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1997).

^* Edward M. Shepard 14, Judge Alton B. Parker 6, former governor Herrick 2, State Supreme Court justice James W. Gerard 2, and Martin W. Littleton 2.

^* Judge Joseph M. Proskauer, one of Al Smith’s closest advisers, said party professionals in New York always laughed a little at FDR for the Sheehan affair. “According to the gospel, FDR won a great victory. But the victory was that instead of getting Sheehan, who was a pretty good upstate lawyer, [Tammany] withdrew him and nominated O’Gorman, whom they would much rather have nominated in the first place.” Interview, Judge Joseph M. Proskauer, Columbia Oral History Project, Columbia University.

^* ER’s feelings never completely changed. “Franklin was always surrounded by Catholics,” she told her friend Irine Sandifer in 1960. “They were determined to see that he was always surrounded.” Irine Reiterman Sandifer, Mrs. Roosevelt as We Knew Her 86 (Silver Spring, Md.: privately printed, 1975). Also see James MacGregor Burns and Susan Dunn, The Three Roosevelts 143, 196–197 (New York: Grove Press, 2001).

^* FDR’s view of Tammany eventually caught up with the times. When Charles Murphy died in 1924, Roosevelt said feelingly, “In Mr. Murphy’s death, the New York City Democratic organization has lost probably the strongest and wisest leader it has had in generations.… He was a genius who kept harmony, and at the same time recognized that the world moves on. It is well to remember that he had helped to accomplish much in the way of progressive and social welfare legislation in our state.” Weiss, Charles Francis Murphy 21; LaCerra, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Tammany Hall 61.

FIVE
AWAKENING

I was an awfully mean cuss when I first went into politics.

—FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT

FRANKLIN WAS LITTLE LIKED in Albany. Most of his colleagues found him insufferable. Al Smith wrote him off as a dilettante—“a damn fool” who thought more about political appearances than substantive legislation. Robert Wagner saw him as a stage dandy interested only in publicity: “Senator Roosevelt has gained his point. What he wants is a headline in the newspapers. Let us proceed to our business.” The elderly Tom Grady, who had served in the legislature with TR, thought Franklin the more obnoxious of the two. Even the genial Tim Sullivan, a man of exceptional warmth and kindness, believed him to be “an awful arrogant fellow.”¹

Frances Perkins, fresh out of Mount Holyoke and Columbia Graduate School, was often in Albany lobbying on behalf of labor. She knew the Roosevelts socially in New York City and traveled in the same circles. No one who saw FDR in those years, she wrote, would have been likely to think of him as a potential president.

I have a vivid picture of him operating on the floor of the Senate: tall and slender, very active and alert, moving around the floor, going in and out of committee rooms, rarely talking with the members, who more or less avoided him, not particularly charming (that came later), artificially serious face, rarely smiling, with an unfortunate habit—so natural that he was unaware of it—of throwing his head up. This, combined with his pince-nez and great height, gave him the appearance of looking down his nose at most people.

I think he started that way not because he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and had a good education at Harvard, but because he really didn’t like people very much and because he had a youthful lack of humility, a streak of self-righteousness, and a deafness to the hopes, fears, and aspirations which are the common lot.²

The fight against Sheehan provided national publicity for Roosevelt. But it exposed his social indifference. On March 25, 1911, while the legislature was still deadlocked, fire broke out in the Triangle Shirtwaist factory, which occupied the three top floors of a New York City loft building just off Washington Square. The flames spread quickly. The doors to the only stairwell were chained shut, ostensibly to prevent theft, and there was no fire escape. Forty-six employees fell or jumped to their deaths on the sidewalk below; one hundred perished in the inferno. All but fifteen were girls and young women between the ages of sixteen and thirty-five. In the trial that followed, the company was absolved of responsibility and collected $64,925 in insurance damages. Twenty-three families of the dead sued and received an overall total of $1,725. That amounted to $75 for each life lost.

The Triangle Shirtwaist fire, the worst factory fire in New York history, exposed the evils of unregulated working conditions. “This calamity is just what I have been predicting,” said the city’s fire chief.³ Rose Schneiderman of the Women’s Trade Union League put it more pejoratively: “The life of men and women is so cheap and property is so sacred, it matters little if one hundred and forty-six of us are burned to death,” she told a protest rally at the Metropolitan Opera House.⁴ Political leaders in Albany took up the cry for reform. The legislature immediately established a Factory Investigating Commission with Robert Wagner as chairman, Al Smith as vice chairman, and Frances Perkins as chief investigator. Over the next three years the commission would produce a flood of thirty-two bills that came to serve as models of industrial reform throughout the nation. Franklin Roosevelt stood on the sidelines. He said nothing about the Triangle fire and took no part in the legislative effort the tragedy produced.

One of the principal pieces of social legislation to come forward at the 1911 session was a bill to limit the workweek of women and children to fifty-four hours. The measure was being held up in committee, and Democrats were divided. Every vote was important. Miss Perkins approached Roosevelt to ask his support and was dismissed abruptly: “No, no. More important things. More important things. Can’t do it now. Can’t do it now. Much more important things.”⁵

Thanks to help from Tammany stalwarts like Big Tim Sullivan and The MacManus (“the Devil’s Deputy from Hell’s Kitchen”), Miss Perkins got the measure to the Senate floor a year later on the final day of the session. Under the rules, an absolute majority—twenty-six votes—was required for passage, and the supporters were two votes shy. At the last moment, Tim Sullivan and his cousin Christy, whom Miss Perkins managed to call back from the night boat that was about to take them down the Hudson to New York, crashed through the chamber door to cast the two decisive votes. “It’s all right, me gal,” Big Tim thundered. “The bosses thought they were going to kill your bill, but they forgot about Tim Sullivan.”⁶ Pandemonium erupted on the floor. The Senate was swept by a tidal wave of emotion. Callous old politicians found themselves weeping. And at the back of the chamber, Frances Perkins was weeping too.⁷

Franklin was absent when the bill passed. “I remember being considerably disappointed because Roosevelt wouldn’t do anything about the 54-hour bill,” said Perkins. “I took it hard that a young man who had so much spirit did not do so well in this, which I thought a test, as did Tim Sullivan and The MacManus, undoubtedly corrupt politicians.”^8*

Whether he could not remember, or whether he simply wanted to cover his tracks, FDR’s version of that night varies substantially—another example of excluding unpleasant facts from the record. Campaigning for governor in 1928, Roosevelt told a labor rally in Manhattan, “One of the first measures that we started in 1911 was the fifty-four-hour law for women and children in industry. In those days a fifty-four-hour law was considered the most radical thing that had ever been talked about.”⁹ Several years later, Roosevelt ratcheted up his involvement, telling reporters how he and Robert Wagner had been called Communists because they had worked for a fifty-four-hour-a-week law. “It is an old story,” said FDR, “but like an elephant, I have a long memory.”¹⁰

The most blatant reinterpretation was provided by Roosevelt’s principal aide and general factotum, Louis Howe, writing for The Saturday Evening Post in 1933. In Howe’s version, FDR not only supported the bill but played the central role in its passage. It was “young Senator Roosevelt,” wrote Howe, who held the Senate floor with a filibuster while Sullivan was summoned from the night boat. When told by runners that Big Tim refused to return, Roosevelt is supposed to have said, “Tell him he has to and I said so.”^11*

FDR’s early record on women’s suffrage was little better. Although his district included Vassar College, a hotbed of feminism, Roosevelt initially hewed to the negative attitude of his farming constituency. Under relentless pressure from campus militants, he took cover in public opinion. “I am trying to get the sentiment of Dutchess County,” he wrote Anna Dayley, a Poughkeepsie attorney, in February 1911, “and I shall be guided very largely by the result.”¹² At the end of May, he was still equivocal. “I am not opposed to female suffrage,” he allowed, “but I think it is a very great question whether the people of the state as a whole want it or not.”¹³

The following year, when the issue of a constitutional amendment for women’s suffrage was before the legislature, FDR came out in favor. Always fond of a good story, Roosevelt enjoyed telling how he had been convinced by the glamorous suffrage lobbyist Inez Milholland, who perched on his desk in the Senate chamber and dazzled him with Vassar wiles and lawyerly arguments. Milholland was often described as the high priestess of the suffragist cause, and, as FDR would have it, she persuaded him that suffrage was “the only chivalric position for a decent man to hold.”¹⁴

Eleanor supported women’s suffrage reluctantly. Throughout her life she refused to concede Milholland’s role. Nevertheless, Franklin’s conversion left her stunned. “I had never given the question serious thought,” she wrote, “for I took it for granted that men were superior creatures and knew more about politics than women did. I realized that if my husband was a suffragist I probably must be too [but] I cannot claim to have been a feminist in those early years.”¹⁵

FDR’s attitude toward Prohibition was equally equivocal. Never averse to bending an elbow himself, he nevertheless accumulated a perfect voting record in the Senate, according to the Anti-Saloon League. In January 1913, he actually introduced a local option bill for the League and became the subject of a laudatory editorial (“An Advocate of Christian Patriotism”) in its national magazine.¹⁶ In this instance, Franklin appears to have been too clever by half. Prohibition was anathema in New York City, and his opponents never tired of tying him to it. Down through 1932 the story persisted that whatever Roosevelt might say, there was a voting record to prove he was “dry” at heart.¹⁷

Following the path blazed by TR, conservation of the state’s natural resources turned Roosevelt progressive. It was as chairman of the traditionally somnolent Forest, Fish, and Game Committee in the Senate that FDR found his voice as a progressive spokesman. He spearheaded the successful fight to update and codify New York’s fish and game laws but lost a bitter battle with the timber industry to enact a similar code to protect the state’s forests. Franklin’s bill for the “Protection of Lands, Forests, and Public Parks” imposed drastic restrictions on harvesting timber—including a clause to restrict cutting trees below a minimum size on private property.

The state’s timber producers descended on Albany in droves, charging that to tamper with private ownership was unconstitutional. For Roosevelt, it was baptism in a battle he would often revisit. “The same old fight is going on up here,” he wrote to a friend in February 1912, “between the people who see that the Adirondacks are being denuded … and those [timber interests] who succeeded in getting for nothing what they would have to pay well for today. Nobody here has any desire to confiscate property and the bill before my Committee is a conservation measure only.”¹⁸ But few believed that. Any attempt to regulate what private landowners could do with their property galvanized the gods of free enterprise. Roosevelt failed to get his bill out of committee. A related bill that FDR introduced to permit the state to flood its own forest lands to provide reservoirs for public power died in the Assembly.

When the fight over the timber bill was at its height, Roosevelt was invited to give the keynote address to the progressive People’s Forum, meeting in nearby Troy. By this time his concern for conservation had morphed into an awareness of the perils of excessive individualism. The speech comes as close as FDR ever came during his early years in politics to providing a philosophical explanation for his actions. Impatient with abstract ideas, he adroitly translated contentious concepts into phrases his audience could relate to—a preview of the mature Franklin D. Roosevelt. No one was better than FDR at simplifying a complex issue and translating it into words the average American could understand.

The course of modern history, he suggested, had been a struggle for individual liberty. “Today, in Europe and America, the liberty of the individual has been accomplished.” What was now required was a process by which that liberty could be harnessed for the betterment of the community. “Competition has been shown to be useful up to a certain point and no further. Co-operation, which is the thing that we must strive for today, begins where competition leaves off.” FDR avoided the term “community interest” as too socialistic. He eschewed “brotherhood of man” as too sentimental. Instead, he defined cooperation as “the struggle for the liberty of the community rather than the liberty of the individual” and said it was “what the founders of the republic were groping for.”

The answer was regulation. But don’t call it regulation, said Roosevelt. “If we call the method regulation, people will hold up their hands in horror and say ‘unAmerican’ or ‘dangerous.’ But if we call the same process co-operation these same old fogeys will cry out ‘well done.’ ”¹⁹

FDR’s embrace of a regulative role for government led him to Trenton and Woodrow Wilson, the fast-rising leader of the progressive wing of the Democratic party. In 1910, the year Franklin was elected to the Senate in Albany, Wilson was rescued by New Jersey Democrats from a difficult situation at Princeton and elected governor.^* Wilson proved more adept at state politics than academic infighting (“The reason academic politics are so vicious is because the stakes are so small” is often attributed to Wilson) and in his first four months as governor cajoled the legislature into enacting a spectacular series of reform measures including a direct primary law, a corrupt-practices act, a bill establishing a strong public utilities commission with rate-setting authority, and an employer’s liability law. The speed with which Wilson pushed the measures through the statehouse provided a lesson in leadership that made him the odds-on favorite among progressive Democrats for the party’s 1912 presidential nomination.

Roosevelt was but one of many Democrats who journeyed to Trenton to meet Wilson. The get-together served a common purpose: Wilson was interested in the delegate vote count in New York; FDR was eager to join the Wilson campaign at its inception. They met in Wilson’s office in the autumn of 1911. How many votes could he count upon from New York? the governor asked. The prospects looked bleak, FDR replied. New York had ninety votes at the convention and perhaps a third might support Wilson. But like the Democratic legislative caucus in Albany, the state operated under the unit rule. Charles Murphy would control the delegation, and Murphy’s candidate, who was likely to be anyone other than Wilson, would get all of New York’s ninety votes.²⁰

Late that afternoon FDR and Wilson resumed their conversation on the train back to Princeton, where Wilson lived. As they sat opposite each other in a Pennsylvania Railroad day coach, the short ride to Princeton Junction gave the man who would become the twenty-eighth president of the United States and the man who would follow twelve years later as the thirty-second an opportunity to appraise each other. At fifty-five years of age, Wilson was the beneficiary of a sudden wave of popularity. But he remained cold, stern, and professorial—a dour Presbyterian academic born to southern privilege who believed God was guiding his every step. Crisply articulate, inflexible, and dedicated to principle, his firm belief in right and wrong evoked in Franklin memories both of his father, James, and, more poignantly, the Reverend Endicott Peabody. Peabody lacked Wilson’s brilliance but shared his righteous certitude. Wilson’s academic writings suggested a highly theoretical approach to the daily cut and thrust of politics, yet this was belied by his stunning pragmatism as governor.²¹ He was not a man approached easily; he was concerned more with issues than personalities; yet his grasp of political reality was indisputable. Years later, writing from the oval office, FDR drew on his own political experience to contrast Wilson with his early role model, Cousin Theodore. As Franklin saw it, TR lacked Wilson’s depth “and failed to stir, as Wilson did, the truly profound moral and social convictions.” Wilson, on the other hand, failed where TR succeeded in arousing popular enthusiasm over specific events, “even though these events may have been superficial.”²²

In FDR, Wilson saw a tall, young (Roosevelt was twenty-nine), ebullient Harvardian, somewhat full of himself, a shade too eager, not unlike many young men he had met at Princeton. He was smooth, bordering on glib, yet he spoke truthfully and reported the New York situation accurately. He would be of little help at the convention, assuming he was a delegate, but he was a Roosevelt and a Democrat, and obviously shared a commitment to reform. If Wilson got the nomination—a very big “if” in the autumn of 1911—the young man sitting opposite would be most useful building an organization in New York that could help carry the state in November. If TR became the Republican candidate, a Democratic Roosevelt would be even more valuable.

In the ensuing months, Wilson’s political fortunes eroded. His honeymoon with New Jersey legislators ended abruptly—the governor had shed none of his sanctimonious rectitude—and early backers lost interest. Supporters on Wall Street, who saw Wilson as a conservative counter to the populism of William Jennings Bryan, became disenchanted with his increasingly progressive agenda and were now working actively against him.²³ Campaign funds dried up, and other candidates, led by House Speaker Champ Clark of Missouri, entered the field.²⁴

The political tide was running strongly against Wilson when New York Democrats convened for their nominating convention in New York City on April 12, 1912. FDR organized a dinner for Wilson supporters at the Belmont Hotel the evening before. He invited close to a hundred upstate delegates, but fewer than twenty replied and of those only three accepted. Murphy dominated the convention from start to finish. A slate of ninety uninstructed delegates was chosen, Tammany held a decisive majority, and Roosevelt was pointedly passed over, as either delegate or alternate.²⁵

If Franklin was discouraged he did not show it. Following a month’s vacation in the Caribbean with his brother-in-law Hall Roosevelt (at TR’s request, Colonel George Goethals gave them a VIP tour of the Panama Canal), FDR accepted the chairmanship of the New York State Wilson Conference, a splinter group of disaffected Democrats, including William Gibbs McAdoo, Henry Morgenthau, Sr., and, to everyone’s surprise, Senator James Aloysius O’Gorman. The organization was paper thin but provided cover for Roosevelt to organize a rump of 150 Wilson supporters to attend the Democratic National Convention in Baltimore—an offset to the official New York delegation under Murphy. FDR’s team set up headquarters in the Munsey Building across from the convention and bombarded delegates with manifestoes urging Wilson’s nomination. No Democrat—save Madison and Buchanan—had ever won the White House without the electoral vote of New York, and winning New York, they asserted, required a progressive candidate. Senator O’Gorman interceded with the Democratic National Committee to obtain seats for the Wilson Conference in the gallery, where they chanted incessantly for Wilson.²⁶ Franklin obtained credentials from the sergeant at arms who admitted him to the convention floor. These were countersigned by Joseph E. Davies, the pro-Wilson national committeeman from Wisconsin who many years later would serve as FDR’s ambassador to the Soviet Union.

The 1912 Baltimore convention was Roosevelt’s first exposure to national politics and he reveled in the excitement. He spent hours working hotel lobbies and dining rooms, shaking hands and touting Wilson’s virtues. Reporters and delegates alike flocked to meet the Democratic Roosevelt. One was Josephus Daniels, editor of the Raleigh News & Observer, who had been a fan of FDR since “Blue-eyed Billy” Sheehan had been denied a seat in the U.S. Senate. Daniels was also the Democratic national committeeman from North Carolina and a prominent fixture in the Wilson campaign. “Franklin and I became friends at that convention,” Daniels wrote later. “It was a case of love at first sight.”²⁷ Another new friend who would play an important role in FDR’s political life was the taciturn Tennessee congressman Cordell Hull, an old-school Appalachian liberal who drove the Wilson bandwagon in the South.

The Democratic convention operated under the two-thirds rule, a tradition that not only gave the South veto power over the nominee but also ensured that voting would continue for at least several days. In 1912, there were 1,088 delegates; 545 constituted a majority, but two-thirds (726) were required to nominate. Most states voted under another historic relic, the unit rule: all votes from a state must be cast for a single candidate. This smothered individual delegates’ preferences and gave each state organization effective control of the vote count. Balloting began June 28. After the roll of the states was called, Champ Clark led with 440 votes; Wilson was second with 324; Judson Harmon, the conservative governor of Ohio, had 148; and Congressman Oscar Underwood of Alabama trailed with 117.^* The New York delegation, in a holding pattern, cast its ninety votes for Harmon. Murphy preferred Clark but was waiting for the opportune moment to swing the Empire State’s vote and start a stampede that would put his candidate across.

The summer of 1912 was one of the hottest on record in Baltimore, and the delegates sweltered through roll call after roll call. On the tenth ballot Murphy decided the time had come and threw New York’s support to Clark. That gave the Speaker a majority, but he was still well short of the 726 votes required. Nevertheless, his momentum appeared unstoppable. At that moment William Jennings Bryan rose from his seat in the Nebraska delegation to address the convention. The “Great Commoner” had three times led the party to defeat, but he retained the affection of many southern and western delegates, and his voice had lost none of the resonance that electrified convention after convention. “So long as the ninety wax figures of the New York delegation vote for Clark,” said Bryan, he was withdrawing his support and casting his vote for Wilson. Bryan’s intercession derailed the victory train. For the next dozen ballots Clark’s strength hovered around 550; then it began to erode. On the thirtieth ballot Indiana’s favorite son, Governor Thomas R. Marshall, withdrew and shifted the Hoosier State’s 31 votes to Wilson, who pulled ahead 460–455. With each succeeding ballot Wilson gained strength. On the forty-third ballot, four days after the voting started, Illinois switched its 58 votes from Clark to Wilson, and the landslide began. Three ballots later, Wilson was nominated with 990 votes. Tammany voted for Clark to the bitter end. Governor Marshall was later rewarded for his switch with the vice presidential nomination.²⁸ Bryan would become Wilson’s secretary of state. FDR, who did little but lead cheers and organize demonstrations, made ready to work for Wilson in the coming election. WILSON NOMINATED THIS AFTERNOON, he wired Eleanor at Campobello. ALL MY PLANS VAGUE. SPLENDID TRIUMPH.^29*

The day after Wilson was nominated, FDR called on the governor at his summer residence in Sea Girt, New Jersey. With Murphy temporarily persona non grata, Franklin sought and obtained the candidate’s permission to organize pro-Wilson New York Democrats to fight the November election. Two weeks later, at a much-ballyhooed press conference in New York City, Roosevelt proclaimed the Empire State Democracy, a grassroots progressive movement with a national agenda. Backed by Ralph Pulitzer’s New York World, the Sun, and a sprinkling of upstate papers, the movement quickly picked up speed. “We are not a small minority,” Franklin told a second organizational meeting of two hundred Democrats at the Hotel Astor on July 29. “We are a big majority.” If state party leaders cannot release themselves from their bondage to Tammany, he said, then “true party loyalty demands that bondage be broken by the rank and file. If this be party treason, let those who are responsible for such conditions make the most of it.”³⁰

The Republicans meanwhile were self-destructing. TR and President Taft traded barbs throughout 1911 and then broke irrevocably in February 1912. The issues were initially political. TR pressed a reform agenda; Taft preferred the status quo. But the dispute soon became personal. Taft denounced Teddy and his supporters as “neurotics” who sought to “pull down the pillars of the temple of freedom.” TR dismissed Taft as a “blackguard,” a “fathead,” and a “puzzlewit” with an intellect slightly less developed than a guinea pig’s. “My hat is in the ring and the fight is on,” he told a crowd of cheering supporters on February 21, 1912.³¹

The GOP convened in Chicago in mid-June. Taft forces controlled the convention machinery; TR commanded the party’s rank and file. “It is a marvelous thing” wrote Franklin, “that [Cousin Theodore], acting with the support of untrained militia, has succeeded in overcoming the well-organized opposition of the trained soldiers of the Republican Party.”³² Almost, but not quite. The credentials of some two hundred delegates were contested, and the Taft forces prevailed in virtually every case. That ensured the president’s renomination. TR charged that the deck had been stacked and dramatically instructed his delegates to walk out of the convention. “We stand at Armageddon, and we battle for the Lord,” said Theodore, with his penchant for understatement. Seven weeks later TR accepted the nomination of the newly formed National Progressive party and, as Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., observed, took the social conscience of the Republican party with him. Claiming to be “as fit as a bull moose,” he posed a threat of unknown dimensions to both parties.³³

Woodrow Wilson believed his election was preordained.³⁴ His campaign staff was less convinced. And with TR added to the race and threatening to siphon off a sizable portion of the progressive vote, all bets were off. The rupture of the Democratic party in New York now took on alarming proportions. If Taft had been the only opposition, FDR’s Empire State Democracy and half a dozen other splinter groups could have been tolerated. Wilson could oppose bossism and let the devil take the hindmost. But now every vote counted, and the Wilson campaign could not afford to alienate Tammany and the regular party organization. For his part, Charles F. Murphy was a constant Democrat. Candidates come and go, but the party continues. He had no difficulty supporting the ticket, even though he had opposed Wilson at the convention.

Wilson and Murphy made no explicit deal. But FDR soon found himself outmaneuvered. The issue came to a head in early October, when the state Democratic party met in Syracuse to nominate its candidate for governor. Murphy supported another term for the complacent John Dix and had the votes to win, though it would likely split the party. Wilson opposed Dix and demanded an open convention. The delegates, he told The New York Times, “must be left free from personal control of any sort.”³⁵

With barely a month before the election, neither Wilson nor Murphy could afford a total break. So while Wilson continued to attack the New York machine publicly, Colonel Edward M. House, his principal adviser and alter ego, negotiated with Murphy to find a compromise candidate: “some unobjectionable Tammany man … who could not bring discredit upon the party,” as House expressed it.³⁶ The charade that followed was carefully choreographed. For the first three ballots Tammany dutifully supported Dix. On the fourth, Murphy shifted his support to Congressman William “Plain Bill” Sulzer of New York City, a public champion of progressivism who had been a Tammany insider for years. Sulzer was exactly the type of common denominator behind whom the party could unite. As with Sheehan two years before, Murphy lost the battle over Dix but won the war.³⁷

Sulzer’s nomination appeared open and above board. House’s role was not revealed. Wilson claimed victory and hailed the “freedom of action which the convention exercised.”³⁸ The party split was healed, the Empire State Democracy dissolved, and FDR said he was proud to be a Democratic regular. “I believe in unity,” he told the Times.³⁹ The only discordant note was sounded by Thomas Mott Osborne, the financial angel of the Empire State Democracy. Wilson, he said afterward, was “perfectly willing to put the ten commandments to a vote and reject them if the vote were adverse.”⁴⁰ Senator Robert Wagner called Osborne a poor loser.⁴¹

FDR’s practical education continued. He began to appreciate that life in the political arena involved more than bossism and good government. He saw House negotiate with Murphy and recognized how expendable he himself had been. He also recognized that he had to get through the eye of the Democratic needle and be renominated for his Senate seat. After that he faced a general election against not just a single Republican opponent but a Bull Moose acolyte of Cousin Theodore as well. Franklin saw the handwriting on the wall and made peace with Tammany. As one scholar expressed it, FDR became a Democratic regular and a Tammany irregular.⁴² There were even rumors that if a Democratic victory in the gubernatorial race had been in doubt, Murphy would have held his nose and backed Roosevelt—just as the Republicans had nominated Theodore in 1898 to avoid defeat.^*

After FDR pulled in his horns he was nominated unanimously by the Democratic caucus in Poughkeepsie. Past differences were brushed aside, and Franklin once again hired Harry Hawkey’s red Maxwell convertible to barnstorm the district. But before the campaign commenced, Roosevelt was struck down with a particularly virulent attack of typhoid. Eleanor, who was also hit, but not as seriously, blamed the drinking water aboard the steamer returning from Campobello.⁴³ Franklin’s political career appeared to have come to an abrupt end. He could not possibly win a three-way race without mounting a strenuous backcountry campaign similar to the one he had waged two years before. But he was feverish and bedridden. To make matters worse, he had been stricken in New York City, not Hyde Park, and the old carpetbagger accusation was certain to resurface. In desperation, Franklin asked Eleanor to send for Louis Howe.⁴⁴

Eleven years older than FDR, Louis Howe was the Albany reporter for the New York Herald. A veteran newsman with a hopeless addiction to politics, Howe gloried in an atmosphere of racetracks, gambling casinos, and the ornate watering holes of East Coast society. He was barely five feet tall, emaciated, his face scarred by a childhood bicycle accident. A malodorous Sweet Caporal cigarette dangled perpetually from his lips, the ashes falling randomly on his rumpled three-piece suits. Even when freshly scrubbed, which was not often, he looked dirty and unkempt. Howe took perverse pride in his appearance, claiming to be one of the four ugliest men in New York. “Children take one look at me on the street and run.”⁴⁵ A fellow reporter once called him a “medieval gnome,” and Howe accepted the designation with delight. For most people, Louis Howe was an acquired taste. But he was blessed with superabundant energy, uncanny political insight, and a penchant for intrigue. His cynical view of human nature rarely left him disappointed. And he was always broke. His job with the Herald was seasonal and provided a precarious living at best. As a result, he hired himself out as a ghostwriter whenever possible, but the pickings in Albany were slim. “I’m in a hole,” he wrote FDR after Wilson’s nomination. “If you can connect me with a job during the campaign, for heaven’s sake help me out.”⁴⁶

Howe leaped for joy when Eleanor’s message arrived. He had admired Franklin’s fight against Sheehan, provided valuable advice to the insurgents on legislative strategy, and interviewed Roosevelt at length for the Herald—FDR’s first exposure to the national media. “Almost at that very first meeting,” Howe said later, “I made up my mind that nothing but an accident could keep him from becoming President.”⁴⁷ Howe needed a hero, and Roosevelt—who in personal appearance and patrician background was everything Howe was not—fit the bill. FDR, for his part, needed practical political guidance, and Louis Howe provided it. Except for a basic attachment to the Democratic party, Howe was indifferent to ideology. Yet he was an astute tactician with a litmus ability to distinguish a sound political move from one that was likely to cause trouble. Roosevelt became virtually unbeatable once Howe joined his entourage. It was a symbiotic relationship in which each supplied what the other could not.

Franklin turned his Senate campaign over to Howe. For the next six weeks Howe became FDR’s surrogate. He moved to Poughkeepsie, decorated Harry Hawkey’s Maxwell with Roosevelt banners, and hustled the countryside for votes. He was as energetic as Franklin had been two years earlier, but he focused more sharply on specific constituencies. To win the farm vote, Howe devised a scheme to protect farmers from New York City commission merchants, the middlemen who pocketed the difference between what the farmer got for his crop and what the consumer paid. Howe pointed out that if reelected, Roosevelt would become chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee. There he would ensure passage of an agricultural marketing act with real teeth in it. Howe mailed hundreds of personal letters over FDR’s signature informing farmers of the proposal. Each letter contained a stamped, self-addressed envelope for the farmer’s reply. Similar letters promised apple growers that Franklin would introduce a bill to standardize the size of barrels, another sore spot for farmers whose apples were often measured in oversized barrels. Shad fishermen were assured that license fees on the Hudson would be lowered. Altogether, Howe dispatched more than eleven thousand letters on FDR’s behalf.⁴⁸

No voter was left uncourted. Howe took out full-page newspaper advertisements, unprecedented in upstate races, in which Roosevelt pledged his support for women’s suffrage, identified with the concerns of the workingman, and bashed the Republicans for standing pat. Howe worked at the end of a long leash. FDR was consulted, but often after Howe had already acted. “Here is your first ad,” he wrote the bedridden Roosevelt in late October. “As I have pledged you in it I thought you might like to know casually what kind of a mess I was getting you into.… Your slave and servant, Howe.”⁴⁹

FDR turned his checkbook over to Howe and soon found himself overdrawn. Expenses were heavy, and Howe, evidently unfamiliar with check writing, always added the amount of the check to the balance rather than subtracting it.⁵⁰ FDR met most of the expenses from his personal funds, including Howe’s salary of $50 a week. Overall the race cost about $3,000, roughly twice the salary of a state senator.⁵¹ A few friends loaned Franklin money for the campaign. “I pray your mother is as wealthy as reported so I can get some of the money back,” wrote FDR’s Hyde Park neighbor Jefferson Newbold.⁵²

Howe scoured the district, promising in Franklin’s name whatever would win votes. “I’m having more fun than a goat,” he wrote FDR in early November.⁵³ Everyone was pleased except Eleanor and Sara, who were put off by Howe’s habits, particularly his addiction to high-powered Sweet Caporals. “Remember, I was still a Puritan,” Eleanor said many years later.⁵⁴ Howe ran the campaign so effectively that FDR’s absence was rarely noted and never commented upon by his opponents.^* Voters for the most part remained unaware that Roosevelt was ill—a forerunner of the campaigns Howe would conduct when FDR ran for governor and president, in which many voters never realized the candidate could not walk.

In the final week of the campaign, Jacob Southard, Franklin’s Republican opponent, attacked FDR as anti-Catholic—an unfortunate legacy of the 1911 fight against Sheehan. Howe enlisted a number of Catholic friends to put out the fire. He told Franklin not to worry. “Everyone is happy and singing the doxology.”⁵⁵ Howe was as good as his word. Without ever setting foot in his district, Franklin won by a larger margin than he had two years before.⁵⁶

FDR’s victory was part of a Democratic sweep. Wilson defeated TR by 2 million votes and Taft by almost 3 million.^* In the electoral college, Wilson carried forty of the forty-eight states with 435 votes, Roosevelt carried six states with 88 votes, while Taft carried only Utah and Vermont for a total of 8 votes. The Democrats added 61 seats in the House of Representatives, giving them a lopsided 291–127 majority, and regained control of the Senate for the first time since 1895.⁵⁷ In New York, Tammany’s “Plain Bill” Sulzer easily won a three-cornered race for governor and the Democrats regained control of both houses of the legislature. FDR led the ticket in the Twenty-sixth Senatorial District, running 700 votes ahead of both Wilson and Sulzer. “Congratulations on your deserved and notable victory,” wrote FDR’s Dutchess County friend John Walker. “When a bull moose and an elephant are both outrun by a man sick-a-bed it would seem ‘Manifest Destiny.’ ”⁵⁸

Franklin returned to Albany in January 1913, still so frail and pallid that Eleanor worried about his ability to carry on. “I’m very well and taking care of myself,” he wrote reassuringly. “Wearing rubbers, brushing my teeth, etc., etc.” As Howe had predicted, FDR became chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee and the ranking member of Forest, Fish, and Game. “This isn’t bad,” he wrote Eleanor. “I am particularly glad that the other members of Agriculture gave me control of the committee as against our N.Y. City friends.”⁵⁹

Roosevelt evidently assumed he would be joining the Wilson administration when it took office on March 4. Instead of the opulent houses they had rented in previous sessions, he and Eleanor took a two-room suite at the Ten Eyck Hotel. They commuted to Albany Tuesday through Thursday while the children remained at the town house on East Sixty-fifth Street.

The first hint that FDR might go to Washington came on January 13, 1913, when he received a telegram from Joseph Tumulty, Wilson’s private secretary, summoning him to Trenton for a conference with the president-elect.⁶⁰ Patronage matters were discussed, and Tumulty pressed Roosevelt on his willingness to join the administration. Tangential evidence suggests that FDR expressed his preference for the number two post in the Navy Department.^* No formal offer was extended, yet Eleanor recalled that in the weeks leading up to the inauguration Franklin was confident he would be going to Washington. Whether he would become the assistant secretary of the Navy was less clear.⁶¹

Wilson chose his cabinet primarily to reward the faithful, repay obligations, and punish his opponents. Little attention was paid to professional expertise or even a modest awareness of the subject matter of each portfolio. William Jennings Bryan had never been outside the United States when he became secretary of state. Lindley M. Garrison of New Jersey, the secretary of war, knew precious little about the military but had a distinguished record as a conservative jurist and was given as hostage to the strict-constructionist wing of the party.⁶² When Garrison departed the cabinet in 1916, he was succeeded by Newton D. Baker, the mayor of Cleveland. Baker too knew little about the Army but had played a key role in swinging Ohio behind Wilson at a crucial moment in Baltimore.⁶³

As secretary of the Navy, Wilson chose North Carolina newspaper editor Josephus Daniels. Daniels, from landlocked Raleigh, knew even less about the Navy than Garrison did about the Army, but he had been a vital Wilson supporter in the South and was on friendly terms with the president-elect.^† William Gibbs McAdoo of New York, whom Wilson tapped to be secretary of the Treasury, was a distinguished New York lawyer and railroad executive and would later become Wilson’s son-in-law. But he had no background in finance. He was selected primarily because he was a prominent anti-Tammany Democrat who had worked vigorously for Wilson’s election. His appointment sent an important message to the New York Democratic organization.

As attorney general, the logical choice was Louis Brandeis, widely regarded as the nation’s leading advocate of judicial reform. Instead, Wilson repaid his debt to Tennessee’s Cordell Hull and appointed James C. McReynolds from the Volunteer State. A decent lawyer who had served in TR’s Justice Department, the ultraconservative McReynolds was scarcely a crusader for reform and had little in the way of national reputation. He proved the least congenial of Wilson’s original appointees and was soon elevated to the Supreme Court, where he would later prove an implacable foe of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal.⁶⁴

FDR made certain he was not overlooked. He and Eleanor took rooms at Washington’s Willard Hotel on March 1, three days before the inauguration. Located at Fourteenth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue—less than two short blocks from the White House—the Willard had been a favorite with visiting politicians for decades. Lincoln had stayed at the old Willard before his inaugural, Grant had stayed there when he went to Washington to assume command, and virtually every subsequent chief executive had stayed at the Willard at one time or another. In 1913, most members of the incoming administration were among its guests, and Wilson attended a gala banquet there on the eve of his inaugural.⁶⁵

On his first day at the hotel, FDR met the incoming Treasury secretary William Gibbs McAdoo, with whom he had worked closely during the campaign. McAdoo was busy assembling his team at Treasury and asked Franklin if he would like to be either assistant secretary or collector of customs of the Port of New York. Both were prime appointments, particularly the collector’s post, which would have provided FDR with a vast patronage base were he interested in running for statewide office in New York. Roosevelt was appreciative but noncommittal. McAdoo’s offer was too good to turn down, but he still hoped for the post at Navy. Two days later, on the morning of the inauguration, Roosevelt ran into Josephus Daniels in the cavernous lobby of the Willard.

As Daniels recalled, FDR was bubbling with enthusiasm: “as keen as a boy to take in the inauguration ceremonies.” Franklin congratulated Daniels on his appointment. Daniels responded by offering Roosevelt the appointment he sought: “How would you like to come to Washington as assistant secretary of the Navy?” Franklin beamed. “It would please me better than anything in the world,” he told Daniels. “All my life I have loved ships and have been a student of the Navy, and the assistant secretaryship is the one place, above all others, that I would like to hold.” Roosevelt said McAdoo had asked him to join Treasury, “but nothing would please me so much as to be with you in the Navy.”⁶⁶

The symbolism of the appointment was apparent. Daniels noted in his diary that Franklin’s “distinguished cousin TR went from that place to the Presidency. May history repeat itself.”⁶⁷ The Raleigh News & Observer, announcing FDR’s posting, proclaimed, “He’s Following in Teddy’s Footsteps.” Cousin Theodore, who at this point despised Wilson even more than Taft, penned a short note: “It is interesting that you are in another place which I myself once held. I am sure you will enjoy yourself to the full as Ass’t Secty of the Navy and that you will do capital work.”⁶⁸

Before sending FDR’s nomination to the Senate, Daniels, as custom required, consulted New York’s Democratic senator, James Aloysius O’Gorman. O’Gorman owed his place in the Senate to FDR, and he assented readily. The Senate, he said, would confirm the appointment promptly.⁶⁹ Out of courtesy Daniels also touched base with the Empire State’s distinguished senior senator, Republican Elihu Root. Root, who had served as secretary of war under McKinley and secretary of state under TR, had just been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. As Daniels recalled, a queer look came over Root’s face when he mentioned FDR. “You know the Roosevelts, don’t you?” Root asked. “Whenever a Roosevelt rides, he wishes to ride in front.” Root told Daniels he knew Franklin slightly and the appointment would be fine, “though, of course, being a Republican, I have no right to make any suggestion.” Daniels replied that he wasn’t worried about FDR and that he wanted a strong man as assistant secretary. “A chief who fears that an assistant will outrank him is not fit to be chief.”⁷⁰

After the inauguration FDR returned briefly to Albany to wind up his affairs. He paid a courtesy call on Senate leader Robert Wagner and asked whether he thought it was wise to go to Washington. “Go, Franklin, go,” Wagner said, delighted to have Roosevelt in the nation’s capital rather than Albany. “I’m sure you’ll be a big success down there.”⁷¹

^* Sullivan ran the gambling and prostitution rings south of Fourteenth Street in Manhattan, and he thrived on the intensely personal side of politics. Every year on his mother’s birthday, he distributed tickets entitling each of the two thousand children in his Bowery constituency to a free pair of shoes, and he could always be counted upon in the legislature to support measures that would benefit the poor.

Sullivan served one term in Congress but left in disgust because it was too far removed from the voters and too anonymous. “There’s nothing in this Congress business,” he told a reporter. “They know ’em in Washington. The people down there use them as hitching posts. Every time they see a Congressman on the street they tie their horse to them.”

When Sullivan died in 1913, twenty-five thousand people, including three United States senators and twenty members of the House of Representatives, followed his casket to the grave. Charles F. Murphy and the mayor of New York headed the pallbearers. The high requiem mass was celebrated by Monsignor Kearney, rector of the old St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Sullivan’s estate, estimated at $2 million to $3 million dollars, was placed in trust for charitable purposes. M. R. Werner, Tammany Hall 508–510 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1968).

^* Howe, who covered Albany for years for the New York Herald, knew his account could not be disproved because the Senate Journal recorded votes only and not speeches. But four New York City newspapers, three Albany papers, and one from Poughkeepsie covered the debate. Five mentioned the Sullivans being called back, but not one mentioned Roosevelt taking part. New York Herald, The New York Times, New York World, New York Tribune, Albany Knickerbocker Press, Albany Daily Argus, Albany Evening Journal, Poughkeepsie Daily Eagle, March 30, 1912.

^* Thomas Woodrow Wilson, Princeton class of 1879, received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins in 1885, was appointed to the Princeton faculty in 1890, and became president in 1902. His first few years as president were punctuated by a flurry of educational reforms, but by 1906 his welcome had worn thin. He alienated alumni by attempting to abolish the eating clubs on Prospect Avenue, and his academic certitude turned faculty against him. In 1909–10 he lost a showdown battle with Dean Andrew West ’74 over the location and role of the graduate school (Wilson wanted it in the midst of the campus; West preferred a bucolic location). Trustees, faculty, and important donors sided with West, and Wilson recognized that his authority as president was fatally compromised. New Jersey Democrats had been urging him to run for governor, and after West’s triumph Wilson had little choice. He accepted the party’s nomination in September 1910. Arthur S. Link, “Woodrow Wilson,” in A Princeton Companion 512–515, Alexander Leitch, ed. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978).

^* The remaining 59 votes were split among a variety of favorite-son candidates, including Governor Thomas R. Marshall of Indiana (31). William Jennings Bryan, who was not a candidate but who hovered over the convention like Banquo’s ghost, received one vote. Congressional Quarterly, Guide to U.S. Elections 148 (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1975).

^* Wilson attributed his nomination to divine intervention. “I am a Presbyterian and believe in predestination. It was Providence that did the work in Baltimore,” he told his campaign manager, William F. McCombs. McCombs, who had worked round the clock to secure Wilson’s victory, was understandably taken aback. “I must confess I felt a chill … because I thought that if he attempted to apply that Predestination doctrine to the extreme, the Democratic campaign might find itself very much in the ruck.” William F. McCombs, Making Woodrow Wilson President 180–181 (New York: Fairview Publishing Co., 1921).

^* An unsigned Tammany memorandum from a member of the State Senate, perhaps Tim Sullivan, to Charles Murphy, makes the case for an alliance with FDR: “I would rather an organization man were elected, but we can’t win with an organization man.… My reasons for favoring Mr. Roosevelt are as follows: First—He is a young man, who would go up and down the state capturing a great army of young men.… Second—The name Roosevelt would mean at least 10,000 votes to the Democratic ticket. Third—He is worth several million dollars, and could finance his own campaign, if necessary. Fourth—He is independent and is known throughout the state as a man who will fight for what he believes to be right.” Manuscript, Senate files, FDRL.

^* In what surely ranks as one of the greatest examples of chutzpah of modern politics, Howe, over FDR’s signature, wrote the voters of Columbia County on November 1 to attack Franklin’s Republican opponent for not having visited the county during the campaign. FDR, meanwhile, was still flat on his back on East Sixty-fifth Street. FDR to [Voter’s name], November 1, 1912, FDRL.

^* The final returns showed Wilson with 6,293,152 to Theodore Roosevelt’s 4,119,207 and Taft’s 3,486,333. Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist candidate, received 900,369, mostly in the West, where agrarian unrest was rampant (he received 16.5 percent of the vote in Nevada and 16.4 percent in Oklahoma). Congressional Quarterly, Guide to U.S. Elections 284 (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Inc., 1975).

^* Michael Francis Doyle, a young Philadelphia lawyer active in both the Wilson and Bryan presidential campaigns, was informed by Bryan shortly after the election that Wilson planned to appoint him assistant secretary of the Navy. After FDR’s visit to Trenton, Bryan advised Doyle that Roosevelt had his eye on the position and urged Doyle to withdraw, which Doyle did. Frank Freidel, interview with Michael Francis Doyle, October 17, 1947, cited in Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt: The Apprenticeship 155 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1952).

^† Daniels was initially concerned about his lack of nautical knowledge but rationalized his acceptance by recalling that he had been a successful newspaper editor without understanding linotype machines or rotary presses. Horatio Nelson, after all, had been a poor sailor, and, as Daniels would have it, Napoleon had had “no practical experience handling troops.”

Daniels remained at the Navy Department for the entire eight years of the Wilson administration. Afterward he relished retelling the query put by a newsman to longtime Republican congressman Martin B. Madden of Illinois: “Can a civilian direct the Navy if he had no experience in Naval affairs?” Madden answered, “Daniels did.” Josephus Daniels, The Wilson Era: Years of Peace—1910–1917 122–123 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1944).

SIX
ANCHORS AWEIGH

As a member of the Wilson administration, Roosevelt noted Wilson’s personal difficulties with the politicians, his remoteness and isolation from them. Taking state committeemen to luncheons to listen to and mollify their grievances was one of the chores Franklin undertook. He unbent, laughed with them, swapped yarns. FDR was good at this. He learned to be a politician.

—FRANCES PERKINS

THE WILSON ADMINISTRATION commenced on a high plane of moral rectitude. Mrs. Wilson canceled the inaugural ball as too frivolous for so solemn an occasion; the president, an avid golfer, declined membership in the Chevy Chase Country Club because it was too exclusive; and incoming Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan initiated the era of grape juice diplomacy by refusing to serve alcohol at state functions.¹ Wilson had campaigned under the banner of the New Freedom, which promised “the emancipation of the generous energies of the people,” primarily through states’ rights, free competition, and tariff reform.² But for the Virginia-born Wilson, the New Freedom was for whites only. The first southerner elected president since Zachary Taylor, Wilson immediately segregated the government’s workforce. Black Republican appointees in the South were discharged and replaced by whites, and within six months government workers in Washington who had worked side by side for years found themselves separated by race.³ “Public segregation of civil servants, necessarily involving personal insult and humiliation, has for the first time in history been made the policy of the United States government,” lamented W. E. B. Du Bois, who, unlike most black leaders, had supported Wilson.^4*

After sixteen years in the wilderness, the Democrats had returned to power—not old-school, high-caste, hard-money Cleveland Democrats but a coalition of agrarian populists, urban workers, middle-class progressives, and all ranks of southerners, who voted Democratic for the same reason most blacks voted Republican: Abraham Lincoln, Emancipation, and the Civil War.⁵ The southern tilt of the Democratic party was more pronounced than ever, and with the GOP hopelessly divided, it was the South that called the tune.⁶

To head the Navy, Wilson had chosen Josephus Daniels, the populist editor of the Raleigh News & Observer, who had managed his campaign publicity in the South. Partially to achieve regional balance, Daniels chose FDR as his assistant secretary, and the president submitted Franklin’s nomination to the Senate on March 12, 1913. He was confirmed unanimously five days later. No hearings were held. Roosevelt, who had been waiting anxiously, promptly took the oath of office. It was March 17, his eighth wedding anniversary, and he immediately wrote Eleanor, who was at home in New York with the children:

My own dear Babbie:

I didn’t know until I sat down at this desk that this is the 17th of happy memory. In fact with all the subdued excitement of getting confirmed and taking the oath of office, the delightful significance of it all is only beginning to dawn on me. My only regret is that you could not have been with me but I am thinking of you a great deal.⁷

The desk at which FDR wrote was the same mahogany behemoth Cousin Theodore had salvaged from a Navy storeroom sixteen years earlier. Festooned with hand-carved warships bulging from the side panels, it had originally been made for Gustavus Fox, the Navy’s assistant secretary during the Civil War. TR had been thirty-eight at the time he was appointed; Franklin was barely thirty-one—the youngest assistant secretary in the history of the Navy, twenty years junior to Secretary Daniels, half the age of most flag officers, and forty-five years younger than Admiral George Dewey, hero of the battle of Manila Bay, the ranking officer on active duty.

Government was small in 1913, and the entire Navy Department was housed on two floors of the old State, War, and Navy Building, adjacent to the White House. An architectural monument in more ways than one (the stone walls were four feet thick), the opulent Second Empire style of the building epitomized the conspicuous consumption of America’s Gilded Age.⁸ Roosevelt’s office on the third floor was almost as large and ornate as the connecting corner office Secretary Daniels occupied. Both enjoyed large French doors opening onto a balcony that overlooked the South Lawn of the White House, which FDR could see easily when seated at his desk.⁹

“Dearest Mama,” Franklin wrote after he settled in. “I am baptized, confirmed, sworn in, vaccinated—and somewhat at sea! For over an hour I have been signing papers which had to be accepted on faith—but I hope luck will keep me out of jail.” Absentmindedly, he signed the handwritten note to his mother with his full official signature, “Franklin D. Roosevelt.” Sara noted the gaffe and did not miss a beat: “Try not to write your signature too small,” she joked. “So many public men have such awful signatures.”¹⁰

The Navy that Daniels and Roosevelt took charge of in 1913 had mastered the transition to modern weaponry but was hobbled by an administrative structure substantially unchanged since 1842. The fleet consisted of 259 ships, including 39 battleships and heavy cruisers, manned by 63,000 officers, sailors, and marines, with an annual budget of $144 million—roughly 20 percent of all federal expenditures.¹¹ The British Admiralty ranked it third in the world (behind Great Britain and Germany), but the numbers concealed the antiquated design of most of the American vessels.¹² The fleet was also divided into three independent formations (Atlantic, Pacific, and Asiatic), each with a separate command structure. Promotion was strictly by seniority, advancement was slow, and there was no overall commander analogous to Britain’s First Sea Lord.

The barnacled logistical apparatus, originally patterned after the administrative boards of the Admiralty in the age of sail, had proved impervious to change. The department was organized into eight quasi-independent bureaus (Navigation, Ordnance, Equipment, Steam Engineering, Construction and Repair, Yards and Docks, Supplies and Accounts, Medicine and Surgery), each headed by a powerful chief who was legally responsible to Congress, not the secretary of the Navy or, for that matter, the president. The bureau chiefs, most of whom were admirals who had held their posts for years, conducted their business in splendid isolation from one another and with little regard for the department as a whole.¹³ They often duplicated one another’s work, competed furiously for appropriations, and steadfastly resisted any organizational change that would diminish their authority.

In 1903 Secretary of War Elihu Root brought the Army, which had a similar structure, reluctantly into the twentieth century. The power of independent branch chiefs such as the adjutant general and the chief of engineers was broken, a general staff system established, and the entire uniformed service brought under the command of a single military head, designated chief of staff to the secretary of war. As president, TR had attempted to reorganize the Navy along similar lines but had been defeated by congressional opposition precipitated by the bureau chiefs.¹⁴

Because of the autonomy of the bureaus, the Navy was considered the most difficult cabinet department to administer.¹⁵ FDR was a vocal critic of the freestanding bureaus—they worked at cross-purposes to the department, he told the House Budget Committee in 1919—but it was not until after the attack on Pearl Harbor that he succeeded in bringing them under executive control.¹⁶

Roosevelt’s duties as assistant secretary were not defined by statute.¹⁷ Traditionally, the secretary of the Navy worked with the president on policy matters, dealt with Congress, and watched over the fleet. The assistant secretary handled the Navy’s business affairs, rode herd on the bureaus, supervised civilian personnel, and negotiated contracts. But, as FDR said, “I get my fingers into just about everything and there’s no law against it.”¹⁸ When TR had occupied the post, he had taken advantage of Secretary John D. Long’s one-day absence from the department to flash the historic signal to Commodore Dewey to move against the Spanish fleet in the Philippines, and Franklin, whenever Daniels was away, enjoyed twitting reporters about potential parallels.¹⁹ “There’s another Roosevelt on the job today,” he would say with a grin. “You remember what happened the last time a Roosevelt occupied a similar position?”²⁰

Daniels and Roosevelt made an odd couple. Yet they served together harmoniously for virtually the entire eight years of Wilson’s presidency. The strengths of one complemented the weaknesses of the other, and FDR learned from Daniels the folksy art of Washington politics. The fact is, Josephus Daniels was the only person to whom Franklin Roosevelt was ever directly subordinate. It was Daniels who made the decision to appoint him; it was Daniels who brought him to Washington; and it was Daniels who treated him as a father might treat a prodigal son whenever FDR wandered off the reservation. Daniels’s motives were primarily political. Aside from regional balance, the name Roosevelt was solid gold in every wardroom in the fleet. Daniels also recognized that an energetic assistant with an amateur’s knowledge of the sea would make his job easier. And though he did not know FDR well, he had liked him from their very first meeting and saw in him the future of the Democratic party.²¹ Roosevelt, who throughout his life called Daniels “Chief,” never forgot the debt he owed him.²² Upon taking office in 1933, one of FDR’s first acts as president was to appoint Daniels ambassador to Mexico, a post in which he served with distinction until 1941.²³

FDR cut a splendid figure as assistant secretary: tall, athletic, well spoken, enthusiastic. Daniels called him “as handsome a figure of an attractive young man as I had ever seen.”²⁴ The secretary, by contrast, was short, pudgy, slow-moving, and deliberate. Always slightly rumpled, he nevertheless dressed with studied southern formality—a tailored black frock coat in winter, white linen and seersucker in the summer. His pleated shirts were always white, his ties always black, and his high-top shoes always well polished. He wore broad-brimmed hats to shield his face from the sun and to the uninitiated looked like a stock figure from central casting.²⁵

Courtly and modest, Daniels had an amiability that concealed an iron will and a remarkably wide-ranging intelligence. He was a tireless worker, a shrewd judge of people, and a longtime rebel against established authority. He suspected that what every admiral told him was wrong, and, as one observer noted, nine times out of ten he was correct.²⁶ Daniels could be as stubborn as a country mule, and he was also without fear. Two months after taking office he went for a training flight with Lieutenant John H. Towers, the pioneer Navy aviator, in a rudimentary open-cockpit, 75-horsepower flying machine at the breathtaking speed of sixty miles an hour—the first high-ranking government official to fly in an airplane. Asked by President Wilson why he had risked his life in such a contraption, Daniels said it was his duty to sign orders for naval officers to fly and “I would not assign any man to any duty I would not try myself.”²⁷

Daniels and William Jennings Bryan were intimate friends of long standing. They were also the two most radical members of Wilson’s cabinet. For seventeen years they had worked to free the common man from the clutches of trusts, railroads, robber barons, and whatever other vested interest appeared on the horizon. Daniels served as Bryan’s publicity director in each of his presidential campaigns, and the two shared a contempt for anything that smacked of wealth and special privilege. Together they sought to promote the values of an old-fashioned, rural, small-town America: pacifist, prohibitionist, and religiously fundamental. They opposed sin with the same vehemence that they opposed the plutocracy of the Republican party and often found it difficult to distinguish between the two.

Daniels brought these values to the Navy Department and aroused the wrath of the naval establishment in so doing. TR thundered that Wilson was guilty of “criminal misconduct in entrusting the State Department and the Navy Department to Bryan and Daniels.”²⁸ While Bryan sought to paper the world with arbitration treaties, Daniels dreamed of disarmament, saw the Navy in terms of Wilsonian neutrality, and was more concerned with the welfare of the enlisted men entrusted to his care than building battleships or expanding the officer corps.²⁹

In 1913 the Navy Department was its own little world. Henry L. Stimson, Taft’s outgoing secretary of war, said it receded from the realm of logic “into a dim religious world in which Neptune was God and Mahan his prophet.”³⁰ That did not deter Daniels. He defined civilian control as civilian command and with Wilson’s support exercised it relentlessly. Daniels abolished the board of four admiral aides that stood between him and the department; limited the term of bureau chiefs to four years; and required deskbound officers to put to sea. He visited naval facilities from coast to coast, often breaking ranks to shake hands with enlisted men lined up for inspection; overrode reluctant admirals and ordered the fleet to cross the Atlantic in winter; and took issue with hallowed naval nomenclature that called left “port” and right “starboard.” At Daniels’s direction, FDR signed General Order No. 30 on May 5, 1913, requiring that directional instructions to the helmsman henceforth be given as “right” and “left.”

Daniels also jettisoned the Navy’s choker-collar uniforms, took engineering officers out of dress whites, and instituted a promotion system based on merit. But his overriding concern was to break down what he considered artificial barriers between officers and enlisted men. He opened the Naval Academy to enlisted applicants, added civilian instructors to the faculty, and sought to make every ship a floating “university” so that sailors would be better prepared to return to civilian life.³¹ Daniels halted the practice of serving wine in the officers’ mess, not only because he believed in temperance but because he thought it undemocratic. If enlisted men could not drink aboard ship, neither should their officers.³² He also banned the issue of condoms to sailors going on shore leave. “It is equivalent to the government advising these boys that it is right and proper for them to indulge in an evil which perverts their morals.”³³

FDR was on an inspection trip to the West Coast when Daniels’s temperance directive came down, but he supported it strongly. “The wine order is … on the whole absolutely right. It took nerve to do it, but tho the Secy will be unpopular in a small circle for a while, it will pay in the end.”³⁴ There is no record of his response to Daniels’s order pertaining to condoms.

Initially FDR thought Daniels a hopeless hayseed who would be overwhelmed by Washington politics. But as he watched the secretary seize control of the Navy Department, socialize with congressional committee chairmen like South Carolina’s irascible “Pitchfork Ben” Tillman,³⁵ and deal intimately with Wilson in the White House, he changed his opinion.³⁶ Two incidents in the spring of 1913 confirmed that judgment. The first dealt with command authority. The State of California had recently adopted legislation forbidding Japanese citizens from owning land in the state.³⁷ On May 9 Japan lodged a vigorous protest with Washington. Wilson rejected the note, tempers flared, and relations deteriorated. Senior military and naval officials believed war to be inevitable. On May 14, the Joint Board of the Army and Navy, chaired by Admiral Dewey, with General Leonard Wood, the Army chief of staff, serving as vice chairman, unanimously recommended that the Navy immediately move the three large battle cruisers of the Asiatic fleet (Saratoga, Monterey, and Monadnock) from their station on the Yangtze River to the Philippines and that additional reinforcements be dispatched to Hawaii and Panama. Secretary of War Lindley M. Garrison approved the recommendations on May 15, and the following day two New York newspapers carried sensational stories that the Army and Navy were preparing for war.³⁸

Daniels was outraged. He had not signed on, he disapproved of the recommendation, and he saw the press leak as a deliberate attempt to force his hand. He told his operations aide, Rear Admiral Bradley A. Fiske, that there would be no movement of ships without his or the president’s order. Daniels said he did not think war was inevitable and that such a move by the Navy would scuttle efforts to achieve a negotiated settlement. He said that in his view the board had exceeded its authority, but he would lay the matter before the president.

Wilson backed Daniels, and that should have ended the discussion. But the admirals, accustomed to having their way under Taft and TR, appealed the decision. Wilson came down hard. It was the duty of the military to follow orders, not to challenge them, he told Fiske. The president thereupon ordered the Army and Navy Board not to meet again without his express authorization. The war scare subsided, and the board remained in limbo for the next two and a half years until, with World War I lapping at America’s shores, Daniels recommended that it be reconvened.³⁹

The second key event for FDR involved the Navy’s contracting authority. Daniels hated monopolies, and the collusion among American steel companies bidding for Navy contracts aroused his special ire. FDR enjoyed telling how in the spring of 1913 he was present when Daniels met with representatives of Bethlehem, Carnegie, and Midvale Steel, each of which had submitted an identical bid for the armor plate to be used in constructing the battleship Arizona. Daniels threw the bids out and asked the companies to submit new figures by noon the next day. “I loved his words,” FDR recalled, reflecting on the pained expressions of the businessmen as they left and his and Daniels’s pleasure at their distress. But at noon the next day the steel men returned with exactly the same figures. Daniels threw those out as well and told FDR to take the next train to New York and meet with Sir John Hatfield, the leader of a British steel consortium who had just arrived in the United States. Hatfield submitted a substantially lower bid, which the American companies agreed to meet. Daniels told Congress that the Navy had saved $1,110,084 (roughly 10 percent of the total cost) as a result.⁴⁰

For the first six months FDR led a bachelor’s life in Washington, living first at the Willard, then at the Powhatan Hotel, an aging landmark at the corner of Eighteenth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, little more than a block from his office. He joined the ultraexclusive Metropolitan Club (Wilson was not tendered an invitation), the Army-Navy Club, the University Club, and the Chevy Chase Country Club—these in addition to the New York clubs to which he already belonged: the New York Yacht Club, the Knickerbocker Club, the City Club, the Racquet and Tennis Club, and the Harvard Club—to all of which he paid dues regularly.⁴¹ Eleanor was in New York with the children, then at Campobello for the summer. Franklin visited for the July Fourth weekend and ordered one of the Navy’s largest battleships, the 22,000-ton North Dakota, to stand off Eastport, Maine—just across the narrow strait from Campobello—for the Independence Day celebration. The Roosevelts entertained the officers on the island, and FDR, who relished the pomp and ceremony attached to his office, later went aboard ship. He would not dress formally, he told the captain, but would appreciate the seventeen-gun salute to which he was entitled since his Campobello neighbors would expect it.⁴²

Shortly thereafter, FDR ordered the destroyer Flusser to take him to the naval base at nearby Frenchman’s Bay for an inspection. The Flusser was commanded by Lieutenant William F. Halsey, Jr., the famous Bull Halsey of World War II. Roosevelt asked Halsey’s permission to pilot the ship through the treacherous Lubec narrows between Campobello and the mainland. With some misgiving, Halsey agreed. Handling a 700-ton destroyer under full power is a lot more complicated than sailing a pleasure boat. According to Halsey, “a destroyer’s bow may point directly down the channel, yet she is not necessarily on a safe course. She pivots around a point near her bridge structure, which means that two-thirds of her length is aft of the pivot, and that her stern will swing in twice the arc of her bow. As Mr. Roosevelt made his first turn, I saw him look aft and check the swing of our stern. My worries were over. He knew his business.”^43*

Back in Washington, Franklin found the city hot and humid. Congress and the Supreme Court were adjourned, but in the executive branch it was business as usual. “The Secretary and I worked like niggers all day,” he wrote Eleanor in late July. Daniels was preparing to go on vacation for two weeks and would leave FDR in charge. “He has given me carte blanche and says he will abide by my decisions.”⁴⁴

“I think it is quite big of him to be willing to let you decide,” Eleanor replied. “It shows great confidence.”⁴⁵

Roosevelt could not have been happier. “I now find my vocation combined with my avocation in a delightful way,” he wrote an old Harvard chum, Charlie Munn.⁴⁶ Socially, FDR had also arrived. Years later he liked to joke that Washington society provided three diversions: “the saloon, the salon, and the Salome.” The “saloon” was a house where drinks flowed freely; the “salon” a house where artists and intellectuals congregated; the “Salome” was Roosevelt’s term for “a mansion where the music was soft, so were the sofas, and the ladies were very pretty.” Franklin was welcome at all three.⁴⁷

As a member of Wilson’s subcabinet and as a Roosevelt, Franklin was readily accepted by Washington’s cave-dwelling social establishment. His good looks, natural friendliness, and buoyant optimism made him a much-sought-after dinner companion. Bainbridge Colby, later secretary of state, thought him “the handsomest and most attractive man in Washington.”⁴⁸ British diplomat Nigel Law found him “the most attractive man whom it was my good fortune to meet during my four years in America.”⁴⁹ Yale football coach Walter Camp called him “a beautifully built man, with the long muscles of an athlete.”⁵⁰

Franklin was a frequent guest at the home of Cousin Alice and Nicholas Longworth, fashionable leaders of Republican society in exile. Longworth had been given a two-year sabbatical from Congress by the voters of Cincinnati, but that did little to dampen his hospitality or stanch the flow of booze and gossip for which he and Alice were famous.⁵¹ TR’s old friends such as the British and French ambassadors, Sir Cecil “Springy” Spring-Rice and Jules Jusserand, made a point of seeking Franklin out, as did Massachusetts senator Henry Cabot Lodge.^* Harvard friends seemed to appear from nowhere; FDR entertained many of them cruising down the Potomac on the Sylph, the smaller of two yachts the Navy maintained for the president. Weekends were sometimes spent at Doughoregan Manor, the baronial Maryland estate leased by his old Harvard roommate, Lathrop Brown, who had just been elected to Congress as a Democrat from New York’s silk-stocking First District on the Upper East Side.

For lunch, FDR usually dined at either the Metropolitan Club or the Army-Navy Club, both of which were within easy walking distance. Several times a week, and most weekends, he would hoist his golf bag over his shoulder and clamber aboard the Connecticut Avenue streetcar for the long ride to Chevy Chase. “Yesterday P.M. I golfed and went to the Department in the evening,” he wrote Eleanor. “Today I have played 45 holes and am nearly dead!”⁵² Roosevelt was a natural long-ball hitter and, according to the author Don Van Natta, Jr., one of the best presidential golfers to play the game.⁵³ Sometimes FDR would join a congressional foursome at Chevy Chase, and in later years he was often paired with the junior senator from Ohio, Warren G. Harding, who was as easygoing and likable as Roosevelt himself.⁵⁴

In the autumn of 1913 Eleanor and the children joined Franklin in Washington. They moved into the handsome four-story brick town house owned by TR’s sister Bamie (Eleanor’s aunt and FDR’s cousin) at 1733 N Street, N.W., six short blocks up Seventeenth Street from the Navy Department. Bamie and her husband, Rear Admiral W. Sheffield Cowles, had lived there when the admiral was stationed in Washington, and both Eleanor and Franklin had stayed in the house on their various visits to the capital when TR was president. In 1901 TR himself lived there briefly while Ida McKinley, the president’s widow, vacated the White House. Later, as president, TR visited so frequently that the press began to call it the Little White House. “We’re really very comfortably settled now in this dear, bright house,” Eleanor wrote her friend Isabella Ferguson. “I feel very much at home, chiefly because Auntie Bye [Bamie] lived here.”⁵⁵

It was a snug fit. In addition to the three children (Anna, James, and Elliott), Eleanor brought a car and chauffeur from Hyde Park, four servants, a nurse, and a governess. Four years later, after the addition of two more children (FDR, Jr., and John), the Roosevelts moved to much larger quarters at 2131 R Street, a double town house some sixty feet wide that Bamie also owned.⁵⁶ Franklin and Eleanor paid the expenses in both houses but lived rent-free. Bamie and her husband were comfortably ensconced at “Oldgate,” the Cowles estate in Farmington, Connecticut, and were content simply to have their Washington homes remain in the family. Meanwhile, FDR leased his New York town house on East Sixty-fifth Street to Thomas W. Lamont, a senior partner (and later chairman) of J. P. Morgan & Co.

Nineteen-thirteen was the first year for federal income tax under the Sixteenth Amendment. The rate was 1 percent, graduated to 6 percent for those with incomes above $500,000 a year. Dividends were not taxed. FDR’s returns for the eight years he was in Washington show a gross income that averaged slightly more than $20,000 annually. (To convert to current dollars, multiply by 18.) Five thousand dollars came from his salary as assistant secretary, another $5,000 from rent on the New York town house, and the remainder from interest and dividends. FDR invested primarily in high-dividend-paying banks, railroads, and General Electric. After deductions and exemptions, his federal tax bills averaged somewhat less than $200.^57*

It was as assistant secretary of the Navy that FDR established his enduring relationship with Louis Howe. Two days after he was sworn in, Franklin asked Howe to join him at the Navy Department (evidently he had made the offer before leaving Albany). “Dear Ludwig,” he wrote. “Here’s the dope. Secretary—$2000—Expect you April 1 with new uniform.”⁵⁸ Howe telegraphed his acceptance instantly: “I am game but it’s going to break me.”⁵⁹ In truth, Howe had never made so much money, nor with more security. He hurried to Washington, bringing his family with him, and rented an apartment in the 1800 block of P Street, two blocks from the Roosevelts. Every morning at 8:15 sharp he would call for Franklin, and the two would walk to the Navy Department. FDR’s son Elliott fondly remembers his father “striding down Connecticut Avenue with Louis hurrying along at his side. The two of them looked uncannily like Don Quixote and Sancho setting out to battle with giants.”⁶⁰

Howe was more than a secretary. Later he joked that when he arrived in Washington he knew so little that for the first several days he was reduced “to blotting Franklin’s signature.”⁶¹ Within weeks he was on top of the job. Howe became the junior member of a two-man firm dedicated to furthering FDR’s career. As one biographer has written, Howe and Roosevelt played politics like doubles partners played tennis and their goal from the beginning was the White House.⁶² For Howe the decision was simple: he loved power. Eleanor, who later developed a great affection for Howe, said, “Louis had enormous interest in having power, and if he could not have it for himself, he wanted it through someone he was influencing.”⁶³ Roosevelt, for his part, found in Howe an extension of his own persona who automatically operated in his interest without requiring hands-on control. Howe had no agenda of his own. The veteran journalist John Gunther put it best when he wrote, “If FDR had come out for the Devil, it wouldn’t have mattered much to Louis Howe.”⁶⁴

Ostensibly, Howe’s duties involved labor relations, special investigations, and speechwriting. He also took charge of patronage, handled Roosevelt’s correspondence, made appointments for his boss, wheedled postmasterships for deserving upstate Democrats, and kept his finger on the pulse of New York politics, building an organization to challenge Tammany when the time came. He thought up myriad projects for Roosevelt to sponsor and insofar as possible took the blame for whatever went wrong. He mastered the intricacies of the Navy’s bureaucracy with remarkable swiftness. As Daniels put it, Howe “knew all the tides and eddies in the Navy Department, in the administration, and in the political life of the country. He advised [FDR] about everything. His one and only ambition was to help steer Franklin’s course so that he could take the tide at the full. He was totally devoted. He would have sidetracked both President Wilson and me to get Franklin Roosevelt to the White House.”⁶⁵

FDR was never a friend of paperwork. He had an exceptional ability to absorb information and was able to make decisions rapidly, but his attention span was short. Paperwork was Howe’s strength. He read quickly, wrote quickly, and had a way with words that was lucid and convincing. He had a newsman’s ability to distill essential facts from vast amounts of information and make the most wearisome details appear interesting. Howe’s mordant sense of humor, his distrust of piety, and his biting cynicism also appealed to FDR. Roosevelt’s personal letters to Howe, often in a jocular German, express an instinctive rapport. “Lieber Ludwig,” he would write. “Hier bin ich, mit grosser Gesundheit und Vergnügen,” which translated means “Here I am in great health and having loads of fun.”⁶⁶ FDR benefited personally as well. Howe, who loved to bet on the ponies and visit establishments less than genteel, knew much about life that Roosevelt never had the opportunity to learn. Howe shared those experiences and made Franklin more worldly. Frances Perkins once wrote that FDR’s Harvard education was a political handicap.⁶⁷ In many respects Louis Howe was the antidote.

Howe, the older man, always called Roosevelt by his first name and spoke out whenever he thought FDR was mistaken. “Louis Howe was a damned smart able man and the best advisor Roosevelt ever had,” said Admiral Emory S. Land, “because he had the guts to say ‘no.’ ”⁶⁸ Few people could have talked to FDR the way Howe was overheard on the telephone: “You damned fool! You can’t do that! You simply can’t do it.… If you do it, you’re a fool—just a damned idiotic fool.” Howe said jokingly that his principal function in Washington was to provide “toe weights to keep Franklin’s feet on the ground,” and FDR accepted Howe’s advice, usually without question.^69*

As assistant secretary of the Navy, Roosevelt’s impact on the policies of the Wilson administration was minimal. But his duties in the Navy Department were significant, and, more important, his eight years in Washington provided a proving ground where he learned the realities of national politics. Under the tutelage of Daniels and Howe, FDR came to appreciate the diversity of the Democratic party, the need to accommodate regional politicians, and the importance of small favors and public gestures. Howe taught Franklin how to deal with organized labor. As assistant secretary, FDR had supervisory responsibility for the Navy’s vast civilian workforce—tens of thousands of workers at Navy yards across the country. Howe insisted that Roosevelt handle labor relations personally. Time and again he would usher union leaders and delegations of workmen into Franklin’s office to chat with “the Boss.” Always a good listener, FDR was at his best in these exchanges. “I want you to feel that you can come to me at any time in my office,” he was soon telling union spokesmen, “and we can talk matters over. Let’s get together for I need you to teach me your business and show me what’s going on.”⁷⁰

Much to the discomfiture of the Navy’s stiff-as-starch officer corps, the assistant secretary’s office became the clearinghouse for labor’s complaints. FDR took the workers’ concerns seriously, and whenever possible used his authority to settle their grievances. “The laboring men all liked him,” Daniels remembered. “If there was any Groton complex, he did not show it.”⁷¹

Roosevelt’s contact with union leaders filled a large gap in his political education. Many with whom he worked became lifelong friends and supporters. When he stepped down as assistant secretary in 1920, FDR could boast with only slight exaggeration that there had not been a single strike or work stoppage on his watch.⁷² Eleanor said later that thanks to Louis Howe, FDR’s experience overseeing the nation’s Navy yards was largely responsible for having made her husband “more than just a very nice young man who went out in society and did a fair job but was perfectly conventional about it.”⁷³

Dealing with Congress proved equally instructive. FDR learned that informal favors granted graciously often counted for more on Capitol Hill than cogent arguments and party loyalty. Constituents routinely asked congressmen to run interference with government departments, and the Navy was no exception. Sometimes a sailor wanted an early discharge, sometimes compassionate leave, forgiveness for misdeeds, and so forth. Roosevelt did his best to fulfill every reasonable request that came from the Hill, and many of those that were not so reasonable as well.^*

When Republican senator Henry Cabot Lodge, the ranking member of the Naval Affairs Committee, sought a promotion for his nephew, Roosevelt complied.⁷⁴ When Massachusetts congressman George Tinkham asked that a young sailor, Josef Paul Zukauskas, be discharged because boxing manager John Buckley thought he had promise, FDR did so promptly. Zukauskas later fought professionally as Jack Sharkey, “the Boston Gob,” and took the heavyweight title from Max Schmeling in 1932. Sitting in the Oval Office many years after that favor had been done, FDR told Frances Perkins that what congressmen wanted most was to have “a nice jolly understanding of their problems rather than lots of patronage. A little patronage, a lot of pleasure, and public signs of friendship and prestige—that’s what makes a political leader secure with his people and that is what he wants anyhow.”⁷⁵

Other department responsibilities molded Roosevelt. The Navy was frequently called upon to maintain order and protect American interests in the Caribbean. For years he enjoyed telling how an agitated William Jennings Bryan raced into his office one afternoon in 1914 shouting, “I’ve got to have a battleship. White people are being killed in Haiti, and I must send a battleship there within twenty-four hours.”

Roosevelt told Bryan that would be impossible. “Our battleships are in Narragansett Bay and I could not get one to Haiti in less than four days steaming at full speed. But I have a gunboat somewhere in the vicinity of Guantanamo and I can get her to Haiti in eight hours if you want me to.”

“That is all I wanted,” said Bryan. The secretary of state turned to leave, then stopped. “Roosevelt,” he said, “when I talk about battleships, don’t think I mean anything technical. All I meant was that I wanted something that would float and had guns on it.”⁷⁶

The situation in Haiti to which Bryan was responding was not unlike that which had erupted in the Dominican Republic ten years earlier. Because of widespread corruption in the collection of customs revenue, the Dominican Republic had found itself unable to pay the interest on its foreign debt. European powers had threatened to intervene, at which point Cousin Theodore had stepped in and assumed responsibility under color of the Monroe Doctrine.^* The United States initially established a fiscal protectorate over the republic and, when unrest did not abate, transformed that into a military occupation that continued until 1924.

In Haiti, the nation’s finances had collapsed and France and Germany threatened to assume control to protect their investors. The Haitian government initially refused American assistance, riot and revolution followed, and in 1915 Wilson ordered Daniels to intervene. Marines were dispatched from Guantánamo to Port-au-Prince, and Haiti, like the Dominican Republic, became an American protectorate. Daniels staunchly opposed long-term occupation of the island, and gradually FDR embraced Daniels’s position.⁷⁷ In his inaugural address in 1933, FDR replaced the Roosevelt corollary with what he called the “Good Neighbor” policy toward Latin America. Subsequently, at Montevideo in December 1933, the United States joined the nations of the Western Hemisphere in pledging that “No state has the right to intervene in the internal or external affairs of another.”⁷⁸ The following year the United States formally renounced its right to intervene in Cuba under the Platt Amendment,⁷⁹ and FDR withdrew the last American marines from Haiti—nineteen years after the occupation had begun.

^* Wilson, like many white southerners, believed segregation to be divinely ordained. As president of Princeton he barred the admission of blacks and later told Sambo stories in cabinet meetings. When challenged about segregation in the federal government, he defended it as a means of reducing tension. “It is as far as possible from being a movement against the Negroes,” he wrote Oswald Garrison Villard of The Nation. “I sincerely believe it to be in their interest.” In a similar message to H. A. Bridgman, editor of Congregationalist and Christian World, Wilson said, “I think if you were here on the ground [in Washington], you would see, as I seem to see, that it is distinctly to the advantage of the colored people themselves.”

There is no doubt that was Wilson’s view. There is also no doubt that virtually all black leaders were disappointed by it. “When the Wilson Administration came into power,” wrote New York’s Amsterdam News, “it promised a ‘new freedom’ to all people, avowing a spirit of Christian Democracy. But on the contrary we are given a stone instead of a loaf of bread; we are given a hissing serpent instead of a fish.”

The NAACP was equally critical. In a public letter to Wilson published in The New York Times, the association asked, “Shall ten million of our citizens say that their civil liberties and rights are not safe in your hands? To ask that question is to answer it. They desire a ‘New Freedom,’ too.”

Ironically, Wilson had appealed for black votes in 1912 and had actually won the largest number ever given to a Democratic presidential candidate. But the anti-Negro bias of the administration caused most blacks to return to the Republican Party, where they remained until FDR ran in 1932.

Arthur S. Link, Wilson: The Road to the White House 3, 502 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1947); Josephus Daniels, The Cabinet Diaries of Josephus Daniels 195, 234, 321, 414, 493, E. David Cronon, ed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1963). WW to OGV, July 23, 1913; WW to HAB, September 8, 1919, Woodrow Wilson Papers, Library of Congress. Amsterdam News, October 3, 1913; The New York Times, August 18, 1913.

^* FDR met many young officers during his eight years as assistant secretary and did not forget them when he became commander in chief. Lieutenant Commander William D. Leahy was skipper of the Navy’s Dolphin, the official yacht of the secretary and assistant secretary. Leahy became chief of naval operations in 1937, was later FDR’s ambassador to Vichy France, and served as the president’s personal chief of staff throughout World War II. Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, commander in chief of the Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor, had been Roosevelt’s naval aide in 1915. Lieutenant Emory S. Land, who later chaired the nation’s Maritime Commission, served in that post as well. Lieutenants Harold Stark and Chester Nimitz, both CNOs (Nimitz after Roosevelt’s death), were well known to FDR during World War I. The naval historian Robert Greenhalgh Albion wrote that as president, FDR always kept a copy of the Navy Register close at hand and knew most senior officers personally. “Some were remembered favorably, a few unfavorably, and some were not remembered at all.” Makers of Naval Policy: 1775–1941 385 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1980).

^* As a young diplomat Cecil Spring-Rice served as best man at TR’s wedding to Edith Carow in 1886 and always had a warm spot in his heart for the president. “You must always remember that Roosevelt is about six,” he gently reminded a friend when TR was in the White House. Jusserand, for his part, had once skinny-dipped with TR in the Potomac near Chain Bridge wearing only his gloves. “We might meet ladies,” he informed the president when asked about his attire. Lodge and TR had maintained a mutual admiration society since the Republican National Convention in 1884, co-authored three books, and shared a view of America’s muscular role in the world. Edmund Morris, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 249–250, 357 (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1979); Theodore Rex 512–513 (New York: Random House, 2002).

^* FDR received his pay from the Navy Department every two weeks. Initially, he took it in cash and put the money in his pocket. “I don’t know where it went, it just went. I couldn’t keep an account with myself. After about six months of this, certain complaints came back from home about paying the grocery bill. And so I began taking my salary by check and putting it in the bank and taking perhaps five dollars cash for the week and putting it in my pocket—trying to anyway.” Elliott Roosevelt and James Brough, An Untold Story: The Roosevelts of Hyde Park 66 (New York: G. P Putnam’s Sons, 1973).

^* FDR’s son James reports a rare instance in which Roosevelt overruled Howe. It was 1932 in Chicago, en route to accepting the Democratic nomination. “I squeezed into the car which carried Father to the hotel. Louis Howe rode in the back seat next to Father, and immediately there began one of the most incongruous performances I have ever witnessed. Louis had strong objections to parts of Father’s proposed acceptance speech and he began arguing with him even as the car was rolling in from the airport. Pa listened with one ear—all the while smiling and waving at the wildly cheering crowds. Finally, Pa exploded: ‘Damnit, Louie, I’m the nominee.’ ” James Roosevelt and Sidney Shalett, Affectionately, F.D.R. 225–226 (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1959).

^* Occasionally a request was beyond the pale, especially if it ran against Daniels’s puritanical instincts. In 1915 Congressman Lathrop Brown, FDR’s Harvard roommate, wrote to request that a young friend named Donald Clapham be allowed to enlist in the Navy. Clapham had gone astray with a young woman, had been convicted of stealing $38, and had received a suspended sentence. Howe replied to Brown on FDR’s behalf:

Now, about your young friend … who appears to be one of nature’s noblemen and to have nothing against him except that he has broken most of the Ten Commandments. I am willing to admit that if we bar from the Navy every gent who has become mixed up with a beautiful female we would have to put most of our ships out of commission and I am afraid we might lose an admiral or two, but in this case the young man was unfortunately caught with the goods. You have run against one of the secretary’s strongest antipathies. And while I know Mr. Roosevelt will speak to Mr. Daniels about the case again, I honestly do not think he has a chance on earth. Do you want one of those “we are doing everything on earth to get this done because of the affection for the Congressman” letters or not? Will send you a masterpiece that will convince your friends that Mr. Roosevelt is sitting on Mr. Daniels’ doorstep every night waiting for a chance to make one more plea when he comes home to supper, if that will ease the strain any.

Louis Howe to Lathrop Brown, September 21, 1915, FDRL.

^* The “Roosevelt corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, announced by TR in his annual message to Congress on December 6, 1904, provided that “Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation, and in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States … to the exercise of an international police power.” It was a unilateral blank check that allowed the United States to intervene in Latin America and became the bedrock of America’s hemispheric policy from 1904 until 1930, when it was repudiated by Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson on behalf of the Hoover administration. The Monroe Doctrine, said Stimson, was “a declaration of the United States versus Europe, not the United States versus Latin America.”

SEVEN
WAR

These dear, good people like W.J.B. [William Jennings Bryan] and J.D. [Josephus Daniels] have as much conception of what a general European war means as [four-year-old] Elliott has of higher mathematics.

—FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, AUGUST 2, 1914

AFTER A YEAR as assistant secretary, FDR grew restive in Washington. While he relished the ceremonial trappings of his office and reveled in the proximity to national power, he was still a pale second to Secretary Daniels and relegated to department housekeeping rather than the grand strategy and high politics to which he aspired. Much of the day-to-day work in the Navy Department he found tedious. He could recommend, but final authority rested with Daniels. Senator Elihu Root had recognized the trait: Roosevelts were accustomed to ride in front. A southern wit like Addie Daniels, Josephus’s wife, would simply have said that Franklin was getting too big for his breeches.

Through Louis Howe, FDR kept tabs on New York politics. The state Democratic party was in more than the usual disarray, and Franklin maneuvered to exploit the confusion. If further advancement in Washington was temporarily blocked—as it clearly was—he would rekindle his career by seeking statewide office in New York. Roosevelt’s perspective was clouded by Potomac myopia, the affliction of self-importance that often causes senior Washington officials to overestimate their significance in their home states, and in FDR’s case he assumed that the governorship of the Empire State was within easy grasp.

“Plain Bill” Sulzer, who had been Tammany’s handpicked choice for governor, had run afoul of the organization and was removed from office in October 1913. He was replaced by the reliable Martin H. Glynn, a Democratic stalwart from Albany. But the heavy hand of Tammany had tainted the impeachment process and made Glynn vulnerable. He was also Catholic, the first of that faith to occupy the governor’s chair, and whether a Catholic could win a statewide election in 1914 was far from clear. In addition, New York had recently enacted the direct-primary law for which FDR had worked so diligently in the legislature. As Franklin saw it, that would limit Tammany’s ability to dictate the party’s nominee and open the way for a candidate with strong grassroots support—support that the name Roosevelt virtually ensured. Finally, FDR envisioned himself as the anointed candidate of the Wilson administration, departing Washington with the president’s blessing to smite the Murphy machine on behalf of political reform.

Wilson’s support was crucial to FDR’s campaign. Yet throughout late 1913 and early 1914 the president refused to commit himself. He may have savored the thought of a reform victory in New York, but he needed the votes of the state’s Tammany-dominated congressional delegation to put the New Freedom legislative program across. Howe launched a series of trial balloons for FDR in the New York press and did his utmost to hint at Wilson’s support, but it was wishful thinking.¹ In March 1914, Roosevelt tried to force Wilson’s hand. Ralph Pulitzer of The New York World had asked FDR to write an article for his paper on the political situation in the Empire State. Franklin asked Wilson for guidance. Could he have five minutes of the president’s time to discuss the matter?² Wilson declined. Instead, he sent FDR a brief note advising him to say nothing. Events in New York were still unfolding, said the president, and “the plot is not yet clear.”³ That was scarcely the vote of confidence Roosevelt needed to challenge a Tammany incumbent in the primary.

When Franklin dispatched intermediaries to canvass Cousin Theodore’s support, the result was equally disappointing. TR said he admired his young Hyde Park relative but was too busy mending fences with liberal Republicans to offer a Progressive endorsement.⁴ The final blow to FDR’s gubernatorial aspirations was administered by Congressman John J. Fitzgerald of Brooklyn, the powerful chairman of the Appropriations Committee and the Tammany spokesman in the House. Unless Wilson disavowed self-appointed critics of Tammany within the administration, said Fitzgerald, he and twenty other New York Democrats would find it difficult to support the New Freedom legislative agenda.⁵ That finished FDR. Wilson issued a public statement saying he had the highest regard for Mr. Fitzgerald and certainly did not endorse the characterization of Tammany congressmen as “representatives of crooks, grafters, and buccaneers”—campaign rhetoric that had become a staple for FDR.^6*

Roosevelt recognized the impossibility of his quest and put an upbeat spin on the outcome. “Thank God,” he wrote Eleanor, “the governorship is out of the question.”⁷ To the Times he denied that he had ever been a candidate: “When I said I was not a candidate and would not accept the nomination, I did not say it in diplomatic language, but in seafaring language, which means it.”⁸

The reason for FDR’s jauntiness soon became apparent: an even more desirable statewide office was available. In May 1913 the Seventeenth Amendment, providing for the direct election of senators, was added to the Constitution. Senator Elihu Root’s term was expiring, and Root, who had opposed the amendment in Senate debate, announced that he would not seek reelection.⁹ That provided an opportunity FDR had not anticipated. The venerable Root was one of the most distinguished members of the Senate—secretary of war under McKinley, secretary of state under TR, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1912. Had Root run, he would have been unbeatable. Now the race was wide open. Even better, there was no Democratic incumbent to contest the nomination. Franklin could barely contain his excitement as he broke the news to Eleanor that he planned to seek both the Democratic and Progressive nominations for the U.S. Senate. “I really would like to be in the Senate just so as to get a summer with my family once every three or four years.”¹⁰

FDR’s 1914 flirtation with elective office was interrupted by events in Sarajevo, far off in the Balkans. On the morning of June 28, Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir apparent to the Hapsburg throne, and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, were shot and killed by a nineteen-year-old Bosnian terrorist while riding in an open car in downtown Sarajevo. The assassin, Gavrilo Princip, one of seven young Bosnian co-conspirators, believed that by killing the archduke he would liberate Bosnia from Hapsburg captivity.¹¹ The Serbian government was implicated in the assassination, and the Austrians demanded satisfaction. Germany backed Austria and gave Vienna a blank check to proceed as it wished. Diplomatic demands escalated, armies mobilized, governments miscalculated, and events took on a life of their own. The Concert of Europe, elaborately crafted by Viscount Castlereagh and Count Metternich one hundred years earlier and embellished by Otto von Bismarck and Benjamin Disraeli in the 1870s, came crashing down like a house of cards. The year before his death, Bismarck had predicted that “some damn foolish thing in the Balkans” would ignite a general war in Europe. Princip provided the spark that set things off.^12*

On July 23, more than three weeks after the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, the Austrian government, believing itself ready for war and confident of German support, presented Serbia with an ultimatum couched in language carefully crafted to make it all but impossible for Belgrade to accept.¹³ The Serbian reply, deliberately evasive, was rejected by Vienna on July 25, and both nations mobilized. Austria declared war on Serbia on July 28; Russia mobilized to support Serbia on July 30; France mobilized to support Russia the following day; and Germany called up its reserves immediately afterward.^14† Last-minute diplomatic efforts failed, and on August 1 Germany declared war on Russia. Locked in by military planning predicated on a two-front war, Germany declared war on France on August 3 and crossed into Belgium to outflank the French Army, which was drawn up facing the Franco-German border. The violation of Belgian neutrality brought Great Britain in on France’s side, and Europe was at war.

The Central Powers believed that victory would be quick. “You will be home before the leaves have fallen from the trees,” the kaiser told departing guards regiments in Potsdam the first week in August.¹⁵ The British took a different view. “The lamps are going out all over Europe,” lamented Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey. “We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.”¹⁶ General Lord Kitchener, recalled from retirement by Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, said that the war “will take a very long time. No one living knows how long.”¹⁷

FDR was fulfilling a speaking engagement for the Navy in Reading, Pennsylvania, when Germany declared war. Summoned by telegram to Washington, he jotted a quick note to Eleanor from the train: “The latest news is that Germany has declared war against Russia. A complete smashup is inevitable, and there are a great many problems for us to consider. These are history-making days. It will be the greatest war in the world’s history. Mr. D. totally fails to grasp the situation and I am to see the President Monday a.m. to go over our own situation.”¹⁸ Whether Franklin was referring to the war in Europe or his political ambitions in New York is unclear, but Wilson had no time on Monday or any day that week: his wife, Ellen, was dying of cancer.¹⁹

With the possibility of war looming, FDR found it even more difficult to play second fiddle. His letters to Eleanor in early August brim with his own activity, in stark contrast to the lethargy he perceived around him. Inexperienced and impulsive, Roosevelt failed to appreciate Daniels’s more cautious approach. The following day he wrote that upon his arrival in Washington,

I went straight to the Department, where as I expected, I found everything asleep and apparently utterly oblivious to the fact that the most terrible drama in history was about to be enacted.

To my astonishment nobody seemed the least bit excited about the European crisis—Mr. Daniels feeling chiefly very sad that his faith in human nature and civilization and similar idealistic nonsense was receiving such a rude shock. So I started in alone to get things ready and prepare plans for what ought to be done by the Navy end of things.…

These dear, good people like W.J.B. and J.D. have as much conception of what a general European war means as Elliott has of higher mathematics. They really believe that because we are neutral we can go about our business as usual.…

All this sounds like borrowing trouble I know, but it is my duty to keep the Navy in a position where no chances, even the most remote, are taken. Today we are taking chances and I nearly boil over when I see the cheery “mañana” way of doing business.²⁰

Franklin told Eleanor he saw no hope of averting the conflict. “The best that can be expected is either a sharp, complete and quick victory by one side, a most unlikely occurrence, or a speedy realization of impending bankruptcy by all, and a cessation by mutual consent, but this too I think unlikely.”²¹

Eleanor said she understood. “I am not surprised at what you say about J.D. or W.J.B. for one could expect little else. To understand the present gigantic conflict one must have at least a glimmering of understanding foreign nations.… Life must be exciting for you and I can see you managing everything while J.D. wrings his hands in horror. There must be so much detail to attend to and so many problems which must, of course, be yours and not J.D.’s.”²²

As it turned out, Daniels was more in tune with administration policy than his brash assistant secretary. On August 4, 1914, President Wilson issued the first of ten neutrality proclamations that would be promulgated during the first three months of the war. These committed the United States to complete neutrality and made it a crime for anyone to be partial beyond the “free expression of opinion.”²³ Two days later Wilson told Daniels to order all officers “to refrain from public comment of any kind upon the military or political situation on the other side of the water.” The Navy was instructed to “watch things along the coast,” protect the neutrality of American ports, and prevent the shipment of munitions to any of the belligerents.²⁴ FDR was appointed to two quickly established cabinet-level committees, one to translate the principles of the neutrality proclamations into practical policy, the other to provide relief for Americans stranded in Europe by the war. He arranged for the battleships North Carolina and Tennessee to sail for the Continent loaded with gold bullion to subsidize the credit of Americans caught in the war zone and organized a coastal patrol to prevent belligerent warships from venturing too close to U.S. shores. “Most of those reports of foreign cruisers off the coast have really been my destroyers,” Franklin proudly wrote Eleanor on August 7.²⁵

FDR was consumed by the war in Europe and the Navy’s responsibility. “I am running the real work, although Josephus is here,” he told Eleanor.²⁶ But over his shoulder, Roosevelt watched what was happening in New York. The prospect of succeeding Elihu Root in the Senate was too enticing to let slip. Treasury secretary William Gibbs McAdoo, who considered himself the de facto leader of the reform wing of the Democratic party in New York, was urging FDR to run, and on August 13, following a lightning visit to Manhattan, Franklin announced his candidacy.²⁷ “My senses have not yet left me,” he wired Louis Howe, who was vacationing with his family on the Massachusetts shore.²⁸

Daniels sought to dissuade FDR. “I told him that I had a hunch he could not win in the primary, and even if he did the indications were that the Republicans would carry the State [in November].”²⁹ Franklin refused to be deterred. “I had no more idea or desire of offering myself as a ‘white hope’ than I had of attempting to succeed Kaiser Wilhelm,” he disingenuously told a friend shortly after he announced. “I protested, but finally agreed to be the goat. Now I am going into the fight as hard as I can.”³⁰ FDR was confident that the Democratic nomination was his for the taking. He remained at Campobello for the remainder of August and did not bother to appear at the campaign kickoff rally Howe organized at New York City’s Cooper Union on September 2. Primary day was September 28, and thus far no opposition candidate had announced.

Early press reports indicated New York publisher William Randolph Hearst might seek the nomination. FDR wrote Howe he was “offering up prayers” that the reports were true. “It would be magnificent sport and also a magnificent service to run against him.” But Hearst stepped back.³¹

In late August, Governor Glynn endorsed Roosevelt, and hope rose that Tammany would let the nomination pass by default. “The truth is that they haven’t a thing to say against you,” Howe told Franklin. “No one is anxious to bell the cat—particularly when they have an idea that the President occasionally pats him on the back and calls him ‘pretty pussy.’ ”³²

Once again FDR underestimated the political skill of Charles Murphy. On September 6, the next-to-the-last day for filing, Tammany unveiled its candidate: James W. Gerard, United States ambassador to Germany and former State Supreme Court justice, an independently wealthy, impeccably honest adherent of the New York City organization who had already distinguished himself assisting Americans stranded in Germany by the war. Even worse for Roosevelt, Gerard had cleared his candidacy with the White House.³³ The ambassador said his duties in Berlin would not permit his return to campaign, which compounded FDR’s problem. Not only did he have no visible opponent to attack, but he could scarcely pose as the administration’s candidate when Wilson’s personal representative in Berlin remained at his post with the president’s approval. With one bold stroke Murphy undercut Roosevelt’s campaign and proved why under his leadership Tammany had become so formidable.

FDR was caught unprepared. He had not expected a rival and was not ready to campaign. He crisscrossed the state several times but made little impression on the voters. Roosevelt had no particular message other than his opposition to “bossism” and he had surprisingly little grasp of the issues facing the state. “When compared to such a man as Elihu Root he cuts a sorry figure as a great statesman,” commented one upstate paper.³⁴

When the votes were counted on September 28, FDR was swamped by his absentee opponent. Gerard received 210,765 votes to Roosevelt’s 76,888. The ambassador led FDR 4 to 1 in New York City and 2 to 1 upstate. Franklin’s only consolation was to carry twenty-two of the state’s sixty-one counties, including Dutchess, which he won 461–93. “I wonder if you are disappointed,” his mother wrote. “I hope you are not. You made a brave fight and can now return to the good and necessary work of the Navy Department, which you have missed all these weeks.”³⁵

Franklin assured Sara that he was not disappointed and cheerily told the press it had been a good fight.³⁶ Within weeks he put a Roosevelt twist on the disaster, claiming to have carried a majority of the state’s counties and losing only because of “the solid lineup of New York City,” ignoring the fact that Gerard had trounced him 2 to 1 upstate.³⁷ Daniels, who had watched the campaign from a distance, believed the loss hurt FDR more than he cared to admit. “I refrained from telling him ‘I told you so.’ ”³⁸

As Daniels had predicted, November was a bad month for Democrats. In the general election, the GOP gained 69 seats in the House of Representatives and picked up seven governorships. In New York, Gerard, who remained at his post in Berlin, lost the Senate race to James Wadsworth of Geneseo by 70,000 votes; Glynn lost his bid for reelection as governor to Charles S. Whitman; and the Republicans recaptured both houses of the legislature.

Both Franklin and Charles Murphy learned from the debacle. Murphy recognized that while Tammany could dictate the party’s nominee, it could not guarantee victory in the general election. FDR learned that running statewide was far more complicated than contesting a three-county Senate seat. He also learned he could not defy the New York City organization if he wanted the nomination, nor could he win in November without Tammany’s support. Howe suggested to Franklin that it was time to make peace, and FDR needed little coaxing. Never again did he publicly criticize Tammany Hall.³⁹

By 1915 Roosevelt had become a virtual regular in the New York organization. He endorsed Al Smith, Tammany’s candidate for sheriff of New York County, supported Senate leader Robert Wagner for postmaster of New York City,^* and posed happily with Charles Murphy at Tammany’s annual Fourth of July celebration. There was even talk that FDR might head the ticket in 1916 as Murphy’s candidate for governor.⁴⁰

FDR made peace with Tammany because his political career required it. But he never forgave Gerard for having defeated him. In October 1914, Colonel House, Wilson’s political majordomo, wrote McAdoo to urge Franklin to come out strongly for Gerard before the November election. Roosevelt returned the note with “NUTS F.D.R.” scrawled across the top.⁴¹ Years later, as president, Roosevelt still held a grudge. James Farley, whose job it was to keep tabs on Democratic donors, urged that Gerard (one of the largest contributors and in Farley’s words “a faithful servant of the Democratic Party”) be appointed ambassador to Italy. “Roosevelt was evasive,” said Farley, “and William Phillips was nominated. I proposed Gerard for Paris, but William C. Bullitt was named.” Eventually Farley persuaded FDR to name Gerard as his representative to the coronation of King George VI in 1937, but that was a one-shot ceremonial appearance.⁴² In 1943, Eleanor attempted to make peace between the president and Gerard, but Roosevelt’s answer was still no.⁴³

Back in Washington, FDR turned his attention to the Navy’s preparedness. From an Allied point of view, the war was not going well. The great German offensive in the West had been blunted, but the battle line was forty miles from Paris. The French government had decamped for Bordeaux, virtually all of Belgium was in German hands, and trenches stretched from Ostend on the English Channel to the Swiss border. In the East, General Paul von Hindenburg had turned back the Russian invasion of East Prussia and was moving eastward toward the Vistula. On the Serbian front, the Austrians advanced, retreated, and advanced again, taking Belgrade for the second time. The one glimmer of hope was the war at sea, where the powerful British Navy kept the German High Seas Fleet bottled up in ports along the North Sea, reluctant to risk a direct engagement.

Smarting from his defeat in the New York primary, Roosevelt was eager to resume the struggle to put the Navy on a war footing. In late October, when Daniels left Washington to inspect facilities on the Gulf Coast, FDR took advantage of the secretary’s absence to release a memorandum prepared by the Navy’s brass documenting the fleet’s deficiencies. Thirteen battleships were laid up because the Navy lacked sailors to man them. Eighteen thousand men were needed urgently, but Congress had failed to authorize them. The New York Times printed the memorandum in full, much to the discomfort of the White House.⁴⁴ “The country needs the truth about the Army and Navy instead of a lot of soft mush about everlasting peace,” Franklin wrote Eleanor. “I am perfectly willing to stand by [the memorandum] even if it gets me into trouble.”⁴⁵

Trouble may have come more swiftly than FDR anticipated. Daniels was not happy with his deputy’s performance, and when he returned to Washington he took Franklin to the woodshed. The next day Roosevelt issued a disclaimer. “I have not recommended 18,000 more men,” he told the press, “nor would I consider it within my province to make any recommendation on the matter one way or the other.”⁴⁶

On December 8, 1914, Wilson forcefully restated the administration’s policy. Speaking to Congress on the state of the union,^* the president counseled against turning the United States into an armed camp:

We are at peace with the world. We mean to live our own lives as we will; but we also mean to let live. We are, indeed, a true friend to all the nations of the world, because we threaten none, covet the possessions of none, desire the overthrow of none. Therein lies our greatness.

Wilson rejected any increase in the size of the regular Army, dismissed an expansion of the reserves, and said an accelerated naval construction program would require greater study to determine precisely what type of ships should be built. “We shall not alter our attitude because some amongst us are nervous and excited.”⁴⁷

The following day Daniels assured the House Naval Affairs Committee that ship for ship the U.S. Navy was the equal of any navy in the world. He said the Navy would continue its program of building two battleships a year and requested no increase in the number of enlisted men.⁴⁸

The committee called FDR to testify on December 16. He had plainly learned his lesson. “It would not be my place to discuss purely matters of policy,” Roosevelt told the congressmen at the outset.⁴⁹ Pressed repeatedly during the five hours he was at the witness table, he steadfastly declined to discuss administration policy and did not contradict Daniels or the president at any point. In his testimony, FDR hewed closely to the facts. He had the details of every program at his fingertips and frequently cited Navy department studies to make the point that if war should come, a rapid expansion would be necessary. He was anything but shrill, and at times he was even amusing. “It is a necessity as a matter of economy that all our ships should not be in commission all the time,” he told the committee. “No navy does that except that of one country.”

“What country is that?” demanded several members in unison.

“Haiti,” replied Roosevelt, smiling broadly. “She has two gunboats and they are in commission all the year around.”⁵⁰

FDR’s testimony was a success. The New York Herald praised him for his promptness in answering questions and his candor. “He showed that in the short time he has been Assistant Secretary he has made a most complete study of the problems of national defense.” The Sun said Roosevelt “exhibited a grasp of naval affairs that seemed to astonish members of the committee who had been studying the question for years.”⁵¹

Franklin wrote Sara that the hearings had been “really great fun … as the members who tried to quizz me and put me in a hole did not know much about their subject and I was able not only to parry but to come back at them with thrusts that went home. Also I was able to get in my own views without particular embarrassment to the Secretary.”⁵²

Eleanor wrote afterward to her friend Isabella Ferguson, “War is in all our thoughts and the horror of it grows. We are distinctly ‘not ready,’ and Franklin tried to make his testimony before Congress very plain and I think brought out his facts clearly without saying anything about the administration policy which would of course, be disloyal.”⁵³

FDR was eager to see the naval war firsthand. In mid-December, immediately after his House testimony, he sought to go to London to study the workings of the Admiralty. Winston Churchill was then first lord of the Admiralty, the British equivalent of secretary of the Navy, and he was piqued that the United States had not yet entered the war. He claimed he was far too busy to receive a delegation of visiting Americans. “I have asked the First Lord as to the possibility of affording facilities to Mr. F. D. Roosevelt and a staff of United States Naval Officers,” the permanent undersecretary of the Admiralty informed the American embassy on December 19. “The First Lord desires me to express his regret that the present pressure of work in the Department would render it impossible to offer the assistance necessary for the accomplishment of the object of such a visit.”⁵⁴ That was FDR’s only brush with Churchill until the two met four years later at a dinner given for the British war cabinet by Lloyd George. That too was unpromising.⁵⁵ Twenty-three years later, when the two statesmen met off Newfoundland to frame the Atlantic Charter, Churchill (to FDR’s chagrin) had no recollection of their prior meeting.⁵⁶

In 1915 the war at sea accelerated. On February 4 Germany declared the waters surrounding the British Isles a war zone: Allied vessels would be sunk on sight; neutral merchantmen that entered did so at their own risk.⁵⁷ Britain responded on March 1 with a counterblockade of German ports.⁵⁸ Wilson composed the United States’ reply to the German announcement at his own typewriter and warned Berlin it would be held to “strict accountability” for the loss of American lives or property.⁵⁹ The response to Britain, prepared jointly by Wilson, Secretary Bryan, and Department of State counselor Robert Lansing, was milder in tone and enjoined London to treat American shipping according to the “recognized rules of international law.”⁶⁰

Wilson’s effort to maintain American neutrality suffered a severe shock on May 7, 1915, when the Cunard liner Lusitania, the largest and fastest on the North Atlantic run, was torpedoed in the Irish Sea and sank in eighteen minutes. Of the 2,000 persons on board, 1,198 perished, including 128 Americans. Public opinion was outraged. Newspapers railed against the “wanton murder” of helpless civilians.^*

Wilson sought to calm the nation. “There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight,” he declared and dispatched a protest note to Berlin reasserting the right of Americans to sail the high seas and demanding indemnity for the loss of American lives.⁶¹ Except for war hawks like TR, the note struck a responsive chord with the public: “a model of restraint and understatement,” said The New Republic. “It reproduces with remarkable skill the mean of American opinion.”⁶² Berlin’s reply, drafted with an eye to German public opinion, expressed regret, placed the blame on Cunard for carrying passengers and munitions on the same ship, and requested a delay in settling the matter until the facts could be established.⁶³ At the same time, and unknown to Washington, the German government ordered its U-boat commanders not to attack large passenger liners, “not even an enemy one,” until further notice.⁶⁴

The American press greeted the German reply harshly. Wilson believed Berlin was unresponsive and stalling for time. Again he pecked out a rejoinder, this time insisting that Germany renounce its “ruthless” submarine warfare and condemning the sinking of Lusitania as a crime against humanity.⁶⁵ Bryan, who thought the German response more than adequate, welcomed the delay Berlin requested so tempers might cool. He was certain the president’s note carried the risk of war and, rather than sign it, submitted his resignation. “A person would have to be very much biased in favor of the Allies to insist that ammunitions intended for one of the belligerents should be safeguarded in transit by the lives of American citizens.”⁶⁶

Bryan’s resignation threw Washington into an uproar. The secretary was assailed for unspeakable treachery, weakening the president’s hand and suggesting to foreign nations that the United States was divided. FDR joined the chorus. “What d’ y’ think of W. Jay B.?” he asked Eleanor. “It’s all too long to write about, but I can only say I’m disgusted clear through. J. D. will not resign.”^67*

Daniels and the other members of the cabinet rallied to the president’s support, as did FDR. To Wilson he wrote, “I want to tell you simply that you have been in my thoughts during these days and that I realize to the full all that you have had to go through—I need not repeat to you my own earlier loyalty and devotion—that I hope you know. But I feel most strongly that the Nation approves and sustains your course and that it is American in the highest sense.”⁶⁸

Wilson’s longhand reply was heartfelt. “Your letter touched me very much,” said the president. “Such messages make the performance of duty worthwhile, because, after all, the people who are nearest are those whose judgment we most value and most need to be supported by.”⁶⁹

In the months following Bryan’s resignation, FDR toiled diligently to enhance the Navy’s readiness—but always within the policy bounds Wilson and Daniels had established. Charles Murphy had taught Roosevelt the importance of disparate political alliances and Democratic solidarity: “They may be sons-of-bitches, but they’re our sons-of-bitches.” Daniels taught him to be a team player—a lesson TR never learned. Franklin sometimes chomped at the restraint and occasionally overstepped, but he was careful never to challenge administration policy directly.

FDR was recuperating at Campobello from a bout of appendicitis in late July 1915 when Daniels summoned him to Washington to help draft plans for the Navy’s expansion.^† Wilson had become increasingly worried about Germany’s intentions as well as his reelection chances. Public opinion, particularly on the East Coast and in the South, had become increasingly militant and the president decided it prudent to stay in step. On July 21 he instructed Daniels and Secretary of War Lindley Garrison to prepare a program for “an adequate national defense” that might be submitted to Congress when it convened in December.⁷⁰ FDR was elated. He returned to Washington in mid-August to serve as acting secretary while Daniels vacationed, and helped pull plans together. To achieve supremacy at sea, the Navy’s General Board urged immediate construction of 176 ships at a cost of $600 million—the largest peacetime construction program in the nation’s history. The proposal included ten battleships, six battle cruisers, ten light cruisers, fifty destroyers, and one hundred submarines, along with the sailors to man them.⁷¹ Wilson approved the plan and submitted it to Congress on December 7, 1915. Daniels, whose peace-loving credentials were unassailable, undermined the pacifist opposition and shepherded the legislation through Congress, which authorized completion of the entire program within three years.^*

For the next fourteen months the argument within the administration turned on how rapidly the United States should mobilize, not whether mobilization was necessary. FDR devised a plan for a Council of National Defense to oversee war production and took it directly to Wilson, who was unwilling to go that far. “It seems that I can accomplish little just now,” Franklin wrote Eleanor. “The President does not want to ‘rattle the sword,’ but he was interested and will I think really take it up soon.”⁷² Roosevelt continued to press the project, and the council came into being in August 1916, the proposal attached as a rider to the Army appropriations bill. The council was empowered to place defense contracts directly with suppliers and draw plans for the “immediate concentration and utilization of the resources of the nation.”⁷³ FDR played an important role in establishing the council and would draw on that experience in 1940, after the fall of France, when he reactivated the council’s advisory panel as the first significant defense agency of World War II.⁷⁴

Another pet project involved creation of a naval reserve. FDR was impressed with the training camp Cousin Theodore and General Leonard Wood had established at Plattsburgh, New York, to drill young gentlemen in the rudiments of military life, and he wished to establish a naval counterpart.^* Initially, the going was heavy. Daniels feared the reserve would appeal primarily to rich young Ivy Leaguers and well-to-do yachtsmen and would have an upper-class bias. Franklin assured him otherwise. “You may take my word for it,” he told Daniels, the reserve would be constituted “on absolutely democratic lines.”⁷⁵ Daniels was won over and permitted a preliminary cruise in the summer of 1916 but procrastinated establishing the reserve itself. On September 2, with Daniels away, FDR as acting secretary ordered the creation of a Naval Reserve of fifty thousand men along with an auxiliary complement of patrol boats.⁷⁶ “Today I sprang the announcement … and trust J.D. will like it,” Franklin wrote Eleanor. “It is of the utmost importance and I have failed for a year to get him to take any action, though he never objected to it. Now I have gone ahead and pulled the trigger myself. I suppose the bullet may bounce back on me, but it is not revolutionary nor alarmist and is just common sense.”⁷⁷

Nineteen-sixteen was a presidential election year, and as a preparedness Democrat FDR was a distinct asset to the administration: a Roosevelt on display to offset the criticism of Cousin Theodore and the interventionist wing of the GOP. Wilson’s chances looked dim. His narrow victory in 1912 traced to the split in Republican ranks between party regulars under Taft and progressive insurgents backing TR. But in the spring of 1916 the Colonel returned to the fold. The GOP regulars were a sordid bunch, he told friends, but “a trifle better than the corrupt and lunatic wild asses who seem most influential in Democratic councils.”⁷⁸ Wilson’s recent marriage to the Washington socialite Edith Galt, a widow considerably younger than he, also did not help his chances, coming so quickly after his first wife’s death. And the preparedness issue cut both ways. While TR lambasted the administration for being too weak, many in the Middle West—where isolationist sentiment was strong—condemned Wilson for being too bellicose.

When the Republican National Convention convened at Chicago in early June, anticipation of victory was in the air. Supreme Court justice Charles Evans Hughes quickly emerged as a compromise candidate and was nominated virtually without opposition on the second ballot.⁷⁹ Twice elected governor of New York, Hughes had established a solid record of reform but had turned away from partisan politics following his elevation to the bench in 1910. His remarkable intellect and good judgment had made him the leader of the Court’s liberal minority, while his stately bearing and conservative demeanor endeared him to Republican regulars. The only Supreme Court justice in the nation’s history to be tapped by a major party, Hughes looked more presidential than any candidate in recent history.

On June 14, 1916, four days after Hughes was nominated, the nation celebrated Flag Day with preparedness parades throughout the country. Wilson led the Washington procession himself, a flag carried decorously over his shoulder. Civilian employees from each government department marched, and FDR headed the Navy’s contingent. “The Navy Department made an excellent showing,” he wrote Eleanor. “When I passed the President’s reviewing stand I was sent for to join them and spent the next four hours there.”⁸⁰ Press coverage the next day featured photographs of Wilson standing foursquare for preparedness, a Democratic Roosevelt beaming at his side.⁸¹

FDR campaigned for the ticket in New England and the middle Atlantic states. He defended the administration’s preparedness record and shielded Daniels from Republican attack, suggesting that criticism of the mobilization effort was counterproductive and unpatriotic. “How would you expect the public to be convinced that a dangerous fire was in progress if they saw members of the volunteer fire department stop their headlong rush toward the conflagration and indulge in a slanging match as to who was responsible for the rotten hose or lack of water at a fire a week ago?”⁸² The fire hose analogy was one of the homey metaphors FDR sometimes called up to explain the necessity for cooperation in times of crisis. In early 1940 he employed it again to support his proposal for Lend-Lease to Great Britain: “Suppose my neighbor’s home catches fire, and I have a length of garden hose four or five hundred feet away. If he can take my garden hose and connect it up with his hydrant, I may help him to put out his fire.”⁸³

Hughes waged a lackluster campaign—TR called him “Wilson with whiskers”—but he remained the overwhelming favorite.⁸⁴ New York bookmakers quoted the final odds at 5 to 3. On election night, FDR attended a large dinner given by Henry Morgenthau, Sr., for party bigwigs at New York’s Biltmore Hotel. Morgenthau chaired the Democratic finance committee, and the politicians present that evening hoped against hope the bookies had it wrong. Gloom settled in quickly. Early returns from the East showed a landslide for Hughes. Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont, all of which Wilson had carried in 1912, had swung Republican. North of the Mason-Dixon Line, only New Hampshire remained in doubt. At midnight Franklin left the Biltmore to catch the last train to Washington, certain that Wilson had lost. Newsboys were already hawking Wednesday’s New York Times proclaiming Hughes elected in banner headlines. At press time, the Republicans had carried or were leading in eighteen states with 247 electoral votes to Wilson’s 135. Two hundred sixty-six votes were needed to win, and Hughes was only 19 shy.

Results from the West were slow coming in. But when FDR reached his office the next morning, Hughes’s lead had narrowed. In addition to the Solid South, Wilson appeared to be adding one after another of the states beyond the Mississippi. The Democrats campaign slogan, “He kept us out of war,” had fallen on receptive ears in America’s heartland. By noon the race had become too close to call. Franklin scribbled a quick note to Eleanor at Hyde Park: “Dearest Babs, [This] is the most extraordinary day of my life. Wilson may be elected after all. It looks hopeful at noon.”⁸⁵ Uncertainty continued through Thursday. “Returns have been coming in every hour,” FDR wrote Eleanor. “Wilson seems to have 251 votes safe.… It appears we have North Dakota (5 votes) and in California (13) we are well ahead, though there are still 200 districts to hear from. New Hampshire looks better and we may carry it.”⁸⁶ Not until Friday morning was the California vote count complete. Wilson carried the state by 3,420 votes. That was the Democrats’ margin of victory. Wilson had 277 electoral votes to Hughes 254. The popular vote was 9,129,606 for Wilson, 8,538,321 for Hughes.

Instead of making ready to leave Washington, Franklin and Eleanor settled in for another four years. “It is rumored that a certain distinguished cousin of mine is now engaged in revising his most noted historical work, The Winning of the West,” FDR joked to an audience of party faithful immediately after the election. To Eleanor he confided, “I hope to God I don’t grow reactionary with advancing years.”⁸⁷

In France, the military stalemate continued. The Allied lines were stretched thin but remained intact. Imperial Russia was on the verge of collapse and revolution loomed, but the British naval blockade was taking a dreadful toll on the German home front. Eager to drive Britain from the war, the German high command concluded that unrestricted submarine warfare—the one weapon they had not yet employed—would force the island to its knees in six months. That might bring the United States into the war, but the German military was convinced the fighting would be over before America’s power could be felt. On January 9, 1917, Kaiser Wilhelm revoked his earlier edict and ordered unrestricted submarine warfare to commence on February 1. German embassies were instructed to inform their host governments on January 31, which left no time for a diplomatic protest. Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmermann dispatched an additional note to the German ambassador in Mexico City:

We shall endeavor to keep the United States neutral. In the event of this not succeeding, we make Mexico a proposal of alliance on the following basis: Make war together, make peace together, generous financial support, and an understanding on our part that Mexico is to reconquer the lost territory in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.⁸⁸

On February 3, following the U-boat sinking of the freighter Housatonic, Wilson went before Congress to announce that he had severed diplomatic relations with Germany.⁸⁹ FDR was inspecting the Marine occupation of Santo Domingo at the time and received an urgent message from Daniels to return to Washington immediately.⁹⁰ “No one knew anything for certain except that the German Ambassador, Count von Bernstorff, had been given his passports and it seemed probable that the United States and Germany were already at war,” Roosevelt recalled. “As we headed north on our way to Hampton Roads no lights were showing, the guns were manned and there was complete radio silence.”⁹¹

When FDR arrived in Washington, he found it was business as usual. Wilson hoped that by breaking relations he would convince Germany to rescind its submarine campaign, and the administration settled into a period of watchful waiting. But the president’s hopes were soon dashed. By the end of February German U-boats had sunk an unprecedented 781,500 tons of Allied shipping. Reeling under the impact, the British Admiralty furnished the U.S. Embassy in London a decoded copy of Zimmermann’s January telegram to his ambassador in Mexico City.^* The embassy passed the message to Washington, and on March 1, 1917, an infuriated Wilson released it to the press. A wave of anti-German sentiment swept the country, and the United States inched closer to war.

With hostilities looming and Daniels out of town, FDR as acting secretary asked Wilson for permission to bring the Atlantic Fleet north from Guantánamo Bay so that it could be fitted out for war. Wilson declined. “I want history to show,” Roosevelt remembers the president saying, “not only that we have tried every diplomatic means to keep out of the war; to show that war has been forced upon us deliberately by Germany; but also that we have come into the court of history with clean hands.”⁹²

Daniels shared Wilson’s view. “If any man in official life ever faced the agony of a Gethsemane,” he wrote later, “I was that man in the first four months of 1917.”⁹³ Not surprisingly, Daniels became the whipping boy for interventionists in the GOP, the Navy League, Wall Street, and the steel industry, as well as the jingoist press, all of which clamored for immediate entry into war. Also, not surprisingly, FDR was praised extravagantly. “Secretary Daniels has been criticized for four years,” wrote Washington’s Evening Star, “but there has been little, if any criticism of his assistant, for the simple reason there has been little to criticize.”⁹⁴ When an old Harvard friend wrote to suggest that he assume Daniels’s position, FDR stood by his chief:

I am having a perfectly good time with many important things to do and my heart is entirely in my work.

Personally I have no use for a man who, serving in a subordinate position, is continually contriving ways to step into his boss’s shoes and I detest nothing so much as that kind of disloyalty.

Franklin said he had “worked very gladly under Mr. Daniels and I wish the public could realize how much he has done for the Navy. I would feel very badly indeed if friends of mine should unwittingly give the impression that I was for a minute thinking of taking his place at the head of the Navy.”⁹⁵

The German U-boat campaign soon resolved whatever tension existed between FDR and Daniels over the speed of mobilization. On March 18 the steamships City of Memphis, Illinois, and Vigilancia were all torpedoed, the Vigilancia without warning. Two days later, Wilson placed the question of war before his cabinet. Daniels was the most reluctant, but in the end, with tears in his eyes, he voted to make the recommendation for war unanimous. “I had hoped and prayed that the hour would not come, but the attitude of the Imperial German Government left us no other course.”⁹⁶

Wilson called Congress back from recess and on the evening of April 2 asked for a declaration of war. The House chamber was packed to capacity that evening as the Senate, the Supreme Court (in a departure from tradition), and the cabinet joined the 435 members of the House.⁹⁷ The galleries were crammed with those fortunate enough to get tickets. FDR sat with Daniels on the House floor, Eleanor in the diplomatic gallery. Setting the tone for the evening, the president was escorted up Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol by a mounted battalion from the 1st Cavalry, stationed at Fort Myer. He was greeted by thunderous applause when he entered the chamber. Virtually every member was on his feet cheering, led by the towering figure of the chief justice of the United States, Edward D. White, a seventy-two-year-old Louisianian who had fought for the Confederacy and had long supported the Allied cause.

Wilson spoke clearly, without bombast or excess. Our quarrel was not with the German people, he said, but with their government, which had “thrown to the winds all scruples of humanity.” America’s object was not conquest but peace and justice—a war “without rancor and without selfish object,” a war without revenge. “The world must be made safe for democracy.”

His pastoral Presbyterian voice reverberating through the chamber, Wilson asked Congress to recognize that a state of war “has been thrust upon us.” He requested authorization to draft 500,000 men and bring the Navy to full combat readiness. “There is one choice we cannot make, we are incapable of making. We will not choose the path of submission.” He ended by paraphrasing the words of Martin Luther. America was privileged to spend her blood for the principles she treasured. “God helping her, she can do no other.”⁹⁸

The House chamber erupted in frantic applause. A few members—Senator Robert La Follette of Wisconsin, Senator George Norris of Nebraska, Senator James K. Vardaman of Mississippi, Representative Jeannette Rankin from Montana—sat silent. But Wilson carried the day. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, an inveterate foe of the administration who hated Wilson with a passion, approached the president as he made his way out of the chamber. “Mr. President, you have expressed in the loftiest manner possible the sentiments of the American people.”⁹⁹ FDR told the press that Wilson’s speech would be “an inspiration to every true citizen no matter what his political faith.”¹⁰⁰ Eleanor said she “listened breathlessly and returned home still half dazed by the sense of political change.”¹⁰¹

Daniels pronounced the most eloquent benediction: “If I should live a thousand years, there would abide with me the reverberation of the fateful ominous sound of the hoofs of the cavalry horses as they escorted Mr. and Mrs. Wilson back to the White House.”¹⁰²

^* In 1916, Wilson sealed his bargain with the New York regular organization when he tapped Martin H. Glynn to give the keynote address at the Democratic convention in Saint Louis, and it was Glynn, in that speech, who coined the slogan “He kept us out of war.” In 1921, as a private citizen, Glynn introduced Prime Minister David Lloyd George to the Irish leader Eamon De Valera and brokered the deal that established the Irish Free State. The New York Times, October 7, 1923.

^* Instability in the Balkans traced to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the defeat of Turkey by Russia in 1878. At the ensuing Congress of Berlin, Serbia, Romania, and Montenegro became independent states and Austria was given a mandate to occupy Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 1908 Austria unilaterally repudiated its occupation mandate and annexed the two provinces directly into the Austro-Hungarian Empire, precipitating the Annexation Crisis of 1908. Austria prevailed, but the reaction of the south Slavic people to the annexation was unforgiving.

Two minor Balkan wars in 1912 and 1913 redistributed the remaining territory of Turkey in Europe among Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, and Serbia. The ensuing treaties of London (May 30, 1913), Bucharest (August 10, 1913), and Constantinople (September 29, 1913) appeared to resolve all outstanding issues except the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria, which continued to rile Serbian irredentist sentiment. When Franz Ferdinand was assassinated, both Serbia and Austria welcomed the showdown, which both believed would be decisive. A balanced account is provided by Fritz Fischer in Germany’s Aims in the First World War 51–57 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1967). Also see Gordon A. Craig, Germany: 1866–1945 302–338 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), and the classic study by Sidney B. Fay, The Origins of the World War, 2 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1930).

^† Because of the enormous military advantage acquired by the nation that mobilized first, the common law of European diplomacy held the act of mobilization tantamount to a declaration of war.

^* Wagner, who had his heart set on becoming a judge of the New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, was taken by surprise and declined the powerful patronage position of postmaster. Three years later he got his wish and was elevated to the bench, where he served until elected to the U.S. Senate in 1926. Wagner was reelected to the Senate in 1932, 1938, and 1944 and served until he resigned because of ill health in 1946.

^* Wilson reinstituted the practice of Presidents Washington and John Adams of delivering the State of the Union message in person to a joint session of Congress—a practice in desuetude since Thomas Jefferson’s time.

^* The sinking of the Lusitania has intrigued historians for almost a century. The ship flew the British flag and, in addition to the passenger complement, carried 4,200 cases of cartridges and 1,250 cases of shrapnel shells. Before it sailed from New York, the German Embassy in Washington placed notices in all major newspapers warning Americans of the danger involved in traveling on a British vessel in a war zone.

The German submarine U-20, which intercepted the ship, had completed its patrol in the Irish Sea and was returning to port with only three torpedoes remaining. Captain William T. Turner of Lusitania had been warned of the presence of a submarine in the area and instructed to sail a zigzag course. Instead, he steered straight ahead and inexplicably reduced speed to eighteen knots, making the ship an easy target. U-20 fired only one torpedo and hit Lusitania on the starboard bow, just behind the bridge. The hit was followed by an enormous explosion and a massive smoke cloud. Diana Preston, Lusitania: An Epic Tragedy 91–241 (New York: Walker & Co., 2002); Thomas A. Bailey and Paul B. Ryan, The Lusitania Disaster 128–225 (New York: The Free Press, 1975); A. A. and Mary Hoehling, The Last Voyage of the Lusitania 102 ff (New York: Holt, 1955).

^* Twenty years later, seasoned by the responsibilities of the presidency, the revelations of the Nye Committee about the prewar machinations of America’s munitions makers, and his own second thoughts, FDR recanted his harsh judgment of Bryan. To Daniels he wrote, “Would that W.J.B. had stayed on as Secretary of State—the Country would have been better off.” FDR to JD, October 3, 1934, Daniels Papers, Library of Congress.

^† Roosevelt suffered a sudden appendicitis attack in Washington the morning of July 1 and was operated on that afternoon. Daniels ordered the secretary’s yacht, Dolphin, to take him to Campobello to recover and checked regularly on his progress. TR wired his concern, as did the Japanese naval attaché, Commander Kichisaburo Nomura. At the time of Pearl Harbor, Nomura was Japanese ambassador to the United States.

^* Daniels saw preparedness as a means of preventing war; FDR looked on it as a prerequisite. Many years later Daniels recalled that Franklin on any number of occasions came into his office and said, “We’ve got to get into this war.” Each time Daniels replied, “I hope not.” Daniels, interview with Frank Freidel, May 29, 1947, quoted in Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt: The Apprenticeship 267 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1952).

^* Eleanor’s brother Hall and three of TR’s sons were among those who attended the Plattsburgh camp in 1915. Richard Harding Davis, the noted journalist who had immortalized TR’s charge up San Juan Hill for the New York Herald, was just back from covering the war in Europe and also enrolled. Davis recalled that his squad included “two fox-hunting squires from Maryland, a master of fox hounds, a gentleman jockey from Boston, and two steeple chase riders who divided between them all of the cups the country offers.” Quoted in Geoffrey C. Ward, A First-Class Temperament 309 (New York: Harper & Row, 1989).

^* British Naval Intelligence intercepted Zimmermann’s message and quickly decoded it but did not pass it on to the American embassy in London until February 23. Ambassador Walter Hines Page immediately flashed it to the State Department, which was able to verify its authenticity by checking it against American cable intercepts. The United States had the coded German message on file but had not bothered to decipher it. Once its authenticity was established, Secretary of State Lansing, Bryan’s successor, passed the telegram to Wilson.

EIGHT
LUCY

You were a goosy girl to think or even pretend to think that I don’t want you here all the summer, because you know I do! But honestly you ought to have six weeks straight at Campobello.

—FRANKLIN TO ELEANOR, JULY 16, 1917

WHEN CONGRESS DECLARED war on April 6, 1917, the United States was a second-class military power.¹ The Army, relegated to showing the flag in Latin America and pursuing Mexican banditti, consisted of 108,399 men, a third of whom were on garrison duty in Panama, Hawaii, and the Philippines. The various state militias, recently formed into a National Guard, added but another 200,000, and there was no organized reserve.² The Navy numbered slightly more than 60,000 in all ranks, with a mere 197 ships on active service.

Within six months the Navy’s strength expanded fourfold. By war’s end nearly half a million men had joined the fleet and the number of ships exceeded two thousand. During the same time, the Army grew to 2.4 million men.³ General John J. Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Force, landed at Boulogne, France, on June 13, 1917. On July 4, elements of the 1st Division paraded down the Champs-Élysées. Ultimately, more than 2 million men would serve in the AEF, escorted safely across the Atlantic by the Navy’s Cruiser and Transport Force.⁴ Except for sporadic firings at German submarines, the U.S. Navy did not engage the enemy in World War I. But thanks to its escort duty, when the armistice was signed the Navy could boast that not one American troopship had been lost in action.⁵

FDR, who was responsible for the Navy’s procurement, threw himself into his mobilization duties. He contracted for vast amounts of materiel and equipment (sometimes before Congress appropriated the money),⁶ pressed for the immediate enlistment of large numbers of men, ordered training camps expanded and ship construction accelerated. “See young Roosevelt about it” became a catchphrase in wartime Washington.⁷

Roosevelt’s procurement efforts were so effective that two weeks after America entered the war he received an urgent summons to the White House. In the Oval Office he found General Hugh Scott, the Army chief of staff. “Mr. Secretary,” said Wilson, barely able to suppress a grin, “I’m very sorry, but you have cornered the market for supplies. You’ll have to divide up with the Army.”⁸

Busy as FDR was, he had no intention of fighting the war behind a desk. And though he had a wife and five young children, he was determined to see action.⁹ That was the path Cousin Theodore had followed, and the old Rough Rider, who had come to Washington to volunteer his services to President Wilson, encouraged Franklin to join up.^* “You must resign,” said TR. “You must get into uniform at once.”¹⁰

Neither Daniels nor Wilson would hear of it. The war placed a premium on the qualities FDR brought to his job as assistant secretary—energy, flexibility, decisiveness, and the willingness to act on a moment’s notice—qualities they did not wish to lose. Daniels told Franklin he was “rendering a far more important war service than if he put on the uniform.”¹¹ Wilson said that Roosevelt’s place had already been assigned by the country. “Tell the young man to stay where he is,” he instructed Daniels.¹² General Leonard Wood, who evidently heard of Franklin’s desire from TR, added his voice to those urging him to remain in Washington. “Franklin Roosevelt should under no circumstances think of leaving the Navy Department,” he wrote. “It would be a public calamity to have him leave at this time.”¹³

Contrary to most Americans’ assumptions in April 1917, the war was not going well. In Russia, the army had mutinied, the czar had abdicated, and the provisional government was fast proving powerless. On April 16—ten days after the United States declared war—Vladimir Lenin and the Bolshevik leadership detrained at the Finland Station in Saint Petersburg, smuggled from Switzerland by the German high command. In France, war weariness gripped the nation. The army might be counted on to defend French soil, but offensive operations were out of the question. In the Atlantic, unrestricted submarine warfare was taking a dreadful toll. Since February 1, German U-boats had sunk 844 Allied vessels. Nine hundred thousand tons of shipping had gone to the bottom in March, and April’s total was expected to be even greater. The Germans were sinking merchantmen faster than they could be replaced. Herbert Hoover, director of American food relief in Europe, reported that British warehouses held only a three-week supply of grain: once that was depleted, the islands could be starved into submission.¹⁴ “Unless we can stop these losses, and stop them soon, we must leave the war,” said Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, Britain’s First Sea Lord.¹⁵

It should have been obvious that the solution to the U-boat menace was to require merchant ships to sail in convoys. Yet the Admiralty stubbornly refused. Convoy duty was inglorious. The warrior ethic of the Royal Navy demanded that submarines be hunted down: a virtual impossibility given the size of the sea and the absence of radar, sonar, and long-range spotting aircraft.¹⁶ But the mounting losses were too great to sustain. Under pressure from Prime Minister Lloyd George—who paid a dramatic visit to the Admiralty—the sea lords relented and on May 10 dispatched a trial convoy of forty ships from Gibraltar to Britain, escorted by six destroyers. All arrived safely. A second merchant convoy set out from Hampton Roads on May 29 and reached Liverpool without incident. The Admiralty recognized its error and immediately decreed that all merchant shipping to or from Britain must travel in convoy.

To provide destroyer escorts for the convoys placed an enormous strain on the Royal Navy. Several destroyer divisions—the eyes of the fleet—were withdrawn from the Grand Fleet for convoy duty, but the shortage of escort vessels remained acute. Rear Admiral William S. Sims, whom Daniels had dispatched to London, reported that unless the American fleet was “thrown into the balance,” Britain and France would “be forced to dire straits.”¹⁷ FDR shared Sims’s concern. A token force of six destroyers was sent immediately to the Celtic port of Queenstown (now Cobh), but it required a high-level British mission headed by former Prime Minister Arthur Balfour and then a French mission that included Marshal Joseph Joffre, hero of the Battle of the Marne, to convince Washington of the seriousness of the situation.¹⁸

Perhaps because he was one of the few members of the Wilson administration who spoke French fluently, FDR drew the assignment of meeting the French mission at Hampton Roads and escorting it to Washington. As a result, he had “twenty-five hours of quite intimate conversation” with the members before they saw anyone else.¹⁹ He also met frequently with the British. In repeated discussions Roosevelt urged both delegations to press for all they needed from the United States. He also pledged to provide Britain with thirty American destroyers, although neither Daniels nor Wilson had authorized him to do so. In this instance FDR’s eagerness served him well. Despite some foot-dragging by the Navy high command, in July 1917 thirty-five American destroyers were on station at Queenstown. Before the war ended, a total of 370 combat vessels had been assigned to the European command.²⁰

The Balfour and Joffre missions went from Washington to New York to raise money and reinforce investor confidence. FDR’s mother, Sara, went to hear Balfour speak at Carnegie Hall (“a perfect little speech”) and the next morning attended a special service for the British delegation at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine on Morningside Heights. Franklin’s half-brother, Rosy, was a trustee of the cathedral and introduced Sara to Balfour. “He is both musical and religious, and wins all hearts, mine included,” she reported. Joffre proved an even greater hit. When Sara discovered that the French hero was staying nearby at the Fifth Avenue mansion of Henry Clay Frick, she asked the marshal’s aide if she might present three of Franklin’s children—Anna, James, and Elliott—to him. The marshal graciously fit them into his schedule, and Sara escorted the children up the grand marble staircase at the Frick residence “to a little bedroom, and Joffre kissed all three children. Then the perfectly charming, brave Joffre spoke to me of my son in a most lovely way. I felt quite queer and rather like shedding a tear but managed to behave decently.”²¹ Sara asked Joffre for a photograph, which the marshal signed and which she immediately had framed and placed conspicuously on the mantel in the library at Hyde Park.

Like Winston Churchill at the Admiralty, FDR was bubbling with new ideas to confound the enemy. His most notable wartime achievement was the laying of a North Sea antisubmarine mine barrage—a chain of underwater high-explosive charges stretching 240 miles from the Orkney Islands to the coast of Norway. Roosevelt did not conceive the plan, but he promoted it so vigorously that Admiral Frederic R. Harris, the Navy’s expert in construction matters, said that if not for Franklin “there would have been no North Sea mine barrage.”^22*

Long before the United States entered the war, Wilson had asked Daniels, “Why don’t the British shut up the hornets in their nests? They are hunting hornets all over the farm and letting the nest alone.”²³ The British had investigated but rejected the idea of constructing an antisubmarine barrier across the North Sea: the distance was too great, the water too deep, the undersea mine too unreliable a weapon, and the cost prohibitive. But Roosevelt persisted, and by October 1917 the Navy had developed a mine that did not require physical contact but could be detonated when a long, electrified antenna was brushed by a metal object. This meant that far fewer mines would be required than originally estimated and could be linked more easily. On October 3, on his own initiative, FDR authorized the manufacture of 100,000 of the modified mines. Daniels signed on, and Wilson, who despaired of London’s unwillingness to try anything new, added his formal approval two weeks later.²⁴ Daniels ordered Admiral Henry T. Mayo, commander in chief of the Atlantic Fleet, to London for the sole purpose of obtaining British approval, and under Mayo’s unrelenting advocacy the Admiralty acquiesced. As FDR put it, the sea lords said, “We think your plan is a bit wild-eyed but go ahead if you want.”²⁵

In February 1918 a special convoy of two dozen vessels sailed for Scotland with 11,000 tons of TNT, 50,000 feet of wire cable, and casings for nearly 100,000 mines. The actual mining commenced in June, and by October some 70,000 mines had been sown at a cost of $80 million.²⁶ The war ended before the barrage could be fully tested, but at least four and possibly eight U-boats are thought to have been destroyed by it. Other estimates run as high as twenty-three.²⁷ Admiral Sims called the barrier “one of the wonders of the war” and partially credits it with the collapse of the German Navy’s morale, but the evidence is sketchy.²⁸

Joseph P. Kennedy, perhaps an unlikely source, testifies to FDR’s decisiveness during the war. Kennedy was then assistant manager of Bethlehem Steel’s Fore River shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts. At the request of the Navy Department, the Fore River yard had constructed two battleships for Argentina. The ships were ready, but the Argentine government was unable to pay, and Charles Schwab, the legendary chairman of Bethlehem, refused to release them. FDR requested a meeting, and Schwab sent Kennedy to Washington in his place.

Franklin received Kennedy cordially. “Don’t worry about the matter,” he said reassuringly. “The State Department will collect the money.”

Kennedy said that wasn’t good enough. Mr. Schwab would not release the ships until they were paid for. “That’s absurd,” FDR replied. He and Kennedy sparred a few rounds, and then Roosevelt escorted his guest to the door. He had been happy to meet Kennedy, he said, but the Navy wanted the ships released immediately. Again Kennedy declined.

When Kennedy reported the conversation to Schwab, they agreed to ignore Roosevelt’s demand, and the battleships remained securely berthed in Quincy. Less than a week later, four Navy tugboats nosed into the Fore River yard, loaded to the gunwales with combat-ready marines. As startled shipyard workers looked on, the marines took possession of the vessels at bayonet point and towed them into the harbor, where Argentine crews waited to receive them. A chastened Kennedy stood by helpless. “Roosevelt was the hardest trader I’d ever run up against,” he said later. “I was so disappointed I broke down and cried.”²⁹

In 1917 the courtship between Tammany and FDR intensified. As assistant secretary, FDR was well placed to reward the Democratic faithful, especially those members of Congress with Navy yards in their district, and particularly someone as powerful as the Brooklyn-based chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, John J. Fitzgerald—who also happened to be Tammany’s spokesman in the House. Franklin was learning the subtleties of congressional politics, and Fitzgerald was a gifted tutor. Since their set- to in 1914, FDR and Fitzgerald had become staunch allies, Fitzgerald supporting the Navy budget down the line and Roosevelt obliging the chairman with myriad personal favors. In 1915, as a sign of affection, Franklin arranged for Fitzgerald’s two young sons to take part in laying the keel of the battleship California at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and then, with remarkable warmth, offered to join the congressman in his reelection campaign.³⁰ When Congress was in session, Fitzgerald stopped by FDR’s office every week or so to ask a favor or two concerning the Brooklyn yard. “Usually Roosevelt would grant the requests,” he recalled, “but sometimes he would say, ‘The old man [Daniels] is against this and I can’t do anything.’ ” But almost always, FDR sent the chairman away happy. “He was a very, very cooperative man,” said Fitzgerald.³¹

Tammany noted Franklin’s change of heart. In mid-June 1917, Congressman Daniel J. Riordan, who had succeeded to the Lower Manhattan seat vacated by “Big Tim” Sullivan, called on Roosevelt to present an invitation from Charles Murphy asking him to give the keynote address at Tammany’s upcoming Fourth of July celebration, one of the grand rituals of the organization. “I guess if we can stand having you, you can stand coming,” joked Riordan.³²

FDR accepted the invitation on the spot. And so it was on July 4, 1917, that Roosevelt found himself ensconced at Tammany headquarters on Fourteenth Street, celebrating the 128th year of the organization’s existence. The band of the “Fighting 69th,” New York’s renowned Irish regiment, provided the music; the Tammany glee club belted out the melodies, and Franklin joined the overflow audience in a lusty rendition of “Tammany Forever.” It was the type of rally FDR did best, frolicking with former enemies and ingratiating himself with the Wigwam’s senior leadership. The New York Tribune reported that Charles Murphy had invited Franklin “to give him ‘the once over’ ” and was not disappointed in what he saw.³³ Immediately speculation arose that Roosevelt would lead the New York Democratic ticket in 1918, contesting the governorship against the two-term incumbent, Charles S. Whitman.

Back in Washington, FDR labeled the speculation “utterly wild” but kept his ear to the ground. In the autumn and winter the Tammany tom-toms beat a steady call for Roosevelt. “Your name is frequently used around New York, looking a little to the future, and it is always a pleasure to hear it,” wrote the up-and-coming Jimmy Walker in November 1917.³⁴ Shortly afterward, John M. Riehle, a prominent Tammany chieftain who headed the National Democratic Club, publicly endorsed FDR, as did William Kelley, leader of the Brooklyn organization. When the Tammany stalwart Thomas J. MacManus (The MacManus), who had served with FDR in the legislature, offered his support, it was clear the Organization was getting its ducks in a row. Roosevelt was “a corking good man,” said MacManus. “I am for him.”³⁵

Franklin remained noncommittal. He said he was gratified to have so many supporters and was “greatly surprised to find many of these friends in somewhat unexpected quarters,” but he declined to announce his candidacy. When asked about his intentions, Roosevelt stressed the patriotic importance of his work in Washington and said it would not be right for him to leave while the war lasted. But he left the door ajar. “It would be foolish and idle for any man to say what he would or would not do in the future, particularly when the entire situation, international and political, may change overnight.”³⁶

In June, President Wilson added his voice to those urging FDR to run. “Tell Roosevelt he ought not to decline to run for Governor of New York if it is tendered to him,” he advised Daniels.³⁷ But Roosevelt, with Howe’s advice and Daniels’s support, decided against a run for the governorship. “I have made my position entirely clear,” he wrote Wilson, “that my duty lies in my present work—not only my duty to you and to the country but my duty to myself—If I were at any time to leave the Assistant Secretaryship it could only be for active service.”³⁸ Roosevelt’s motives were mixed. So long as the war continued, he believed his place was to serve the war effort, either as assistant secretary or in uniform. To abandon his post would be tantamount to desertion. He also thought 1918 would be another Republican year. Whether he could unseat a popular incumbent was far from clear. Having lost one statewide race, Roosevelt did not want to lose another. What could not be foreseen was that the war would be over by election time and the political equation would have changed. The Democrats nominated Al Smith in FDR’s place in 1918, and Smith went on to win a stunning upset victory over Governor Whitman.³⁹ In later years, Roosevelt claimed to have engineered Smith’s nomination.^* “I see that you have been called the ‘best equipped’ man” for governor, FDR wrote Smith on the night of the Democratic primary. “May I tell you that this is not only true, but that I trust that the people of the State will realize that this is not a mere phrase—it is based upon actual fact.”⁴⁰

As with Franklin, the war gave Eleanor the opportunity to move beyond her limited social circle. Her first four years in Washington as wife of a member of Wilson’s subcabinet had been almost as circumscribed as her life had been in New York, restricted to paying formal calls and leaving visiting cards, entertaining and being entertained, while supervising a household that grew larger each year. When war came, Eleanor found herself in great demand outside that narrow world, and like Franklin she threw herself into her new role with an enthusiasm she had not experienced since her days as head girl at Allenwood. She became an indefatigable organizer of Red Cross volunteers. Scarcely a troop train could pass through Union Station without Eleanor being there with a bevy of assistants to hand out coffee, sandwiches, and hand-knitted woolen socks.⁴¹

Despite her wide exposure, some prejudices died hard. Eleanor never felt completely comfortable with the Roman Catholic clergy and the Irish politicians with whom FDR consorted, and her tolerance for those of the Jewish faith grew slowly.^* Eleanor was distressed in January 1918 when she was obliged to attend a gala given by the British Embassy to honor Bernard Baruch, then head of the War Industries Board. It would be “mostly Jews,” she wrote Sara, and “I’d rather be hung than seen there.” Afterward she reported, “The Jew party was appalling. I never wish to hear money, jewels, and sables mentioned again.”⁴²

Several months later Eleanor was surprised when FDR brought the young Harvard professor and Washington consultant Felix Frankfurter home for lunch. She found Frankfurter unappealing. “An interesting little man,” she wrote Sara, “but very Jew.”⁴³ Later she would refuse to read Maurice Low’s interpretive biography of Woodrow Wilson because the author was “such a loathsome little Jew.”⁴⁴ Blanche Wiesen Cook, Eleanor’s elegant biographer, noted, “ER’s caustic comments concerning Jews remained a routine part of her social observation for many years, diminishing as her friendship with Baruch and other Jews flourished.”⁴⁵

FDR did not have that problem. Although his half brother, Rosy, was a notorious anti-Semite, neither Sara nor Franklin’s father, James, was infected with the virus. James had numerous Jewish friends, including August Belmont and Henry Morgenthau, Sr., and he told Sara on several occasions that although he was not Jewish, “if he were he would be proud of it.”⁴⁶ FDR enjoyed ethnic jokes and often told them himself, but he drew the line at sectarian slurs, especially if directed at particular individuals. And he recognized early in his career that he needed support across the religious spectrum. Henry Morgenthau, Jr., his neighbor in Dutchess County, was one of Franklin’s closest friends. They shared the interests of gentleman farmers, comparing notes on everything from breeds of dairy cattle to selective timbering. “Two of a kind,” FDR inscribed across a photograph of him and Morgenthau seated together in an open convertible. When he became governor, Roosevelt appointed Morgenthau chairman of New York’s Agricultural Advisory Commission and then called him to Washington in 1933 to head the newly established Farm Credit Administration. The following year Morgenthau succeeded William H. Woodin as secretary of the Treasury, a post he held for the duration of the Roosevelt administration.

Throughout his career FDR drew heavily on members of the Jewish faith for their skill and expertise. Judge Samuel Rosenman joined Roosevelt’s staff in 1928 as his chief aide and speechwriter and remained in that capacity until the president’s death in 1945. Sidney Hillman, Ben Cohen, and David Niles were in and out of the White House, advising the president and carrying water for the New Deal. Jews constituted roughly 3 percent of the population when FDR was president, yet they represented about 15 percent of his top appointments.⁴⁷ Roosevelt set the tone with his masterly reply to a pointed query about his ancestry: “In the dim past [my ancestors] may have been Jews or Catholics or Protestants. What I am more interested in is whether they were good citizens and believers in God. I hope they were both.”⁴⁸ FDR’s response to the Holocaust was nuanced and complex, and certainly not everything America’s Jewish community desired, but that in no way diminishes his commitment to social justice or the breakthrough that the New Deal represented. Until 1933, Washington had been run by WASP descendants of old-stock Americans. Roosevelt opened government to those of talent regardless of pedigree.

The war years also saw Franklin and Eleanor grow distant. FDR put in longer hours at the Navy Department. Eleanor was drawn increasingly into volunteer work, and their summers were spent apart, Franklin at his post in Washington, ER and the children at Campobello. After the birth of their sixth child, John Aspinwall Roosevelt, on March 13, 1916, the evidence suggests that Eleanor and Franklin adopted abstinence as the only sure means of birth control. That was common at the time. The Episcopal Church (as well as the Roman Catholic) forbade birth control, and it was illegal in many states by statute.⁴⁹ Sara had adopted the practice after Franklin’s birth, and in the refined circles in which the Roosevelts moved, contraception was almost never discussed.^*

An only child, Franklin had wanted six children—the same number that had romped through Cousin Theodore’s home at Sagamore Hill. That desire had been one of the reasons he had been rejected by the young Alice Sohier in 1902, before his courtship of Eleanor. Whether he mentioned this same desire to Eleanor is unclear, but she had now given birth to six children (one of whom had died in infancy), and the Roosevelts would have no more.

The Roosevelt siblings are in agreement on the matter. Anna, who was closest to her parents, said her mother told her that “sex is an ordeal to be borne.” After John’s birth, “that was the end of any marital relationship, period.”⁵⁰ James, more circumspect, wrote, “It is possible that she [ER] knew no birth-control methods other than abstinence when she determined to have no more children.”⁵¹ Elliott said that from John’s birth

until the end of Father’s days, my parents never again lived together as man and wife.

Mother had performed her austere duty in marriage, and five children were testimony to that. She wanted no more, but her blank ignorance about how to ward off pregnancy left her no choice other than abstinence. Her shyness and stubborn pride would keep her from seeking advice from a doctor or woman friend.… It quickly became the most tightly held secret that we five children ever shared and kept.⁵²

It was in the summer of 1916, shortly after the birth of John Aspinwall, that FDR took up with Lucy Mercer, Eleanor’s part-time social secretary. ER and the children were at Campobello, and Franklin was spending another summer alone in Washington. Lucy was nearby, unattached, and incredibly attractive. The long, tender love affair between Franklin and Lucy remained shrouded in secrecy until well after the president’s death. Eleanor never mentioned it in her extensive autobiographical writings; Franklin said nothing; and Lucy was among the most private of persons. The families knew, the White House staff was aware, and many in the press had more than an inkling of the relationship. In those days the private lives of public persons were strictly private.⁵³ Journalists respected that, the public was not consumed with people watching, and the three protagonists—Eleanor, Franklin, and Lucy—conducted themselves with honor, dignity, and discretion.

Arthur Schlesinger put the romance into perspective: “If Lucy Mercer in any way helped Franklin Roosevelt sustain the frightful burdens of leadership in the Second World War, the nation has good reason to be grateful to her.”⁵⁴

Lucy Mercer came into the Roosevelt family in the winter of 1914, when Eleanor, overwhelmed by her social obligations as wife of the assistant secretary of the Navy, hired her three mornings a week to assist with correspondence and help unravel the mysteries of Washington society. Lucy was twenty-three, the impoverished daughter of high-living socialites who had recklessly spent their way through a substantial fortune. She had been raised in Washington, just a few doors from the Roosevelt home on N Street, educated at a convent in Austria, and, despite the hard times on which her family had fallen, was listed in the Social Register in both New York and Washington. She attended the same parties and dinners as the Roosevelts, was accorded the deference bestowed on aboriginal families in the District of Columbia, and found ready employment as a social secretary, a genteel calling that virtually made one a member of the family.

The Roosevelt children adored her. Anna remembered Lucy’s warm smile and friendly greeting. Elliott called her gay, smiling, and relaxed. “She was femininely gentle where Mother had something of a schoolmarm’s air about her, outgoing where Mother was an introvert. We children welcomed the days she came to work.”⁵⁵

Lucy was nearly as tall as Eleanor, fair, slender, and with the same blue eyes and light brown hair, but was far more graceful and at ease with herself. Alice Roosevelt Longworth recalled Lucy as “beautiful, charming, and absolutely delightful,” with a really lovely face and “always beautifully dressed.”⁵⁶ A friend, Aileen Tone, who held a similar position with Henry Adams, remembered seeing Lucy seated on the Roosevelts’ living room floor, the family’s bills, letters, and invitations spread around her in neat piles, “making order of them in a twinkle.”⁵⁷ Another friend remembered her smile, “the most beautiful and winning I have ever seen.”⁵⁸ Still another remembered her warm, mellow voice in contrast to the “shrill arpeggios” into which Eleanor’s sometimes climbed.⁵⁹ Roy Jenkins (Lord Jenkins of Hillhead), FDR’s most recent biographer, may have said it best when he described Lucy as a young lady of delicate charm, “a quintessential Jane Austen heroine, cast up one hundred years late on the shores of the District of Columbia rather than those of Dorset or Devon.”⁶⁰

Franklin was thirty-four, nine years older than Lucy, but still so youthful-looking that a cranky Wisconsin congressman ordered him to stub out his cigarette while he waited to testify before a House subcommittee, mistaking him for a junior clerk.⁶¹ His appeal for the opposite sex was now considerable. Arthur Murray, Great Britain’s assistant military attaché, spoke of Roosevelt as “breathing health and virility.”⁶² Bamie called him “my debonair young cousin,” and her elderly husband, Admiral Sheffield Cowles, teased Franklin that “the girls will spoil you soon enough. I leave you to them.”⁶³

In 1915, when Franklin attended the Panama Pacific Exposition with his friend Assistant Secretary of State William Phillips, a San Francisco society matron proclaimed them “the most magnetic young men I ever saw. I had no idea that the Democratic party ever recruited that type of person.”^64* A Washington doyenne remembered FDR from his time as assistant secretary as “the most desirable man” she had ever met.⁶⁵ Alice Roosevelt Longworth, when she learned of Franklin’s interest in Lucy, confessed that she marveled he hadn’t strayed earlier.⁶⁶

The romance began innocently enough. Franklin was again in Washington alone for the summer and continued his usual round of social engagements. Lucy was often present at those functions, and FDR, as was his wont, flirted brazenly. Lucy, who in many ways was as strong-willed as Eleanor, flirted back. One thing led to another, and soon Franklin was inviting her for cruises aboard the Navy’s yacht Sylph and long drives in the Virginia countryside. The cruises were always well attended by a host of guests, but the drives were strictly private.

“I saw you twenty miles out in the country,” Alice Longworth teased Franklin, “but you didn’t see me. Your hands were on the wheel but your eyes were on that perfectly lovely lady.”

“Yes, she is lovely, isn’t she?”⁶⁷

FDR was happy in Lucy’s company and she very much in his. Unlike Eleanor, Lucy was uncritical in her affection and saw no need to direct his activities or admonish his behavior. She knew instinctively how to please him, to bolster rather than challenge him. Elliott recalls that Lucy had “the same brand of charm as Father, and there was a hint of fire in her warm dark eyes. In the new circumstances of Father’s life at home, I see it as inevitable that they were irresistibly attracted to each other.”⁶⁸

Friends recognized that as well. A number, such as British Embassy counselor Nigel Law and Franklin’s Harvard classmate Livingston Davis, often provided cover, posing as Lucy’s escorts, while others, such as Alice Longworth and Edith Morton Eustis, provided safe houses for the couple to meet. “Franklin deserved a good time,” said Alice. “He was married to Eleanor.”⁶⁹ Alice, though she had been Eleanor’s maid of honor, had little good to say about her cousin in those years, and her decision to provide succor for Franklin and Lucy was spiked with malice—perhaps because her own marriage to Nicholas Longworth had turned sour.

Edith Eustis, one of five attractive daughters of former vice president Levi Morton, was a Dutchess County neighbor of the Roosevelts and had known Franklin since childhood.⁷⁰ She admired his work in Washington and adored Lucy, a cousin of her husband, William Corcoran Eustis. Their elegant Washington mansion, Corcoran House, had been built in the earliest days of the city for Lucy’s ancestor Maryland Governor Thomas Swann. It stood at the corner of Connecticut Avenue and H Street, directly across from Lafayette Park, astride the route Franklin walked each day to and from the Navy Department.^71*

Eleanor sensed something amiss that summer. Franklin’s letters were intermittent and perfunctory, and he visited Campobello for only ten days, an aberration for someone who enjoyed the island so much as he. A polio epidemic raging along the East Coast kept Eleanor and the children at Campobello for four months instead of the usual two (the island proved to be insulated from the disease), and she did not return to Washington until after the election in November. “From a life centered entirely in my family,” she wrote many years later, “I became conscious that there was a sense of impending disaster hanging over all of us.”⁷² The comment in her autobiography is interlaced between references to the growing menace posed by imperial Germany in late 1916, and it is easy to believe that ER was referring to the international situation. Elliott and others believe she was referring to something more personal. “By ‘all of us’ she meant not the country at large, but her family. She was talking about trouble much closer to home.”⁷³

The relationship between FDR and Lucy intensified in 1917. On June 24, ten weeks after the United States entered the war, Lucy enlisted in the Navy as a yeoman (female) and was assigned secretarial duties in the office of the assistant secretary. To believe FDR did not have a hand in the assignment is to believe in the tooth fairy. Franklin did not flaunt his infatuation with Lucy, but he made no secret of his affection for her. He began to put in longer hours at the Navy Department and often did not arrive home until after midnight.⁷⁴

That summer Eleanor delayed her departure for Campobello as long as feasible. She and Franklin had words, there were arguments and upsets, but it was all vague. FDR was eager for her to take the children out of the Washington heat; Eleanor was reluctant to leave Franklin alone in the city. Finally, on July 15, she packed up her family and went off to Campobello. FDR wrote her en route, part apology, part smoke screen: “[Y]ou were a goosy girl to think or even pretend to think that I don’t want you here all the summer, because you know I do! But honestly you ought to have six weeks straight at Campo.… I know what a whole summer here does to people’s nerves and at the end of this summer I will be like a bear with a sore head … as you know I am unreasonable and touchy now—but I will try to improve.”⁷⁵

Scarcely had Franklin written than The New York Times published an earnest interview with Eleanor that made matters worse. Under the headline “How to Save in Big Homes,” the Times snidely described the Roosevelt ten-servant household on N Street as a model of wartime thriftiness: “Mrs. Roosevelt does the buying, the cooks see that there is no food wasted, the laundress is sparing in her use of soap, and each servant keeps a watchful eye for evidence of shortcomings on the part of the others; and all are encouraged to make helpful suggestions in the use of ‘leftovers.’ ” Eleanor was quoted as saying that “Making the ten servants help me do my saving has not only been possible but highly profitable.”⁷⁶

FDR responded with biting sarcasm:

All I can say is that your latest newspaper campaign is a corker and I am proud to be the husband to the Originator, Discoverer and Inventor of the New Household Economy for Millionaires! Please have a photo of the family, and ten cooperating servants, the scraps saved from the table. I will have it published in the Sunday Times.

Honestly you have leaped into public fame, all Washington is talking of the Roosevelt plan and I began to get telegrams of congratulations and requests for further details from Pittsburgh, New Orleans, San Francisco and other neighboring cities.⁷⁷

Eleanor was mortified. “I do think it was horrid of that woman to use my name in that way,” she replied. “I feel dreadfully about it because so much is not true and yet some of it I did say. I never will be caught again that’s sure and I’d like to crawl away for shame.”⁷⁸ The flap ended quickly. It was ER’s first experience at the hands of the press, and she had no idea how her candor could be exploited. She was never “caught again,” and never again referred publicly to her household staff.^*

In early August FDR came down with a serious throat infection that hospitalized him for four days. Eleanor rushed to his side and remained in Washington for almost two weeks. They evidently quarreled again, and Eleanor insisted he come to Campobello by the end of the month.⁷⁹ “I hated to leave you yesterday,” she wrote on August 15. “Please go to the doctor twice a week, eat well and sleep well, and remember I count on seeing you on the 26th. My threat was no idle one.”⁸⁰

The precise nature of ER’s threat is unknown, but the context is clear. Some authors suggest she meant to bring the children back to Washington immediately if FDR did not appear.⁸¹ Elliott, who edited his father’s papers, is more explicit: “There was no mystery; she threatened to leave him.”⁸²

Whatever the case, FDR made it to Campobello in time to forestall a crisis, and that autumn the Roosevelts moved into more spacious quarters at 2131 R Street. “Whether ER was consciously aware at this time that FDR spent as many hours as possible with Lucy Mercer, we shall never know,” wrote Blanche Wiesen Cook. But members of the family knew, so did many of ER’s Red Cross co-workers, and, in Cook’s words, so did “almost everybody else of importance in Washington. Certainly on some level she knew it all, the way lovers always know, unconsciously and through every cell of their being, when somebody else has preempted some big or little piece of their beloved’s heart.”⁸³

One important figure in Washington who had become aware was Josephus Daniels, FDR’s family-minded chief at the Navy Department. On October 5, 1917, Yeoman Lucy Mercer was summarily discharged from the service “by Special Order of the Secretary of the Navy.” No explanation was provided. No reason was given, and Lucy’s conduct was rated outstanding. Daniels was a man who, in his son’s words, “never let it be known that he knew what he did not want to know.”⁸⁴ He never indicated in his diary or by word of mouth that he had ever heard of Lucy Mercer. But he could not have failed to notice the chemistry between his assistant secretary and his comely yeoman aide, nor could he disregard the warnings flashed by his wife, who was well aware of the Washington gossip.⁸⁵

Daniels was old-fashioned about the sanctity of marriage and the sin of divorce. When his brother-in-law, who ran the Raleigh News & Observer in his absence, announced his intention to divorce and remarry, Daniels peremptorily fired him and ran him out of state. The “Chief” loved Franklin as a son. He held Eleanor in deep respect. And he could recognize trouble when he saw it. A divorce would have been political suicide for FDR. Even a scandal would be hard to live down. To prevent that, Daniels evidently decided it was best for Miss Mercer to move on.

During the next six months Eleanor and Franklin saw little of each other. He continued to put in long hours at the Navy Department and saw Lucy when he could, while ER devoted every day to the Red Cross. “I loved it. I simply ate it up,” she wrote later.⁸⁶ For Eleanor, her war work was an essential distraction that kept her mind occupied. Feeling alone and increasingly isolated, she instinctively turned to Sara for reassurance. The relationship between Eleanor and her mother-in-law had never been easy. But with her marriage threatened, ER found Sara a dependable ally. Sara’s unyielding insistence on family tradition, her unstinting advocacy of virtue and noblesse oblige, even her deep-seated conservatism appealed to Eleanor as she faced the crisis she did not yet fully comprehend.

In the winter of 1918 Eleanor wrote Sara almost every day. She mentioned nothing directly but spoke often of the need to confide, to talk intimately: “I miss you and so do the children. As the years go on, I realize how lucky we are to have you, and I wish we could always be together. Very few mothers I know mean as much to their daughters as you do to me.”⁸⁷ Sara responded with equally fulsome praise. The two women were never closer. On March 17, 1918—Franklin and Eleanor’s thirteenth wedding anniversary—Sara sent a congratulatory telegram. Eleanor wrote movingly in reply:

I often think what an interesting happy life Franklin has given me and how much you have done to make our life what it is. As I have grown older I have realized better all you do for us and all you mean to me and the children especially and you will never know how grateful I am nor how much I love you dear.⁸⁸

In the summer of 1918 FDR finally managed to get to the front in France. The Senate Naval Affairs Committee was heading to Europe, and Daniels wanted Roosevelt to get there first and correct anything that might attract its criticism.⁸⁹ Franklin chose to make the Atlantic crossing aboard the USS Dyer, a newly commissioned destroyer rushed into service without a shakedown cruise to escort a convoy of troopships through the war zone. He reveled in every moment, from the storm that smashed the crockery in the wardroom to an engine breakdown and the alarm bells signaling a U-boat attack that never materialized. As Roosevelt retold the story through the years, the German submarine came closer and closer until he had almost seen it himself.

In England, FDR met Lloyd George (“not very tall, rather large head, rather long hair, but tremendous vitality”) and the King (“He seemed delighted that I had come over on a destroyer”); consulted with the Admiralty; spent a weekend at Cliveden with Lady Astor (“enthusiastic, amusing and talkative as always”), and spoke at a banquet at Gray’s Inn.⁹⁰ In Paris he dined with President and Mme. Poincaré (“much like similar dinners at the White House except that here the wines were perfect of their kind and perfectly served”); spoke again with Marshal Joffre (“older and grayer than when he was in the United States”); and, the high point of his visit, met with the premier, Georges Clemenceau.

I knew at once I was in the presence of the greatest civilian in France. He did not wait for me to advance to meet him at his desk, and there was no formality such as one generally meets.… He is only 77 years old and people say he is getting younger everyday. He seemed delighted at the present rate of progress. [T]he wonderful old man leaves his office almost every Saturday in a high-powered car, dashes to the front, visits a Corps Commander, travels perhaps all night, goes up a good deal closer to the actual battle line than the officers like, keeps it up all day Sunday and motors back in time to be at his desk on Monday morning.⁹¹

Roosevelt was especially impressed by French sangfroid. Despite four years of war, with the Germans literally outside the gates of Paris, they continued “the planting of the flower beds in the Tuileries and the repairing and cleaning of streets. They seem to lose their heads even less than the Anglo-Saxons—very different from what we thought four years ago.”⁹²

From Paris, FDR went to the front. After relieving an American naval attaché who sought to keep him out of the trenches, he pushed his party from one battlefield to the next. He saw Château-Thierry, Belleau Wood, and Verdun, was briefly under enemy fire (“the long whining whistle of a shell was followed by the dull boom of the explosion”), and came within a mile of the German lines. “Such tireless energy as Roosevelt’s I have never known,” said Captain Edward McCauley, Franklin’s naval aide, “except perhaps for his kinsman, Theodore Roosevelt. I thought I was fairly husky, but I couldn’t keep up with him.”⁹³

If Franklin did not see combat, he surely experienced its immediate aftermath: the shell holes filled with water, the roofless houses and splintered trees, the stench of dead horses, “rusty bayonets, broken guns, discarded overcoats and ration tins, rain-stained love letters, men buried in shallow graves, some unmarked, some with rifles stuck in the earth bayonet down, and some, too, with a whittled little cross and a tag of wood or wrapping paper hung on it and in a pencil scrawl an American name.” That is the way Franklin described Belleau Wood, a memory he would cite again and again.⁹⁴

From France, FDR went briefly to Italy, hoping to resolve the complicated command structure in the Mediterranean. In Rome he met with his naval counterparts and urged that the Italian fleet take action against the Austrians as soon as possible. At one point he questioned the wisdom of keeping the main Italian battle fleet riding at anchor in Taranto harbor for more than a year, with no drill or target practice.

“Ah,” said the Italian chief of staff, “but my dear Mr. Minister, you must not forget that the Austrian Fleet have not had any either.”

“This is a naval classic which is hard to beat,” FDR wrote afterward, “but which perhaps should not be publicly repeated for a generation or two.”⁹⁵

From Italy back to France, then briefly to England before boarding the troopship USS Leviathan in Brest on September 8 for the return home. “Somehow I don’t believe I shall be long in Washington,” he wrote Eleanor before sailing. “The more I think of it the more I feel that being only 36 my place is not at a Washington desk, even a Navy desk. I know you will understand.”⁹⁶

Whatever Franklin’s wish for active service, the Atlantic crossing of the Leviathan in September 1918 was certainly one he preferred to forget. Another Spanish influenza epidemic swept Europe and the United States that year, taking more than 20 million lives. Leviathan was hit hard. Virtually the entire ship’s complement was struck down, Franklin included. Many of the officers and men were buried at sea, while Franklin hovered semiconscious in his bunk, his condition exacerbated by the onset of double pneumonia. The Navy Department kept a wary eye on Leviathan as it made its way to New York. Secretary Daniels telegraphed Sara of Franklin’s condition, suggesting that she and Eleanor (who was in Hyde Park) meet the ship when it docked on September 19.

“When the boat docked and we went on board,” Eleanor recalled years later, “I remember visiting several of the men who were still in bed. My husband did not seem to me so seriously ill as the doctors implied.”⁹⁷ The fact is that Franklin’s condition was still grave: he was so weak he had to be carried off the ship to an ambulance and borne up the stairs of Sara’s house on East Sixty-fifth Street by four muscular orderlies. While it is possible that Eleanor’s recollection may reflect her feelings at the time, it is more likely to have been colored by the bitterness that set in shortly afterward.⁹⁸

In the course of unpacking Franklin’s luggage, Eleanor discovered a neatly bound packet of love letters from Lucy Mercer. “The bottom dropped out of my world,” Eleanor remembered. “I faced myself, my surroundings, my world, honestly for the first time.”⁹⁹

Family recollections differ as to what happened next. The two versions are not mutually exclusive. The Roosevelts believe that Eleanor offered to step aside so that Franklin might be with the woman he loved but that Lucy, being Catholic, could not bring herself to marry a divorced man with five children.¹⁰⁰ Lucy’s relatives contend that she was perfectly prepared to marry Franklin but that “Eleanor was not willing to step aside.”¹⁰¹

What is generally accepted is that Eleanor did indeed offer “to give Franklin his freedom.” Her Aunt Maude had recently divorced, and divorce was certainly preferable to remaining where she was not wanted.¹⁰² It is also likely that Franklin was prepared to leave. But what neither he nor Eleanor reckoned with were Sara’s reaction and the counsel of Louis Howe. Both intervened decisively to hold the marriage together.

For Sara, divorce was unthinkable. If FDR really wished to leave his wife and five children for another woman and bring scandal upon the family, she said, she could not stop him. But if he did so she “would not give him another dollar,” nor could he expect to inherit his beloved Hyde Park. And for Eleanor, well, it was perfectly all right for her to talk about giving Franklin his freedom, but what about the children? Who would take care of them?¹⁰³

For Howe, it was a question of Franklin’s career. Daniels would certainly have fired him, and the electorate would be unforgiving. Any hope of future elective office was out of the question. If FDR had presidential ambitions (and certainly Howe did on Franklin’s behalf), he would have to choose between his career and Lucy Mercer.

Howe evidently played mediator. Sara had pulled Franklin and Eleanor back from the brink, but it was Howe, speaking separately with each, who brokered the settlement. He persuaded Eleanor that FDR could not go on successfully without her; and he convinced Franklin that to continue in politics he needed his wife.¹⁰⁴ FDR agreed never to see Lucy again—that was Eleanor’s price for reconciliation—and with Louis Howe’s help the two stitched together one of the most remarkable partnerships the world has ever known.

Franklin broke the news to Lucy but could not bear to tell her the truth. Instead, he put the blame on Eleanor: she would not agree to a divorce. Lucy said it did not matter. As a Catholic she could not have married a divorced man. Both were white lies, told by lovers to spare each other’s feelings. Lucy’s mother, an equally devout Catholic, had divorced and remarried, and there is little reason to believe that Lucy would not have married the man who had risked everything for her.

“She and Franklin were very much in love with each other,” remembered Mrs. Lyman Cotten, Lucy’s North Carolina cousin and confidante. “I know the marriage would have taken place but as Lucy said to us, ‘Eleanor was not willing to step aside.’ I am also sure that she thought that the religious opinions of the two could have been arranged. Nothing is easier in the Roman Catholic Church than an annulment, especially among those occupying high places.”¹⁰⁵

Eleanor emerged from the ordeal a different woman. “I knew more about the human heart.… I became a more tolerant person … but I think more determined to try for certain ultimate objectives.”¹⁰⁶ Mrs. Roosevelt commenced the metamorphosis from a private to a public person. The marriage survived, but love and trust were gone. She forgave Franklin and they continued to live together, but their relationship had changed. Independent and increasingly self-confident and outspoken, Eleanor was now her own person. For her, the Lucy Mercer affair was a watershed. “I have the memory of an elephant,” she told a friend. “I can forgive, but I cannot forget.”¹⁰⁷

Franklin, for his part, changed as well. He took care to protect his wife’s feelings and to preserve outward proprieties. He would never allow anyone to criticize Eleanor in his presence. He spent more time with the children, gave up golf on Sunday mornings, and did his utmost to rebuild the marriage, albeit at arm’s length. Like Eleanor, he matured and became more serious.

Historians and biographers attribute FDR’s political coming of age to the searing effect of polio. Many of Franklin’s friends believed his bitter disappointment in love had an earlier and equally profound effect. Corinne Robinson Alsop, Eleanor’s cousin, thought that before Lucy, Franklin was without depth. “He had a loveless quality, as if he were incapable of emotion. It is difficult to describe, but to me [the affair] seemed to release something in him.” Another who knew Franklin wrote that after losing Lucy he emerged “tougher and more resilient, wiser and more profound, even prior to his paralysis.”¹⁰⁸

There was no scandal. Not until the 1960s was FDR linked publicly with Lucy Mercer.¹⁰⁹ Harvard Professor Frank Freidel, writing the first multivolume biography of FDR in the early 1950s, dismissed the story in a footnote. Such rumors, wrote Freidel, “seem preposterous. They reflect more on the teller than FDR.”¹¹⁰ James MacGregor Burns, in his captivating Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox, published in 1956, alluded to wartime rumors in Washington but refuted them in a paragraph.¹¹¹ Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., in The Age of Roosevelt, mentions Lucy Mercer and FDR’s affection for her but resists going further.¹¹² The first to attempt a full account of the romance was Jonathan Daniels, FDR’s presidential press aide and the son of Josephus Daniels, first in The End of Innocence, then in Washington Quadrille, published in 1968.¹¹³ Eleanor Roosevelt confirmed the story in her long series of interviews with Joseph Lash, summarized by Lash in 1972 in his loving portrait Eleanor and Franklin and embellished in Love, Eleanor ten years later.¹¹⁴

Franklin did not see Lucy again until 1941, although they never really lost contact. In 1920, Lucy married Winthrop Rutherfurd, one of the wealthiest and by all accounts one of the most respected members of East Coast society. A direct descendent of Peter Stuyvesant of New York and John Winthrop of Massachusetts, Winthrop (“Winty,” his friends called him) was an avid sportsman who divided his time between a country estate in Allamuchy, New Jersey, an elegant town house in New York, and Ridgeley Hall, his winter home in Aiken, South Carolina. In his youth, Rutherfurd was considered one of the most eligible bachelors in New York and had successfully courted and won the affection of Consuelo Vanderbilt, only to have Consuelo’s mother break off the engagement and compel her to marry the ninth Duke of Marlborough.¹¹⁵ Winthrop later married another considerable heiress, Alice Morton, a daughter of Vice President Levi Morton (and sister of Lucy’s friend Edith Eustis). Alice died in 1917, leaving Rutherfurd a widower at fifty-five with six children to care for. After Lucy’s romance with Franklin broke off, Edith Eustis evidently brought her and Winty together, and they were married shortly afterward. He was fifty-seven, Lucy was twenty-nine.

The Rutherfurds lived together in happy contentment, dividing their time among their estates, the various social seasons, fox hunts, kennel shows, and travel abroad. Lucy helped raise the Rutherfurd children and soon had a daughter of her own. “Seldom have I seen a mother more beloved and respected than was Lucy by her stepchildren,” wrote the Russian portrait painter Elizabeth Shoumatoff.¹¹⁶ Lucy and Franklin maintained a formal correspondence, writing to extend greetings or condolences on special occasions. Other letters, if there were any, have been lost, destroyed, or safely sequestered. But there is no doubt the affection lingered. FDR quietly arranged for Lucy to watch each of his inaugurations from a White House limousine, and about 1940 he began calling her once or twice a week, sometimes speaking in his almost forgotten French to avoid being overheard. Lucy evidently called him as well, and the White House switchboard had standing orders to put Mrs. Rutherfurd directly through to the president.¹¹⁷

In the spring of 1941 Lucy and Franklin began to see each another again. She was given the code name “Mrs. Johnson” by the Secret Service, and her name appears frequently on the White House register.¹¹⁸ FDR enjoyed taking Lucy for afternoon drives through Rock Creek Park, and when Eleanor was away she would be invited by Franklin’s daughter, Anna, to dine with the president. FDR, Jr., home on leave from the Navy, reports bounding into the Oval Office unannounced to find his father having his shriveled legs massaged by an unfamiliar woman whom the president introduced simply as “my old friend, Mrs. Winthrop Rutherfurd.”¹¹⁹

There was “never anything clandestine about these occasions,” Anna recalled. “On the contrary, they were occasions which I welcomed for my father because they were light-hearted and gay, affording a few hours of much needed relaxation for a beloved father and world leader in a time of crisis.… Lucy was a wonderful person. I was grateful to her.”¹²⁰

Winthrop Rutherfurd died in 1944 after a long illness, and thereafter FDR would sometimes stop the presidential train en route from Washington to Hyde Park to visit Lucy at her Allamuchy estate. Once she accompanied him for a weekend at Shangri La, the president’s Catoctin Mountain retreat (now Camp David); they spent a week together at Bernard Baruch’s South Carolina estate, Hobcaw Manor; and FDR enjoyed nothing so much as driving Lucy along the meandering country roads near Warm Springs. She was with him there on April 12, 1945, and her face was the last FDR saw before he died. What attracted Franklin to Lucy? The writer Ellen Feldman sums it up nicely:

Lucy Mercer had a talent [to] make other people happy. I am not talking about giving up a career to stay at home and raise children, or nursing an aged parent, or other instances of worthy self-sacrifice. I mean a contagious genius for living joyously. Her descendants speak of the insouciance with which she met early hardship.… They mention her soft heart.… They speak of her need to make surroundings beautiful, and days bright, and loved ones glad to be alive.¹²¹

In the months following the president’s death, Eleanor came to accept Lucy’s return to Franklin’s life and Anna’s role in making her visits possible. Sorting through FDR’s effects at Hyde Park, she came upon a small watercolor of her husband painted by Lucy’s friend Elizabeth Shoumatoff. She instructed that it be sent to Lucy.¹²² Anna also called. “Your telephoning the other night meant so much to me,” wrote Lucy. “This blow must be crushing to you—to all of you—but I know that you meant more to your father than any one and that makes it closer and harder to bear.… I have been reading over some very old letters of his—and in one he says ‘Anna is a dear fine person—I wish so much that you knew her’—Well, now we do know one another—and it is a great joy to me and I think he was happy this past year that it was so.”¹²³ Anna kept Lucy’s letter in her bedside table for the rest of her life.¹²⁴

^* The day Congress declared war, TR went to Washington to ask that he be allowed to raise a division of volunteers and lead it to France. Georges Clemenceau, not yet premier, supported the proposal. The battle-weary soldiers of France needed a miracle to restore their spirits, he wrote Wilson. “Send them Roosevelt.” But the president and Secretary of War Newton D. Baker, who received TR cordially, wanted no part of the idea. Wilson had decided to fight the war with a conscript army, in which there was no place for volunteers. “To make an exception of Colonel Roosevelt would have been to strike at the heart of the whole design,” wrote Wilson’s secretary, Joe Tumulty.

Wilson found TR more engaging than he had anticipated: “He’s a great big boy. There is a sweetness about him that is compelling.” But aside from the political and military risks of having TR on board, the Colonel was in poor health and half blind, and had been out of touch with military developments for twenty years. Joseph L. Gardner, Departing Glory: Theodore Roosevelt as Ex-President 371–373 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1973); Joseph P. Tumulty, Woodrow Wilson as I Knew Him 288–289 (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1921).

^* FDR pressed the mine barrage, oblivious to the infraction of the law of nations as well as earlier protests lodged by the United States against British and German efforts to mine the high seas. On August 13, 1914, Secretary of State Bryan had warned the British that the laying of submarine mines was in violation of Article 1 of the Hague Convention of 1907. “The Secretary of State is loath to believe that a signatory to that convention would willfully disregard its treaty obligation, which was manifestly made in the interest of neutral shipping.” Diplomatic correspondence on the issue continued through the remainder of 1914 and early 1915, and on February 15, 1915, the United States sent identical notes to Germany and Great Britain expressing hope that the two belligerents “may through reciprocal concessions, find a basis for agreement … that neither will sow any floating mines, whether upon the high seas or in territorial waters.” U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1914, Supplement 454–473; 1915, Supplement 119–120; 1916, Supplement 3–7.

FDR’s memo to Daniels outlining the project (October 29, 1917), as well as his letter to President Wilson (October 29, 1917), made no mention of the earlier American protests or the law of nations. 2 The Roosevelt Letters 293–294, Elliott Roosevelt, ed. (London: George G. Harrap, 1950).

^* In 1938 FDR related the episode to the Wilson biographer Ray Stannard Baker:

About the middle of June [1918] the political situation in New York flared to the front.… Charles F. Murphy, who had the final say in the City, and sufficient support in several large upstate cities to give him control of the convention, had come to realize that a New York City candidate would stand little chance of election if forced through by the City Organization. The secretary of Tammany Hall, Mr. Thomas Smith, came to Washington to see me with the message from Mr. Murphy that he would be very glad to support me for the governorship as there seemed no other upstate candidate who was well-known in every part of the state and who, at the same time, had a definite connection with war service. I told Mr. Smith I was extremely sorry but that I could not even consider accepting the nomination. Mr. Smith went to New York and returned a few days later to ask me to give Mr. Murphy some recommendations of upstate candidates. A careful check of the field convinced me that the best-known Democrat in the State was Alfred E. Smith.… It was pointed out by Mr. [Thomas] Smith and Mr. Murphy that Alfred E. Smith was not only a Tammany man but a Catholic. My reply was the demand for his nomination for Governor could well originate with upstate delegates and that in war-time, the church to which he belonged would not be raised as an issue in any community.

I communicated with many of my friends among Democratic leaders upstate suggesting to them that they should start an organized movement for the nomination of Alfred E. Smith.

FDR to Baker, October 24, 1938, Baker Papers, Library of Congress.

^* By 1916 Franklin had shed whatever anti-Catholic bias he might have inherited. Not only had he formed strong bonds with the Irish politicians of New York City, but many of the clergy would become his close friends, including Francis Cardinal Spellman of New York, George Cardinal Mundelein of Chicago, and especially James Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore. Somewhat to Sara’s chagrin, the Roosevelts were in fact distantly related to James Roosevelt Bayley, an Episcopal convert to Catholicism who had been Gibbons’s predecessor as archbishop of Baltimore, and to Bayley’s aunt, Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton, America’s first Catholic saint. In later years FDR enjoyed recounting Cardinal Gibbons’s reply when asked whether he subscribed to the doctrine of papal infallibility. Gibbons acknowledged that he did, adding with a twinkle that he had met the Holy Father many times “and each time he called me ‘Jibbons.’ ”

One might note that except for his mother and Eleanor, the three women closest to FDR during most of his adult life were his secretaries Missy LeHand and Grace Tully, and Lucy Mercer, all of whom were Roman Catholics. For the Gibbons quote, see Nathan Miller, The Roosevelt Chronicles 137 (New York: Doubleday, 1979).

^* As Alice Roosevelt Longworth recalled, “Most of my contemporaries were far too shy even to ask their doctors about such matters. I think most American doctors at the time would have been horrified, fearing lawsuits.… I still have a letter written to me shortly after I was married by my sister-in-law, Nan Wallingford, who was the mother of three. In it she begged me to send her ‘one of those cunning, labor-saving devices’ so that she might save her ‘tottering reason.’ ” Michael Teague, Mrs. L: Conversations with Alice Roosevelt Longworth 57 (New York: Doubleday, 1981).

^* FDR accompanied Vice President Thomas R. Marshall to officially open the 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition at San Francisco. While on the West Coast he inspected Navy installations and took his first dive in a submarine. Shortly before, the American submarine F-4 had failed to surface after a dive off Pearl Harbor with the loss of all on board. The public was stunned, and FDR, who was worried about Navy morale, went aboard submarine K-7 in Los Angeles. Despite heavy seas he ordered it to dive and go through its paces. Roosevelt greeted the press afterward, elated: “It was fine and for the first time since we left Washington we feel perfectly at home.” Los Angeles Tribune, March 29, 1915; Josephus Daniels, Years of War and After 256; Robert F. Cross, Sailor in the White House: The Seafaring Life of FDR 204 (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 2003).

^* Corcoran House, along with the Hay-Adams houses and Decatur House, was one of Washington’s most noted residences. Daniel Webster had lived there when he was secretary of state but found himself unable to support it afterward and sold it to W. W. Corcoran, founder of the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Eustis, a Corcoran grandson, was a fabled huntsman who preferred his estates in Leesburg, Virginia, and Aiken, South Carolina, to living in Washington. In 1920 he sold the house to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, whereupon it was demolished and a new headquarters building for the Chamber was erected on the site. Washington: City and Capital 655–656, Federal Writers’ Project, Works Progress Administration (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1937).

^* Although deeply embarrassed, ER remained resolute in her determination to save food. Elliott reports that throughout the war his mother always had a spare place set at the table for “Mr. Hoover” (Food Administrator Herbert Hoover) to symbolize for the family their need to conserve. Elliott Roosevelt and James Brough, An Untold Story: The Roosevelts of Hyde Park 87 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1973).

NINE
THE CAMPAIGN OF 1920

It was a darned fine sail.

—FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT

ON JANUARY 2, 1919, Franklin and Eleanor boarded the USS George Washington in New York, heading for Paris.¹ The armistice had been signed in November, and FDR was to initiate the dismantling of the Navy’s vast European establishment. This included fifty-four shore installations stretching from the Azores to the Shetlands, twenty-five port authorities, and mountains of supplies, plus a vast array of claims, contracts, and government agreements arising from operations abroad. His party included Thomas J. Spellacy, a genial Irishman who was United States attorney for Connecticut, as legal adviser; and Commander John M. Hancock, chief of Navy purchasing.^*

For Franklin and Eleanor it was a reconciliation of sorts—Eleanor’s first visit to Europe since their wedding trip in 1905—and an opportunity to heal the hurt of the past autumn. After Eleanor discovered Franklin’s romance with Lucy Mercer, she grew morose, suffered headaches, and had days when she doubted her will to live. “This past year has rather got the better of me,” she wrote her friend Isabella Ferguson. “I still have a breathless, hunted feeling.”²

Several times each week Eleanor drove herself to Rock Creek Cemetery on the outskirts of Washington to sit alone and contemplate the remarkable statue Henry Adams had commissioned Augustus Saint-Gaudens to sculpt in his wife’s memory. Eleanor found solace communing with that shrouded figure of grief and in later years would usually visit the cemetery whenever in Washington.^3* Henry’s wife, Clover Adams, a pioneer woman photographer, had committed suicide by drinking potassium cyanide, deeply distressed at her husband’s infatuation with their friend and neighbor, Elizabeth Cameron, the beautiful young wife of Senator J. Donald Cameron of Pennsylvania.⁴ To learn more about the Adamses, Eleanor gave Franklin a copy of The Education of Henry Adams, which had been privately printed in 1906 and had just been reissued for general purchase. They took it aboard the George Washington, and Eleanor read it during the crossing. “Very interesting,” she noted of Henry Adams, “but sad to have had so much and yet find it so little.”⁵

Four days out of New York, Franklin and Eleanor were informed by radio that Theodore Roosevelt was dead. Both were stunned. TR had just turned sixty-one and, though he had recently been hospitalized, seemed to be regaining strength for another run at the White House in 1920. The Republicans had retaken control of both houses of Congress in November, Wilson was vulnerable, there was no apparent Democratic successor, and once again the GOP appeared united. Senator Boies Penrose of Pennsylvania, a bitter critic of TR in past years, believed he would be nominated by acclamation on the first ballot.⁶ The former president died of a pulmonary embolism while asleep at Sagamore Hill. “Death had to take him in his sleep,” commented Vice President Thomas R. Marshall. “If Roosevelt had been awake, there would have been a fight.”⁷ TR was not old, said Franklin, “but I cannot help think that he himself would have had it this way and that he has been spared a lingering illness.”⁸ Eleanor wrote Sara that she was concerned about Aunt Edith, “for it will leave her very much alone. Another big figure gone from our nation and I fear the last years were for him full of disappointment.”⁹

Paris in January 1919 was a city of contrasts. Reminders of the war were everywhere: captured German artillery pieces lined the Champs-Élysées and the Place de la Concorde; limbless men and demobilized soldiers begged for change on fashionable street corners; and almost every other woman was dressed in black, mourning a departed loved one. Along the grand boulevards the glorious chestnut trees were gone, cut for firewood during the last desperate winter. Paris itself had been spared, but there were severe shortages of coal, milk, and bread.

Nevertheless, a festive air gripped the city. Those with money could still find wonderful clothes and jewels. The restaurants, when they could get supplies, were marvelous, and the nightclubs sparkled with gaiety. “I never saw anything like Paris,” wrote Eleanor. “The scandals going on would make many a woman at home unhappy. It is no place for the boys [i.e., American soldiers], especially the younger ones.… All the women in the restaurant look to me exaggerated, some pretty, all chic, but you wonder if any are ladies.”¹⁰

The Roosevelts were billeted by the Navy in a suite at the Ritz, where the lobby swarmed with foreign dignitaries sent to attend the peace conference that was about to begin. Woodrow Wilson arrived in the city the first week of January, after a triumphal tour of Great Britain and Western Europe. David Lloyd George arrived on January 11. The following day the Supreme Council of peacemakers—Wilson, Lloyd George, Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando of Italy, and Georges Clemenceau—convened for the first time.¹¹ They met in the ornate chambers of the French Foreign Ministry on the Quai d’Orsay, where, as host, Clemenceau presided. For the most part their discussions were conducted in English. Clemenceau, who had lived many years in the United States, spoke English fluently, and Orlando was minimally conversant.¹²

As the only head of state, Wilson was accorded a chair a few inches higher than the others, but of the four, Wilson was in the most precarious political position.¹³ Lloyd George was fresh from parliamentary elections in which his coalition had won a huge majority; Clemenceau had just received an unprecedented 398–93 vote of confidence in the Chamber of Deputies; and Orlando headed a left-center government that was virtually unassailable. Only Wilson was fresh from defeat, having unwisely declared the congressional midterm elections in November a referendum on his leadership.¹⁴ The electorate had responded by giving the GOP control of Congress for the first time since 1910.¹⁵

To compound his problem, Wilson had excluded the Senate from the negotiations. The American delegation, in addition to Secretary of State Lansing and Colonel House, included more than twenty academic specialists but not one member of the U.S. Senate, which ultimately would have to pass judgment on the peace treaty.^* Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts would soon become chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and was on record as supporting a league of nations.¹⁶ The personal animosity between Wilson and Lodge was notorious, but to have included him would have been an act of statesmanship from which the president would have benefited substantially. Equally damaging, Wilson had thumbed his nose at the nation’s Republican leadership, almost all of whom had supported the war vigorously. William Howard Taft, Charles Evans Hughes, and Elihu Root had all endorsed the idea of a league, and their inclusion would have given the delegation a bipartisan cast.¹⁷ Instead, Wilson chose to go it alone, convinced, as always, that his mission was divinely ordained.

The meetings of the Supreme Council were held in camera, and the participants’ discussions remained secret. So much for “open covenants, openly arrived at,” the first of Wilson’s Fourteen Points. But it was just as well the sessions were closed because relations among the Big Four were tepid at best.¹⁸ Orlando correctly perceived that he was being patronized; Lloyd George, the quintessential opportunist, had difficulty adhering to a fixed course; Clemenceau was all too fixed, obsessed with the need to provide for French security; while Wilson spoke with the dogmatic assurance of a Presbyterian elder. “What ignorance of Europe and how difficult all understandings were with him,” said Clemenceau. “He believed you could do everything by formulas and his fourteen points. God himself was content with ten commandments. Wilson modestly inflicted fourteen points on us … the fourteen commandments of the most empty theory.”¹⁹

FDR played no role at the peace conference. He and Eleanor remained in Europe five weeks, during which time Franklin devoted himself to disposing of the Navy’s foreign assets. Roosevelt spoke French fluently and lubricated the discussions while Hancock and Spellacy hammered out the details.²⁰ “The most successful thing I pulled off in Paris,” FDR remembered, was the sale of the Navy’s Lafayette Radio Station near Bordeaux, the most powerful transmitter in the world at the time. The French had been dragging their feet, hoping the United States would simply abandon the installation. According to Roosevelt, André Tardieu, the French minister responsible (and later premier, 1929–30), “offered a ridiculous sum counting on the fact that the cost of dismantling and removing it would be prohibitive.” Just when the meeting reached an impasse, a messenger handed a telegram to FDR that read, “Dismantle and ship station to America. [Signed] Daniels.” Tardieu immediately gave in and agreed to buy the facility at FDR’s asking price of 22 million francs. Roosevelt later boasted to friends that he had written the telegram himself and arranged to have it delivered to him at the meeting.²¹ “This is a big success,” Eleanor wrote Sara, “but don’t mention it.”²²

On February 15, 1919, the Roosevelts left Paris for Brest and the return home on the George Washington. Among their fellow passengers were President and Mrs. Wilson, who were taking a quick break from negotiations so that the president might return to Washington to sign the final flurry of legislation passed by the outgoing Sixty-fifth Congress.²³ Wilson proudly carried with him the draft covenant of the League of Nations, which had just been completed. The president had insisted that the peace conference establish the League as its first order of business, and, with British acquiescence and French ambivalence, he had prevailed. “I like the League,” Clemenceau was quoted as saying, “but I do not believe in it.”²⁴

Aboard the George Washington Wilson remained aloof and kept more or less to his cabin. “He seemed to have very little interest in making himself popular with groups of people whom he touched,” Eleanor remembered.²⁵ One day, to FDR’s surprise, the president summoned him for a discussion about the League and what it meant for the future. The invitation came out of the blue, and FDR recalled Wilson’s intensity. A day or so later, Franklin and Eleanor were included in a small luncheon party given by the Wilsons. For the most part the conversation was unremarkable, though Eleanor remembered two things: Wilson said that since the war began he had read no newspapers; his secretary, Joseph P. Tumulty, clipped them for him, giving him only what was important.^* The second was that Wilson had spoken with great emotion about the League. “The United States must go in or it will break the heart of the world, for she is the only nation that all feel is disinterested and all trust.”²⁶

The George Washington’s original destination had been New York, but after she was under way Wilson advised the captain that he wished to land at Boston, where he was scheduled to speak at Mechanics Hall and introduce the League. The captain adjusted course but to his horror discovered he had no charts on board for a Boston landfall. He would have to feel his way. To complicate the task, a heavy North Atlantic fog descended as the ship slanted southward along the Massachusetts coast. “I was awakened in my berth by a shuddering noise,” FDR recalled. “Thinking the George Washington must be aground, I rushed to the bridge in my pajamas and bathrobe to discover that the ship’s engines had been reversed and cut off—that was the noise—and that she lay between two jagged rocks, with little way between, facing a shoreline with a row of summer cottages. I recognized the settlement as Nahant, where I had frequently made port, and in a general way I was able to tell [the captain] where he would find Boston harbor. He then gave the order for backing the ship out of its perilous location, and proceeded safely to Boston. President Wilson, who had not been awakened, was never told what happened.”²⁷

Back in the United States, the Roosevelts grappled with the future. “We’ve had an interesting trip,” Eleanor wrote her Aunt Bamie, “and F. thinks he succeeded very well with his demobilization of all possible stations in Europe.… He says he now expects to go into business this summer for a time so we may be in New York next year and there may be a little more time which we can call our own.”²⁸

But first Washington beckoned. Secretary Daniels left for Europe in mid-March to attend an Allied naval conference and was gone for two months, again leaving FDR in charge. The Navy’s demobilization was almost complete, and aside from adjusting to Republican control of Congress there was little other than routine housekeeping to occupy the acting secretary. Nevertheless, Daniels left detailed instructions to cover every contingency. The secretary was especially concerned that the admirals running the various bureaus not take advantage of his absence to push their pet projects through Congress. “They will probably present you with letters to sign and send to the new chairmen of the Naval Affairs Committees,” he told FDR. This, Daniels said, you must not do. “It would be very well … for you to have a drawer and put them all in it so that we can make a study of them, and we will discuss them when I get back.”²⁹

Franklin was careful to stay on sides. “Ever since you left,” he wrote Daniels, “things have been so quiet here as to be almost terrifying. Literally nothing has happened outside of routine work, which, however, has been positively voluminous.”³⁰ The workload was indeed heavy. The Navy remained the only cabinet department with just one assistant secretary. Whenever Daniels or Roosevelt was absent, the entire administrative workload fell to the other. By FDR’s account he worked fourteen hours a day and thrived on it. When Daniels returned in late May, Franklin wrote his old golfing partner John McIlhenny, “I have had a perfectly delightful two months, running things with a high hand and getting things done that were never done before. Last Saturday the Secretary got back and now I shall have a little leisure.”³¹

If the Navy Department had returned to normal by late spring, the city of Washington was anything but. Labor unrest gripped the nation. Prices were high, jobs were scarce, and thousands of returning servicemen clamored for work. Four million Americans went out on strike in 1919, one out of every five industrial workers. Organized labor strove to expand union membership, management resisted fiercely, and both sides carried their cases to Washington. John L. Lewis and the United Mine Workers demanded that the government nationalize the coal mines immediately; mine and mill owners responded with court injunctions ordering strikers back to work. As agitation increased, violence became widespread, and Washington was not spared.

On the evening of June 2, 1919, a powerful bomb ripped the façade of the R Street home of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, directly across the street from the Roosevelts’. The bomb was the work of a committed anarchist, who was blown up by his own device. Franklin and Eleanor were down the block when the bomb went off, returning from a late party. The blast shattered windows within a hundred-yard radius. Eleven-year-old James was the only Roosevelt child home at the time. Franklin raced upstairs and found him standing in his pajamas, barefoot amid the splintered glass, watching the scene below. “I’ll never forget how unnerved Father was when he found me standing at the window,” James recalled. “He grabbed me in an embrace that almost cracked my ribs.”³²

With James safe, Franklin went across the street to assist the Palmers, who had escaped injury. He drove Mrs. Palmer and her daughter to the home of friends and then helped police gather up pages and pages of anarchist literature scattered by the blast. “Now we are roped off,” Eleanor reported to Sara the next morning. “The police haven’t yet allowed the gore to be wiped up on our steps and James glories in every bone found! I only hope the victim was not a poor passerby instead of the anarchist.”³³

The following month the city was torn by a bloody four-day race riot that left fifteen dead and hundreds injured. The Washington police proved powerless, and eventually the military was deployed to restore order. “The riots seem about over today,” Franklin wrote Eleanor on July 23. “Only one man killed last night. Luckily the trouble hasn’t spread to R Street and though I have troubled to keep out of harm’s way I have heard occasional shots during the evening and night. It has been a nasty episode and I only wish quicker action had been taken to stop it.”³⁴

The attack on Attorney General Palmer precipitated a widespread crackdown on suspected anarchists and Bolsheviks, known historically as the Red Scare of 1919–20. Primed by the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, government authorities under the attorney general’s direction launched an attack on civil liberties unequaled in peacetime since passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts at the end of the eighteenth century.³⁵ Law enforcement officials illegally raided homes and union offices, aliens suspected of radicalism were deported, and thousands of innocent citizens were hounded for their beliefs. On a single night in January 1920 more than four thousand suspected Communists were arrested in thirty-three different cities.³⁶ The Palmer raids yielded almost nothing in the way of arms or revolutionaries but triggered a climate of fear that engulfed the nation. The New York state legislature, its better judgment swept away by a tidal wave of reaction, refused to seat five elected Socialists from New York City. In Washington, the House of Representatives twice refused to tender the oath of office to Socialist Victor L. Berger, elected overwhelmingly by the voters of Milwaukee.³⁷

FDR showed no interest in Palmer’s Red-baiting crusade. Indeed, at the same time that Congress and the New York legislature were expelling Socialists from their ranks, he upbraided Rear Admiral S. S. Robinson, commandant of the Boston Navy Yard, for discharging three machinists because they were Socialists. “Now, my dear Admiral,” Roosevelt wrote, “neither you nor I can fire a man because he happens to be a Socialist. It so happens that the Socialist party has a place on the official ballot in almost every state in the union.”³⁸

When an old grad sought to enlist Franklin’s help to cleanse the Harvard faculty of dangerous radicals (FDR was now a member of the university’s board of overseers), he ignored the request. The radical in question was Harold Laski, a young instructor in the Government Department who had recently advocated nationalizing the country’s railroads. “If Mr. Laski were teaching mathematics,” wrote Paul Tuckerman, ’78, “the argument for academic freedom would have some force … but he teaches our sons, not mathematics but government, and what reverence for our government and institutions can a professional Bolshevik teach? Why not clean house and get rid of this foreign propagandist?”³⁹ President A. Lawrence Lowell stood by Laski, and the Harvard board stood by Lowell. Laski returned to England shortly afterward to accept a position at the London School of Economics and went on to become an internationally renowned scholar and chairman of the British Labour party.

While Franklin was busy at the Navy Department, Eleanor took the first steps to make a life for herself outside the home. “Everyone is concerned about strikes and labor questions,” she wrote Isabella Ferguson in September 1919. “I realize more and more that we are entering on a new era where ideas and habits and customs are to be revolutionized if we are not to have another kind of revolution.”⁴⁰

On behalf of the Red Cross, Eleanor undertook to inspect St. Elizabeth’s, the nation’s mental hospital in Washington, where hundreds of battle-shocked servicemen were confined. “I cannot do this,” she remembered thinking to herself, but she went anyway. “You must do the thing you think you cannot do,” she wrote later, supplying her own emphasis.⁴¹

Once a week for the remainder of their time in Washington, Eleanor visited the hospital, distributing flowers and cigarettes, stopping to talk with the troubled men. When she discovered there were not enough attendants to provide proper care, she lobbied her friend Franklin K. Lane, secretary of the interior, in whose bailiwick St. Elizabeth’s fell. Lane declined ER’s invitation to visit the hospital—“the last thing he wanted to see was a hospital for the insane”—but he ensured that appropriations for St. Elizabeth’s were increased.⁴² Eleanor arranged for the Red Cross to build a recreation facility for the men, cajoled money from the Colonial Dames of America for occupational therapy, and organized a retail shop where patients could sell their handmade wares.

At the height of the Red Scare, Eleanor made her first contact with feminist organizations interested in improving working conditions for women. In late October 1919 representatives of nineteen nations convened in Washington for the First International Congress of Working Women. Because many of the delegates could not speak English, Mrs. Roosevelt and other multilingual Washington wives volunteered as translators. “It was of course, a very advanced and radical gathering,” Eleanor wrote Sara, “but I found it interesting and amusing.”⁴³

Eleanor invited a number of the women home for lunch. The U.S. delegation included many early activists in the American labor movement: Margaret Dreier Robins, Rose Schneiderman, Maud Swartz, Julia O’Connor, Fannia Cohn, and Leonora O’Reilly. “I liked all of the women very much indeed,” said Eleanor, “but I had no idea how much I was going to see of them in the future.”⁴⁴

After four months of additional negotiation, President Wilson returned to Washington on July 8 with the freshly minted Treaty of Versailles. Two days later, he presented it to the Senate. The treaty, he said, had come about “by no plan of our conceiving but by the hand of God who has led us into this way.”⁴⁵

The Senate was divided. A dozen or so irreconcilables, primarily populists from the South and West, favored rejection. Most Democrats supported the president and wished to accept the treaty outright. In the middle was a large group of Republicans led by Lodge who favored approval provided reservations to protect American sovereignty were registered. Unlike amendments, reservations do not change the text of a treaty but clarify how it will be interpreted. It is a well-established diplomatic practice for countries to add such qualifications, and if Wilson agreed, the chances were that the Senate would approve the treaty overwhelmingly. Secretary of State Lansing and the Senate’s Democratic leadership urged the president to accept the reservations, but Wilson refused.⁴⁶

Convinced that God and the people were with him, the president chose to make a direct appeal to the electorate. On September 2, 1919, Wilson set out by special train to canvass the West. His health was failing. He had already suffered a mild stroke in Paris in April and was haggard and drawn. His face twitched, his hands trembled. During the next twenty-two days the president would travel 8,200 miles through fourteen states, delivering more than forty speeches. On September 25 Wilson spoke at Pueblo, Colorado. That evening he suffered a total physical collapse. The tour was canceled, and the president returned to the White House. The following week Wilson had a massive stroke that paralyzed his left side. For two months he hovered between life and death, barely able to scrawl a shaky signature on documents his wife presented to him. After that his mind became clear enough to follow what was happening and he was able to dictate letters. But he never fully recovered.

On November 6 Senator Gilbert Hitchcock of Nebraska, the Democratic floor leader in the fight for the League, was admitted to the president’s bedside. Without the Lodge reservations, he told Wilson, he could not muster even a bare majority for the treaty, much less the two thirds required for approval. Wilson refused to accept the inevitable. “Let Lodge compromise,” he told Hitchcock. Two weeks later the Senate voted on the Treaty of Versailles and the opponents won. Brought up for reconsideration at the next session, it once more failed to achieve a two-thirds majority. On March 19, 1920, the Senate formally returned the treaty to the president, noting its inability to give its advice and consent.^*

Like most Democrats, FDR supported the League but did not see it as the be-all and end-all of public life. “Last spring I thought the League of Nations merely a beautiful dream, a Utopia,” he told the New York Bar Association in March 1919. “But in June I went abroad [and] found in Europe not only a desire to beat the Hun but a growing demand that out of it all must come something else.”⁴⁷ Three months later he warned the graduating class at Worcester Polytechnic Institute that “the United States would commit a grievous wrong to itself and to all mankind if it were even to attempt to go backwards toward an old Chinese wall policy of isolation.”⁴⁸ But unlike Wilson he did not object to Lodge’s reservations and believed the president should compromise to get the League accepted. The details were less important than the final product. “I have read the draft of the League three times,” he declared, “and always find something to object to in it, and that is the way with everybody.”⁴⁹

The British, the French, and most cabinet officers shared that view. In September 1919, the British government dispatched former foreign secretary Sir Edward Grey (Viscount Grey of Fallodon) to Washington to plead with Wilson to accept the Lodge reservations. Wilson refused to receive him. When the Roosevelts entertained Lord Grey and his staff at Christmastime, they became non gratae in the eyes of the White House.⁵⁰ The consequence for FDR was negligible because by January 1920 the Wilson administration had come unglued and it was every man for himself. Colonel House was no longer consulted; Secretary of State Lansing had been dismissed; Franklin Lane resigned at Interior, as did Carter Glass at the Treasury, frustrated at their inability to communicate with Wilson. Daniels wished to resign as well but remained out of personal loyalty to the invalid president.

It was in the context of the derelict Wilson administration that FDR began to look to his political future. But he did so discreetly. “I sometimes think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not the bad luck of the early worm,” he wrote an impetuous supporter in late 1919.⁵¹

Already FDR had been mentioned as a possible candidate for the U.S. Senate or the governorship should Al Smith choose not to run for reelection. But the possibility of the latter was slight, and the chance of defeating a popular Republican incumbent in the Senate, his good friend James Wadsworth of Geneseo, appeared equally remote. “I am not running for Senator or Governor or dog catcher,” Franklin told a friend shortly after Christmas. “I do not personally intend to make an early Christian martyr of myself this fall if it is going to be a strongly Republican year.”⁵²

The idea of seeking the vice presidency, just as the possibility of running for the New York State Senate in 1910, came to Roosevelt largely by chance. On January 10, 1920, FDR received a visit from an old friend, Louis B. Wehle, a Kentucky attorney and member of the War Industries Board who had admired Franklin since their days together on The Harvard Crimson. The Democrats’ presidential prospects looked bleak, said Wehle, but after talking to a number of party leaders he had hit upon a ticket that might win: Herbert Hoover for president, Roosevelt for vice president. Hoover was from California, FDR from New York: two states the Democrats must carry if they were to succeed. Hoover enjoyed a sterling reputation as wartime food administrator, he supported the Treaty of Versailles with minor reservations, and he was especially popular among American women, who in 1920 would be voting for the first time.⁵³ Like Hoover’s, Franklin’s wartime service as assistant secretary of the Navy had been exemplary, and he would add the luster of the Roosevelt name to the ticket. “Whether you win or lose,” said Wehle, “you would make a number of key acquaintances in every state … that would probably lead you eventually to the presidency.”⁵⁴

Roosevelt needed no convincing. “Hoover is certainly a wonder,” he allowed. “I wish we could make him President of the United States. There could not be a better one.”⁵⁵ Franklin, who thus far had patterned his career on TR’s, was well aware that the vice presidency had been Cousin Theodore’s stepping-stone to the White House. “You can go to it as far as I’m concerned,” he told Wehle. “Good luck.”⁵⁶

The following day Wehle called on Democratic kingmaker Colonel Edward House at his New York apartment. House was on the outs with Wilson but still wielded considerable influence in the party. “It’s a wonderful idea,” he told Wehle. “A Hoover-Roosevelt ticket is probably the only chance the Democrats have in November.”⁵⁷

Was Hoover a Democrat? Wehle called on the food administrator at his office on lower Broadway and found him noncommittal. So too did House. Like Dwight Eisenhower after World War II, Hoover was being courted by both parties and kept his own counsel. On March 6 Franklin and Eleanor dined with the would-be nominee but could not smoke him out. “Mr. Hoover talked a great deal,” Eleanor wrote Sara. “He has an extraordinary knowledge and grasp of present-day problems.” Evidently he did not reveal his allegiance.⁵⁸ At the end of March 1920, Hoover broke his long silence and proclaimed himself a progressive Republican: he had been registered as a Republican in California since 1898, and he had supported TR in 1912.⁵⁹ There would be no Hoover-Roosevelt ticket.

But FDR had been bitten by the vice presidential bug. Alben Barkley, Harry Truman’s vice president in 1949, was fond of telling of the woman who had two sons: one became a sailor and went to sea; the other became vice president of the United States. “Neither has been heard from since.”⁶⁰ “Cactus Jack” Garner of Uvalde, Texas, FDR’s crusty vice president, later told newsmen the job “wasn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.”^*61 For Roosevelt, it was a ticket to be punched, a way station on the road to the White House, and Wehle was correct: the nomination would bring Franklin into contact with Democrats across the country.

A successful vice presidential aspirant plays his cards close to his chest, waiting for lightning to strike. The choice of a running mate is traditionally the prerogative of the presidential nominee, and one scarcely runs for the post. But Hoover or no Hoover, FDR’s credentials would have placed him on any nominee’s short list: young, attractive, high-profile wartime service in Washington, liberal but not populist, probably wet but acceptable to the drys on Prohibition,^† and above all a Roosevelt from New York, by far the most populous state in the Union, with forty-five electoral votes, roughly one fifth of the number required for election.

When the Democratic convention met in San Francisco on June 28, FDR had positioned himself for the nomination. The support of the New York delegation was critical, and Franklin had taken every precaution. He traveled cross-country on the Knickerbocker Express with his fellow delegates, entertained them lavishly on the battleship New York, anchored off Treasure Island, and volunteered to second the nomination of Al Smith, a favorite-son candidate whom Charles Murphy was using as a stalking horse until the decisive moment to shift the Empire State’s ninety votes behind the winner. Franklin’s entourage included his Dutchess County allies John Mack and Tom Lynch; his old Harvard roommate, former congressman Lathrop Brown; his law partner Grenville Emmett; and his personal secretary from the Navy Department—all of whom began to work the hotel corridors and lobbies on FDR’s behalf.

Franklin took advantage of every opportunity. When a huge floodlit portrait of Wilson was unveiled during opening ceremonies, the convention erupted with a sentimental display of affection. Delegation after delegation flooded the aisles, parading around the hall, state standards held aloft. All, that is, except New York, whose delegates conspicuously kept their seats to illustrate the organization’s distaste for the president. When the demonstration reached its height, FDR seized the New York standard—Murphy nodded his approval—and joined the parade, to the cheers of hundreds of delegates.^*62

Al Smith was nominated by Tammany’s Bourke Cockran, one of the most gifted orators of the day. FDR’s seconding speech was brief and well received. Poised, confident, standing at a convention podium for the first time in his career, he was effusive in his praise of Smith: “I love him as a friend; I look up to him as a man; I am with him as a Democrat; and we all know his record throughout the nation as a great servant of the public.”⁶³

Grenville Emmett thought FDR’s speech “could not have been better.” Frances Perkins said Franklin was “one of the stars of the show. I recall how he displayed his athletic ability by vaulting over a row of chairs to get to the platform in a hurry. Al [Smith] always thought of this as the beginning of his friendship with Roosevelt and often referred to it as Roosevelt’s real start in important public life. And so it was.”⁶⁴

Smith remained in contention for seven ballots. On the eighth, Murphy switched the bulk of New York’s vote to three-term Ohio governor James Cox, a competent but colorless public servant, moderate, wet, untainted by any link to the Wilson administration, and uncommitted on the League. FDR and some nineteen upstate delegates voted for William Gibbs McAdoo, Wilson’s son-in-law and onetime secretary of the Treasury. For the next four days the convention wavered among McAdoo, Cox, and the nation’s Red-chasing attorney general, A. Mitchell Palmer. Cox gained the lead on the thirty-ninth ballot and went over the top on the forty-fourth shortly after midnight on Monday, July 6. The convention then adjourned until noon the next day, when it would meet to choose the party’s vice presidential nominee.

Early Tuesday morning Cox’s campaign manager, Edmund H. Moore, called the governor at his home in Dayton. Whom did he wish as a running mate? “I’ve been thinking about this a good deal,” Cox replied, “and my choice is young Roosevelt. His name is good, he’s right geographically, and he’s anti-Tammany. But since we need a united front, go to see Charlie Murphy and say we won’t nominate Roosevelt if he objects.”⁶⁵

Moore followed instructions. “I don’t like Roosevelt,” said Murphy. “He is not well known in the country, but, Ed, this is the first time a Democratic nominee for the presidency has shown me courtesy. That’s why I’d vote for the devil himself if Cox wanted me to. Tell him we will nominate Roosevelt on the first ballot as soon as we assemble.”⁶⁶

When the Democrats reconvened at noon, the early roll call of the states placed several favorite sons in nomination. As the roll call continued, Florida yielded to Ohio, at which point Judge Timothy T. Ansberry, leader of the Buckeye delegation, made his way to the platform. “The young man whose name I am going to suggest,” said Ansberry, “is but three years over the age of thirty-five prescribed by the Constitution … but he has crowded into that short period a very large experience as a public official. His name is a name to conjure with in American politics: Franklin D. Roosevelt.” Indiana and Kansas seconded the nomination, the favorite sons withdrew, the rules were suspended, and FDR was nominated by acclamation.⁶⁷

Josephus Daniels, by now the grand old man of the party, beloved by populists, Wilsonians, and big-city bosses alike, concluded the proceedings:

I wish to say that to me, and to five hundred thousand men in the American Navy, and to five million men in the Army, it is a matter of particular gratification that this Convention unanimously has chosen as a candidate for Vice President that clear-headed and able executive and patriotic citizen of New York, the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Franklin D. Roosevelt.⁶⁸

Pleased with the ticket of Cox and Roosevelt, and a trifle more optimistic than the circumstances warranted, the convention adjourned sine die at 1:42 P.M. FDR’s friends were overjoyed. Walter Lippmann of The New Republic wired his congratulations: “Your nomination is the best news in many a long day.” Herbert Hoover wrote, “the fact that I do not belong to your political tribe does not deter me from offering my personal congratulations to an old friend. I am glad to see you in the game in such a prominent place, and, although I will not be charged with traitorship by wishing you success, I nevertheless consider it a contribution to the good of the country that you have been nominated and it will bring the merit of a great public servant to the front.” Franklin K. Lane offered his advice: “Get plenty of sleep. Do not give yourself to the handshakers. Be wise! Don’t be brilliant.”⁶⁹

On August 6, 1920, FDR resigned as assistant secretary of the Navy and headed west.⁷⁰ In the next three months he would crisscross the country twice, delivering nearly one thousand speeches and countless impromptu addresses—the most extensive campaign ever conducted by a candidate for national office.⁷¹ Franklin wrapped himself in TR’s mantle, peppering his speeches with “bully,” “strenuous,” and all manner of verbal tics associated with the former president. “I do not profess to know what Theodore Roosevelt would say if he were alive today, but I cannot help think that the man who invented the word ‘pussy-footer’ could not have resisted the temptation to apply it to Mr. Harding.”⁷²

Colonel Robert R. McCormick, a sometime Bull Moose and Franklin’s classmate at Groton, immediately protested. On August 13 the Chicago Tribune called FDR “the one-half of one percent Roosevelt. Franklin is as much like Theodore as a clam is like a bear-cat.… If he is Theodore Roosevelt, Elihu Root is [Socialist leader] Gene Debs, and Bryan is a brewer.”⁷³ Edith Roosevelt, TR’s widow, said, “Franklin is nine-tenths mush and one-tenth Eleanor.” Nicholas Longworth, Alice’s husband and a man who knew something about alcohol, called FDR “a denatured Roosevelt.”⁷⁴

Franklin’s advance man during the campaign was Steve Early, a blunt-spoken southern journalist who would remain at FDR’s side throughout his career. His press aide was Marvin McIntyre, who had handled that job at the Navy Department and who would become another permanent fixture. Louis Howe was there, of course, as were Tom Lynch from Hyde Park and FDR’s faithful personal secretary, Renah Camalier. When the campaign ran short of money, Franklin wrote a check for $5,000; Sara wrote another for $3,000. (In today’s currency, that would be $50,000 and $30,000, respectively.) Roosevelt was not yet the polished campaigner he would become. But he was tireless and confident, and Louis Howe thought he was becoming increasingly eloquent. Unfortunately, he was often unfocused and prone to exaggerate his personal achievements. Early complained, “he couldn’t be made to prepare speeches in advance, preferring to play cards instead.”⁷⁵

Franklin’s casual approach caused a passel of trouble. On August 18, in Deer Lodge, Montana, he became carried away by his own rhetoric and claimed to have written the Haitian constitution, much as Al Gore once claimed to have invented the Internet. A week later in San Francisco, he boasted of “running Haiti and Santo Domingo for the past seven years.”⁷⁶ The Associated Press picked up the stories, and Republicans had a field day. Harding said that when he became president, “I will not empower the Assistant Secretary of the Navy to draft a constitution for helpless neighbors in the West Indies and jam it down their throats at the point of bayonets carried by United States Marines.”⁷⁷ John Barrett, director of the Pan-American Union, declared that Roosevelt had made a dreadful mistake. The New York Telegraph called him “a spoiled child to be spanked.”⁷⁸ FDR denied having made the statements, but there were too many witnesses to make the denial credible.

For the most part, Cox and Roosevelt tied themselves to Wilson and the League. But the electorate was tired of both. Harding pledged “a return to normalcy,” and that pledge struck a responsive chord. The November results were devastating. Harding polled 61 percent of the popular vote and trounced Cox in the electoral college 404–127. The Democrats failed to carry a single state outside the Solid South—the party’s worst showing since the Civil War. The Republicans won a record 301 seats in the House of Representatives and picked up 10 additional seats in the Senate. Nowhere were the results worse than in New York, where Cox and FDR polled just 27 percent of the vote, taking Smith and the rest of the ticket down with them. Outside New York City, the Democrats did not carry a single county or elect anyone to statewide office.⁷⁹

FDR took the defeat in stride. He telegraphed congratulations to Calvin Coolidge, Harding’s running mate, and headed off to the marshes of Louisiana for two weeks of hunting and loafing. Looking back on the campaign years later, FDR told Supreme Court associate justice Robert H. Jackson that if he had not run for vice president in 1920, he would not have been nominated for president in 1932. “He created a sense of indebtedness on the part of the Democrats and made personal friends who remembered him later when his campaign manager, James Farley, went out looking for delegates,” said Jackson. “Roosevelt’s sense of security was such that he did not fear defeat.”⁸⁰

The 1920 campaign saw Eleanor emerge into public life. She joined the campaign train in September and for the next four weeks accompanied Franklin as he barnstormed the country—the only woman in the entourage. Unlike the Republicans, the Democrats initially made little effort to appeal to women voters.^* Eleanor was relegated to playing the dutiful wife, appearing at whistle-stops to look gracious and smile adoringly while Franklin delivered the same speech over and over.⁸¹ It was Louis Howe, not Franklin, who recognized Eleanor’s potential. And it was Howe who worked her into the campaign. Repeatedly Howe would knock on her compartment door and ask her to review speeches and help plan press conferences. “I was flattered,” Eleanor recalled, “and before long I found myself discussing a wide range of topics.”⁸²

Howe taught Eleanor about national politics, just as he had taught Franklin, and he helped her understand the importance of the press. “The newspaper fraternity was not so familiar to me at that time, and I was a little afraid of it. Largely because of Louis Howe’s early interpretations of the standards and ethics of the newspaper business, I came to look with interest and confidence on the writing fraternity and gained a liking for it which I have never lost.”⁸³

Even more important, Eleanor and Howe developed a deep and lasting friendship. Before, she had resented his intimacy with FDR and was jealous of the role he played in her husband’s life. Now she understood Howe’s position and felt treated as an equal partner. Howe encouraged her political talents and helped her express them. He understood her moods and dedicated himself to bridging the distance between her and Franklin. Eleanor, for her part, discovered that Howe had many talents. Aside from an encyclopedic knowledge of the nation’s politics, he had the temperament of an artist. He painted landscapes and portraits, sang in the choir at St. Thomas’ Church, wrote poetry, and was an avid theater buff, directing and acting for the Drama League Players in Washington. Howe loved the seashore, and, most endearingly, he knew when to be silent and when to speak up. As Blanche Wiesen Cook observed, “Louis Howe was the first of many intimate friends that ER grew to trust and love, with a warmth and generosity both spontaneous and unlimited.”⁸⁴

At Christmas Franklin sent each of the men who had campaigned with him a pair of gold cuff links engraved with his initials on one link and his own on the other. This was the beginning of the famous Cuff Links Club, which would meet annually on FDR’s birthday to eat, drink, and reminisce about their first campaign together. The men in turn presented Eleanor with a suitably engraved gold pin as a souvenir of the campaign, a gift she treasured.⁸⁵

FDR had no illusions about the political future. The Democrats, he told Cox, were unlikely to return to the White House until economic catastrophe drove the Republicans out. “Every war brings after it a period of materialism and conservatism. People tire quickly of ideals.” To Steve Early he joked, “Thank the Lord we are both comparatively youthful.”⁸⁶

To prepare for the political wilderness, FDR set about to restore his finances. After ten years of public service his coffers were bare. And with five children attending fashionable boarding schools, plus extensive social commitments, membership in a half-dozen elite clubs, first-class travel, and a household of ten servants, the need to make a substantial living could no longer be ignored. The answer was Wall Street. And the opportunity came when Van Lear Black, a wealthy Democratic contributor who owned the Baltimore Sun, asked FDR to become vice president of his Fidelity & Deposit Company of Maryland, the fourth largest surety bonding company in the United States. Roosevelt’s responsibilities would be to oversee the firm’s operations in New York and New England and to serve as rainmaker, bringing in new clients through his connections in government, labor, and industry.

FDR would be the firm’s front man on Wall Street, for which Black agreed to pay him $25,000 a year, five times his salary at the Navy Department. It was an arrangement from which both stood to profit. The hemorrhaging of Roosevelt’s finances would be stanched, and Black would benefit from Franklin’s name on the masthead. Even more important—which both men understood implicitly—the position was a holding pattern for FDR, much as the presidency of Columbia University would be for Dwight D. Eisenhower thirty years later. It was agreed that Franklin would spend only half a day at the office, leaving him free to develop his law practice and remain active in party politics.

On January 7, 1921, Black announced FDR’s appointment with a lavish black-tie dinner at Delmonico’s, the favorite watering hole of the Wall Street establishment. Among the dignitaries who welcomed Roosevelt to the business world were Owen D. Young of General Electric, Edward R. Stettinius of United States Steel, Daniel Willard of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and Adolph S. Ochs of The New York Times, all valued clients of F & D. Within little more than a month Roosevelt mastered the business routine. He glad-handed old friends like the boxing promoter Tex Rickard and called in his chits from the days in Washington. Unions that had been recognized by the Navy Department were invited to consider having their officers bonded by Fidelity & Deposit, as were the industries contracting with the service. When Harding took office in March, FDR added Louis Howe to his staff. Like Franklin, Howe worked at both Fidelity’s business and Democratic politics. As his personal secretary, FDR engaged Marguerite LeHand, a pert twenty-three-year-old who had worked during the campaign in Roosevelt’s New York headquarters. Known as “Missy” because the younger Roosevelt children had difficulty saying “Miss LeHand,” she too would become a permanent fixture in FDR’s entourage.

As Franklin jumped into New York social life, Eleanor enrolled in business school to learn typing and shorthand. She found a housewife to teach her to cook and became active in the League of Women Voters. Her task was to keep tabs on the League’s legislative agenda in both Washington and Albany, a job that brought her into contact with many of the nation’s leading feminists: Carrie Chapman Catt, Minnie Fisher Cunningham, Narcissa Vanderlip, Elizabeth F. Read, and Esther Lape. Eleanor took her responsibilities with the League seriously and began to address women’s groups on her own, bringing them up to date on legislative matters. She enjoyed the work, but, as she wrote Franklin from the League’s national convention in Cleveland in April, “I prefer doing my politics with you.”⁸⁷

With Louis Howe’s help, FDR began to stitch together an upstate organization to contest the 1922 election. This time he was careful to stress party unity. Already mentioned as a leading contender for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate, Roosevelt recognized the importance of a full-blown organization effort under Charles Murphy rather than another divisive split. William Calder, the Republican incumbent, was vulnerable, but to beat him the Democrats needed a united front.^*

Speaking engagements carried Roosevelt throughout the state. He also undertook a wide range of charitable and philanthropic activities. In addition to the Harvard Board of Overseers, he became a member of the executive committee of the National Civic Federation, the Near East Relief Committee, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, and the Seamen’s Church Institute. He headed a $2 million fund drive for Lighthouses for the Blind and accepted the chairmanship of the Greater New York Committee of the Boy Scouts of America. It was as chairman of the Scouts that on Thursday, July 28, 1921, FDR set sail up the Hudson for Bear Mountain and the annual Boy Scout Jamboree.

It was the type of occasion Franklin liked best. There were parades and speeches and solemn demonstrations of scouting activities. FDR posed for the newspapers surrounded by cheering boys and their scoutmasters. He served as master of ceremonies at a campfire before sailing back to the city that evening. Little did he realize that at some point during the day he had ingested a mysterious virus, incubated among the Boy Scouts, that would change his life forever.

^* Hancock proved so adept at contract liquidation that soon after resigning from the Navy he joined the New York investment house of Lehman Brothers, rising to become one of its managing partners. In 1933, FDR called him to Washington to help organize the National Recovery Administration (NRA). During World War II Hancock returned to Washington to head an interdepartmental board to handle contract settlement, and he drafted the 1943 legislation on contract renegotiation.

^* On the day before FDR’s inauguration in 1933, Eleanor asked her friend Lorena Hickok to pick her up at the Mayflower Hotel, where she and the president-elect were staying. Mrs. Roosevelt instructed the cab driver to take them to Rock Creek Cemetery so that she might gaze upon the statue once again. “In the old days when we lived here,” said Eleanor, “I was much younger and not so very wise. Sometimes I’d be very unhappy and sorry for myself. When I was feeling that way, if I could manage, I’d come here alone, and sit and look at that woman. And I’d always come away feeling better. And stronger. I’ve been here many, many times.” Lorena A. Hickok, Eleanor Roosevelt: Reluctant First Lady 92 (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1980).

^* Wilson’s exclusion of the Senate placed him at odds with American practice. In 1898, after the Spanish-American War, President McKinley sent a five-man delegation to Paris to negotiate the peace treaty and among the five included three senators from the Foreign Relations Committee: William Pierce Frye (R., Maine), Cushman Kellogg Davis (R., Wisconsin), and George Gray (D., Delaware). McKinley’s foresight was rewarded when the Senate narrowly consented to the treaty 57–27, just three votes more than the required two thirds.

^* Eleanor was startled by Wilson’s revelation. “This is too much to leave to any man,” she noted of Tumulty’s task in her diary. A president has a responsibility to keep himself informed. Later she wrote, “It was … a problem of allotting time. Franklin reserved certain periods for his study of the press, particularly the opposition press, and, at least while Louis Howe was with him, he was always closely informed on all shades of opinion in the country. This firsthand awareness of what people are doing and thinking and saying is essential to a president. When this information is filtered through other people, or selected with a view to what a few individuals think the president should know, the inevitable result is that this source of information is dangerously curtailed or misleadingly slanted. This is fatal in the formulation of far-reaching decisions.” Eleanor Roosevelt, Autobiography 101–102 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961).

^* The Senate’s constitutional responsibility is to give its “advice and consent” to treaties by two-thirds vote. It does not “ratify” treaties. Ratification is a technical diplomatic term that applies when the president formally signs the treaty bringing it into effect, subsequent to the Senate’s advice and consent.

^* Newspapers sanitized Garner’s comment, and “warm piss” has come down through generations as “warm spit”: admittedly a four-letter word but scarcely as pungent as Cactus Jack’s characterization. Garner’s political insight is treated perceptively in a series of interviews with Bascom N. Timmons published in four installments by Collier’s, February 21, March 6, 16, and 20, 1948.

^† Next to the League of Nations, Prohibition was the burning political issue of 1920. The Eighteenth Amendment, banning the sale of alcoholic beverages, went into effect on January 15, 1920, a date widely celebrated by the drys and perhaps even more widely deplored by the nation’s wets. As a young legislator in Albany, FDR had backed the prohibitionist cause, reflecting the sentiments of his upstate district. Thus he had a record the drys could embrace. In his personal life, Roosevelt enjoyed a drink as much as anyone. He paid no attention to Prohibition and never believed in it for an instant.

^* In his frequent retelling of the episode, FDR invariably escalated the event: “I grabbed the standard. About half a dozen men grabbed me and we had a jolly good fight, but I got the standard and it was paraded.” But Judge Jeremiah T. Mahoney, the Tammany stalwart who held the standard, reported that “FDR couldn’t budge it until Mr. Murphy sort of bowed to let it go and we let it go. The whole thing probably took less than four seconds. There wasn’t even an angry gesture.” Frank Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt: The Ordeal 63 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1954); Judge Jeremiah T. Mahoney interview, Columbia Oral History Project, Columbia University.

^* The GOP had always taken a more forceful stand on women’s suffrage than the Democrats, who were still captive to their southern, traditionalist base. On October 1, 1920, Harding held a special day for suffragists and then a Social Justice Day in which he called for equal pay for equal work, an end to child labor, a minimum wage, national health care, and a department of social justice—virtually the entire program of the League of Women Voters. Cox and Roosevelt let the opportunity slip by. Stanley J. Lemons, The Woman Citizen: Social Feminism in the 1920s 87–101 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973).

^* In 1922, the Democrats roared back under Murphy’s leadership. Al Smith was overwhelmingly returned to the governor’s office, and Dr. Royal S. Copeland, president of the New York Board of Health, easily defeated Calder for the Senate: 1,276,667 to 995,421. Congressional Quarterly, Guide to U.S. Elections (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Service, 1975).

TEN
POLIO

This is the happy Warrior;
    this is he,
That every man in arms
    should wish to be.

—WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

AFTER EIGHT YEARS in Washington, FDR looked forward to spending the summer of 1921 at Campobello. Eleanor and the children left New York for the island as soon as school was over in June.^* Franklin, who was detained by business, embarked on Friday, August 5, traveling the distance aboard Van Lear Black’s oceangoing yacht Sabalo. “I thought he looked tired when he left,” Missy LeHand wrote Eleanor. Both women hoped the brief sea voyage would revive him.¹

FDR arrived at Campobello Sunday evening and found their eighteen-bedroom “cottage” overflowing with guests. In addition to five children and the normal complement of servants, tutors, and governesses, Louis Howe and his family were visiting, as were several friends from Washington, including Romanian diplomat Prince Antoine Bibesco and his wife, Elizabeth, daughter of former British prime minister Herbert Asquith.

For the first time in years, Sara was not in her house next door. At sixty-seven she had resumed her prewar practice of an annual trip to Europe and on the spur of the moment had flown from London to Paris in an early twin-engine airplane. “It was five hours,” she wrote Eleanor. “I had been told four hours, but I would not have missed it. If I do it again I shall take an open plane as one sees more and it is more like flying.”²

As soon as he arrived, FDR threw himself into a frantic round of island activity: deep-sea fishing in the Bay of Fundy, afternoon sails, swimming, tennis, baseball, whatever else the children expected. On August 10, while the family was sailing, they spotted a small forest fire on one of the lesser islands. Franklin worked the boat in as close as he could—“almost on the beach,” James recalled—and led Eleanor and the children ashore. They fought the blaze with pine boughs for several hours until it was extinguished. “Our eyes were bleary with smoke,” said Franklin. “We were begrimed, smarting with spark-burns, exhausted.”³

It was about four o’clock when they returned home. FDR admitted to feeling logy and decided the remedy would be a quick swim in the relatively warm waters of Lake Glen Severn, a shallow freshwater pond on the other side of the island. He and the children jogged two miles to the lake, splashed around in the tepid water, and topped it off with an icy dip in the Bay of Fundy. Franklin was disappointed that he did not get “the glow I’d expected.” They trotted back to the cottage, and by then FDR was totally exhausted. The mail had arrived, and he sat down in his wet bathing suit to read it, “too tired even to dress. I’d never quite felt that way before.”⁴

About an hour later Roosevelt felt a sudden chill. He told Eleanor he thought he was catching a cold and had better not risk infecting the children. He would go straight to bed. Eleanor sent up a tray of food, but he was not hungry. He had trouble sleeping that night and continued to tremble despite two heavy woolen blankets.

The next morning he was worse. When he swung his legs out of bed and attempted to stand, his left leg buckled beneath him. He managed to get up and shave and assumed the problem would pass. “I tried to persuade myself that the trouble with my leg was muscular, that it would disappear as I used it. But presently it refused to work, and then the other collapsed as well.”⁵ FDR dragged himself back to bed, and when Eleanor took his temperature it was 102.

There was no telephone in the house, so Eleanor dispatched a runner to fetch their family physician, Dr. E. H. Bennett, from Lubec. Dr. Bennett was an elderly country doctor, well suited to delivering babies and setting broken bones but not especially qualified for complex diagnoses. He examined Franklin and thought he was suffering from a bad cold; he said he would return in the morning to see how his patient was doing.

Roosevelt knew he did not have a cold. The next morning, Friday, August 12, he could not stand, and by evening he had lost the power to move his legs. They were numb, yet extremely sensitive. He ached all over and was paralyzed from the chest down. His thumb muscles had become so weak he could not write.⁶

On Saturday Eleanor and Dr. Bennett decided to seek a second opinion. Louis Howe canvassed the nearby resorts and discovered that the eminent Philadelphia surgeon Dr. William Keen was staying at Bar Harbor. Keen had once operated secretly on President Grover Cleveland and had successfully removed a cancer from the roof of the president’s mouth.⁷ He was a man of discretion, which Howe appreciated, but he was now eighty-four and his experience had been in surgery, not orthopedics. Dr. Keen examined Franklin thoroughly and decided his paralysis was due to a blood clot in the lower spinal cord. He prescribed heavy massages and predicted that Roosevelt would recover, “but it may take some months.”⁸

Dr. Keen was as far off target as Dr. Bennett, and his prescription of vigorous massages exacerbated the problem.^* FDR’s condition worsened daily. Soon his hands and arms were paralyzed as well as his legs. His fever soared, and he lost control of his bodily functions. For a short time his eyesight seemed threatened. Eleanor slept on a couch in Franklin’s room and with the help of Louis Howe managed to move him, bathe him, and turn him over at regular intervals. She administered catheters and enemas, massaged his legs, brushed his teeth, and waited on his every need. “It required a certain amount of skilled nursing,” Eleanor remembered, “and I was very thankful for every bit of training which Miss Spring [the children’s nurse] had given me.”⁹

Slowly, Roosevelt’s temperature subsided. He was still in constant pain, but the feeling of panic diminished. “I think he is getting back his grip and a better mental attitude,” Eleanor wrote Franklin’s half brother, Rosy, on August 18. “We thought yesterday he moved his toes on one foot a little better which is encouraging.”¹⁰

Dr. Keen, for his part, marveled at Eleanor’s devotion. “You have been a rare wife and have borne your heavy burden most bravely,” he wrote in late August. “You will surely break down if you do not have immediate relief. Even when the catheter has to be used your sleep must be broken at least once a night. I hope that by having his urine drawn the last thing at night, he will be able to wait until morning.”¹¹

It was Louis Howe who first suspected Franklin had been misdiagnosed. A confirmed cynic and partial hypochondriac, Howe was skeptical of expert opinion in general and the medical profession in particular. He wrote detailed letters to Sara’s brother Frederic A. Delano (Uncle Fred), the head of the family in New York, describing Franklin’s symptoms and requesting that the information be relayed to orthopedic specialists for their opinion. Uncle Fred saw the point immediately. “All doctors seem to know Dr. Keen,” he wrote Eleanor. “He is a fine old chap, but he is a surgeon and not a connoisseur of this malady. I think it would be very unwise to trust his opinion.”¹² After making soundings in New York, Uncle Fred went to Boston to consult “the great Dr. Lovett”—Dr. Robert Williamson Lovett, professor of orthopedic surgery at Harvard and the nation’s leading authority on infantile paralysis.¹³ Lovett was summering in Newport, but his associates at the Harvard Infantile Paralysis Commission agreed that FDR’s symptoms were unquestionably those of infantile paralysis.

“On Uncle Fred’s urgent advice,” Eleanor wrote Rosy, “which I feel I must follow on Mama’s account, I have asked Dr. Keen to try to get Dr. Lovett here for a consultation to determine if it is I.P. or not. Dr. Keen thinks not but the treatment at this stage differs in one particular and no matter what it costs I feel and I am sure Mama would feel we must leave no stone unturned to accomplish the best results.”^14*

Dr. Lovett arrived at Campobello August 25 and found Franklin paralyzed from the waist down, running a temperature of 100 degrees. His back muscles and arms were weak and the leg muscles even weaker. He could not sit up without assistance. Lovett pronounced the verdict crisply: It was “perfectly clear” that FDR had poliomyelitis.¹⁵

Eleanor was stunned. Were the children in any danger? she asked. Lovett thought not. If any were going to be ill, it would have happened already. As for Franklin, he ordered the massages discontinued immediately, believing that overtiring the weak muscles might damage them further. A complete recovery was possible, said Lovett. There was nothing to do but wait. “I told them frankly that no one could tell where they stood, that the case was evidently not of the severest type.… [I]t looked to me as if some of the important muscles might be on the edge where they could be influenced either way—toward recovery, or turn into completely paralyzed muscles.”¹⁶

Franklin appeared relieved to know the worst. “He looked very strained and very tired,” said Eleanor. “But he was completely calm. His reaction to any great event was always to be completely calm. If it was something that was bad, he just became almost like an iceberg, and there was never the slightest emotion that was allowed to show.”¹⁷

As the days wore on, FDR’s composure deteriorated. His condition was not improving, and he worried that stopping the massages had been a mistake. At the end of August, Dr. Bennett wired Lovett for help: “Atrophy increasing, power lessening, causing patient much anxiety. Attributed by him to discontinuance of massage. Can you recommend anything to keep up his courage?”¹⁸

Dr. Lovett replied instantly. “There is nothing that can be added to the treatment,” he wrote. “This is one of the hardest things to make the family understand.”

Drugs I believe are of little or no value.… Bromide for sleeplessness may be useful. Massage will prolong hyperesthesia and tenderness.… The use of hot baths should I think now be considered again, as it is really helpful and will encourage the patient, as he can do so much more under water with his legs.… I should have him sit up in a chair as soon as it can be done without discomfort.¹⁹

In mid-September it was decided to take Franklin back to New York, where he could be treated at Presbyterian Hospital by Dr. George Draper, a Harvard classmate who was a protégé of Dr. Lovett. Uncle Fred arranged for a private railroad car to be dispatched to Eastport, and Howe ensured that FDR was smuggled aboard out of range of inquisitive reporters. Thus far the press had reported only that Roosevelt was ill and was recovering. Polio had not been mentioned.

The news of Franklin’s malady first appeared on the front page of The New York Times the morning of September 16:

F.D. ROOSEVELT ILL OF POLIOMYELITIS

BROUGHT ON SPECIAL CAR FROM CAMPOBELLO, BAY OF FUNDY, TO HOSPITAL HERE

The accompanying article quoted Dr. Draper to the effect that although Franklin had lost the use of both legs below the knee, “he definitely will not be crippled. No one need have any fear of any permanent injury from this attack.”²⁰

FDR’s hopes soared. That afternoon he dictated a note to his friend Adolph S. Ochs, publisher of the Times:

While the doctors were unanimous in telling me that the attack was very mild and that I was not going to suffer any permanent effects from it, I had, of course, the usual dark suspicion that they were just saying nice things to make me feel good. But now that I have seen the same statement officially made in The New York Times I feel immensely relieved because I know of course it must be true.²¹

Wishful thinking. The fact was, FDR was not improving. His fever refused to abate, and his legs continued to atrophy. “There is a marked falling away of the muscle masses on either side of the spine in the lower lumbar region,” Draper warned Dr. Lovett in late September. “The lower extremities present a most depressing picture. There is little motion in the long extensors of the toes of each foot.” Draper believed the psychological factor would be decisive. “He has such courage, such ambition, and yet at the same time such an extraordinarily sensitive emotional mechanism, that it will take all the skill we can muster to lead him successfully to a recognition of what he really faces without utterly crushing him.”²²

Slowly Franklin improved. By early October he was well enough for Missy LeHand to be admitted an hour or so each morning to take dictation. Eleanor and Louis Howe kept up with his affairs, and the brief dictation sessions worked wonders on FDR’s morale. But what Roosevelt craved most was personal contact. Close friends were now allowed into his hospital room for brief visits. Interviewed by the journalist Ernest K. Lindley ten years later, many still recalled their visits with awe. “Roosevelt gaily brushed aside every hint of condolence and sent them away more cheerful than when they arrived. None of them has ever heard him utter a complaint or a regret or even acknowledge that he had had so much as a bit of bad luck.”²³

FDR saw it as his duty not only to appear in the best of spirits but to bolster the spirits of those about him. Despite the grim reality of his condition, he persisted in seeing the bright side. “I am sure you will be glad to learn that the doctors are most encouraging,” he disingenuously wrote Josephus Daniels in mid-October. “Your surmise regarding the stern determination of my ‘missus’ not to let me proceed too rapidly is absolutely correct. In fact, I already suspect that she has entered into an alliance with the doctors to keep me in the idle class long after it is really necessary.”²⁴

Franklin’s arms and back muscles recovered first. “I was delighted to find that he had much more power in the back muscles than I had thought,” said Draper in early October.²⁵ Dr. Lovett came down from Boston to see the patient on October 15. FDR was now able to sit up. “He is cheerful and doing an hour or so of business each day. He has been in a chair once and I recommended pushing him around, and letting him go home when he wanted to.”²⁶

On October 28, 1921, Roosevelt was discharged from hospital and taken home to East Sixty-fifth Street. He was now able to pull himself up by a strap and, with some assistance, swing himself into a wheelchair. “The patient is doing very well,” Dr. Draper noted on November 19. “He navigates about successfully in a wheel chair. He is exceedingly ambitious and anxious to get to the point where he can try the crutches, but I am not encouraging him.”²⁷

In December, FDR began a carefully constructed exercise regimen with Mrs. Kathleen Lake, a trained physiotherapist. The tendons behind his knees had tightened to the point that it was terribly painful to stretch his legs. Mrs. Lake had him exercise on a board. Some paralytics found this so stressful they could endure it just three days a week. FDR insisted that Mrs. Lake come every day. “Mrs. Lake works so long now every a.m.,” Eleanor reported to Sara, “that F. does not get up till after noon at least, except on Sundays when she doesn’t come.”²⁸

Progress was slow. In mid-December Mrs. Lake reported to Dr. Lovett that Franklin

feels his legs growing stronger all the time. He is perfectly satisfied to remain as he is now and not get up on crutches as he says he has plenty of occupations for his mind, everything is going well in the city, and he would rather strengthen his legs this way than try to get up too soon.

He is a wonderful patient, very cheerful, and works awfully hard and tries every suggestion one makes. He has certainly improved since he started the board which he insists on calling “the morgue!”²⁹

FDR did his utmost to reassure his children, displaying his withered legs and reciting the anatomical names of the muscles affected. “How we loved to talk about Pa’s gluteus maximus,” James recalled.³⁰ When Christmas came, Franklin presided as always, carving the turkey and reading Dickens’s Christmas Carol. He could no longer trim the tree himself but supervised every detail. “Father was a perfectionist,” said one of the children. “Though fear of fire was his only phobia, [he] insisted on decorating the tree with candles rather than electric bulbs.… I still don’t know how he did it, but Father kept us completely at ease. He cushioned the shock for us. He made it possible to participate in various festivities that Christmas without feeling any depression or guilt.”³¹

As was usually the case with the Roosevelts, the double town house on East Sixty-fifth Street was jammed to capacity. Franklin was ensconced in the large back bedroom on the second floor, the quietest in the house. Louis Howe, who had committed himself irrevocably to FDR’s fortunes, took the big front room, while the children filled the fourth floor and spilled over into Sara’s adjoining house. Live-in servants occupied the rooms on the fifth and sixth floors under the roof. Eleanor slept on a cot in young Elliott’s room and dressed in her husband’s bathroom. “In the daytime I was too busy to need a room for myself,” she recalled.³²

By this time, Eleanor had become fiercely attached to Louis Howe. “She had called for help and Louis came,” said Frances Perkins. “I know that Mrs. Roosevelt loved Louis Howe. She loved him the way you love a person who has stood by you in the midst of the valley of the shadow and not been afraid of anything.”³³

Howe was downtown at Fidelity & Deposit most of the day attending to Franklin’s business. But he took breakfast with the family and spent most of his time at the table reading the dozen or so newspapers he consumed daily. “He read more newspapers than any human being I’ve ever known,” Eleanor said.³⁴

From the beginning, ER and Howe agreed that insofar as possible Franklin should not be treated as an invalid. Louis maintained that FDR’s political future was bright and downplayed the seriousness of his illness. He planted optimistic stories with the press and wrote cheery letters to Roosevelt’s wide circle of correspondents.

“Do you really believe that Franklin has a political future?” asked Eleanor.

“I believe someday Franklin will be President,” Howe replied.³⁵

Eleanor supported Howe in every way. She ushered a continuous stream of visitors in to see Franklin and soon undertook speaking engagements on his behalf. She joined Howe in urging FDR to persevere in his exercises—perhaps a little more sternly than Roosevelt might have desired. Howe was better at cajoling Franklin because he had a lighter touch, interspersing gossipy anecdotes among his exhortations to get on with the job.

Sara took a different view. Instead of resuming public life, she felt Franklin should retire to the pastoral comfort of Hyde Park and settle into the graceful life of an invalid country squire, much as Mr. James had done. There was no need to earn a living—Sara’s share of the Delano fortune ensured that—and Franklin could pursue the hobbies and bucolic interests of which he was so fond.

A struggle of wills ensued. “This was the most trying winter of my entire life,” Eleanor remembered.³⁶ She and Howe worked to keep Franklin focused on recovery; Sara just as resolutely decried their efforts and sought to convince her son to follow the path his father had chosen. “My mother-in-law thought we were tiring my husband and that he should be kept completely quiet. This made the discussions about his care somewhat acrimonious on occasion.”³⁷

Dr. Draper sided with Eleanor and Howe and thought it best for FDR to make every effort to resume a normal life.^* Most important, so too did Franklin. As Sara noted laconically, “Franklin had no intention of conforming to my quiet ideas for his future existence.”³⁸ Out of courtesy he offered to resign as vice president of Fidelity & Deposit, but Van Lear Black refused to consider it. Howe kept on top of the work for FDR, and Black was far more interested in retaining the Roosevelt name and the connections associated with it than in Franklin’s physical presence at the office. FDR retained his position on the boards of various charitable organizations, including the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine and the Boy Scouts, and with the help of Howe and Missy LeHand kept up a constant correspondence with Democratic leaders about the party’s future.

In March FDR was fitted with steel braces that weighed fourteen pounds and ran from his heels to above his hips. After seven months in bed, Franklin’s ability to balance had vanished, and it required the assistance of all hands just to get him to his feet. Since his hips were paralyzed, he was incapable of moving his legs individually and was taught to pivot forward on his crutches, using his head and upper body for leverage. Despite the constant danger of falling, FDR rejoiced at being on his feet and able to move under his own power. “I am indeed delighted to hear you are getting well so fast and so confidently,” Woodrow Wilson wrote on April 30. “I shall try and be generous enough not to envy you,” said the former president, now confined to a wheelchair at his S Street home in Washington.³⁹

Dr. Draper’s progress report to Dr. Lovett was guarded. Franklin “was walking quite successfully and seems to be gaining power in the hip muscles. The quadriceps are coming back a little, but they are nothing to brag of yet. Below the knee I must say it looks rather hopeless.” When Dr. Draper said FDR was walking, he simply meant he was capable of moving forward on crutches wearing his braces. There was no suggestion that he would ever walk normally.⁴⁰

When summer came, Franklin was moved to Hyde Park, where it was cooler and he would have easier access to the outdoors. Sara installed ramps (“inclined planes,” she called them) and removed all the thresholds so her son’s wheelchair could roll smoothly.^* The old trunk elevator, operated by rope pulleys and designed to move heavy trunks to the attic, made it possible for FDR to move easily from floor to floor. He resisted having it electrified, believing a power failure would leave him trapped, whereas he could always manipulate the ropes manually. “Mr. Roosevelt seems to be cheerful and I should say that he has gained considerably in the tricks of handling himself,” Dr. Draper reported. “There is no question but that the change of scene has had a very beneficial effect … and I look forward to the continued stretch of quiet at Hyde Park with great hopefulness.”⁴¹

FDR’s routine rarely varied. He slept late, breakfasted on a tray sent to his room, and worked out on a set of rings mounted over his bed. Three days a week Mrs. Lake came to oversee his exercises, after which he went downstairs and was pushed out onto the porch, where he read and worked on his stamp collection. He swam in Vincent Astor’s heated pool in Rhinebeck and exercised with parallel bars on the lawn. Progress remained slow. “I think it is very important for you to do all the walking that you can within your limit of fatigue,” wrote Dr. Lovett on August 14. “Walking on crutches is not a gift, but an art, acquired by constant practice just as any other game, and you will have to put in quite a little time before you get about satisfactorily.”⁴² Franklin devoted his afternoons to struggling up the gravel driveway to the Albany Post Road, awkwardly pushing his braces, his hips swiveling, his crutches working, as he inched ahead, a little farther each day until he reached the brownstone gateposts a quarter mile away. At the end of the summer he reported to Dr. Lovett, “I have faithfully followed out the walking and am really getting so that both legs take it quite naturally, and I can stay on my feet for an hour without feeling tired.”⁴³

Franklin saw the bright side. His daughter, Anna, back from a summer in Europe, was aghast at the effort FDR put in. “It’s a bit traumatic,” she noted, “to see your father, who took long walks with you, sailed with you, could out-jump you, and suddenly you look up and you see him walking on crutches—trying, struggling in heavy steel braces. And you see the sweat pouring down his face, and you hear him saying, ‘I must get down the driveway today—all the way down the driveway.’ ”⁴⁴

As FDR convalesced, the New York Democratic party once again found itself in disarray. The GOP occupied the governor’s mansion, and all bets for the November election were off. William Randolph Hearst, the flamboyant publisher of the New York American and Evening Journal, had begun corralling delegates for the Democratic nomination and appeared to have a clear track unless Al Smith could be coaxed back from private life. Following his defeat in 1920, Smith had found safe haven as chairman of the United States Trucking Corporation, a largely symbolic position that paid the princely salary of $50,000 a year. That, plus the sizable fees he earned as a director of other firms, made Smith reluctant to run again. But Smith loathed Hearst. He soon agreed with party leaders that the maverick publisher did not have a chance of prevailing in the general election and would likely pull the entire ticket down with him. To save the party, Smith privately agreed to run. And to get the ball rolling he asked Franklin, as the most prominent upstate Democrat, to issue a public appeal for him to do so.

Delighted to be called on, if only to play a symbolic role, FDR wrote a “Dear Al” open letter on August 13. “The Democratic party must put its best foot forward,” he told Smith. “I am taking it upon myself to appeal to you in the name of countless citizens of upstate New York. You represent the type of citizen the voters of this state want to vote for for Governor. We realize that years of public service make it most desirable that you think now of your family’s needs. I am in the same boat myself—yet this call for further service must come first.”⁴⁵

The letter was front-page news throughout the state. So too was Smith’s “Dear Frank” reply. The former governor agreed to accept the party’s call. Hearst saw the handwriting on the wall and immediately withdrew.⁴⁶

AL NOMINATED WITH GREAT ENTHUSIASM, Howe wired FDR from the Democratic convention in Syracuse. MORGENTHAU [Henry Morgenthau, Jr.] AND YOUR MISSUS LED THE DUTCHESS DELEGATION WITH THE BANNER THREE TIMES AROUND THE HALL.⁴⁷

Smith shared Howe’s elation. “Everything went along first rate,” he wrote Franklin. “I had quite a session with our lady politicians as Mrs. Roosevelt no doubt told you. I was delighted to see her taking an active part and I am really sorry that you could not be there, but take care of yourself—there is another day coming.”⁴⁸

Eleanor was now committed to the Democratic party. At Louis Howe’s urging, she had broadened her nonpartisan attachment to the League of Women Voters to include active participation in mainstream politics. As Howe put it, Eleanor “had to become actively involved in Democratic politics in order to keep alive Franklin’s interest in the party and the party’s interest in him.”⁴⁹ In June 1922, when Nancy Cook of the New York State Democratic Committee asked her to address a fund-raising luncheon, she dutifully accepted despite her terror of speaking in public. “I trembled so that I did not know whether I could stand up,” Eleanor wrote later. “I am quite sure my voice could not be heard.”⁵⁰ Evidently ER exceeded her expectations: she was immediately asked to chair the finance committee of the Women’s Division of the party and later edited the Women’s Democratic News.

Nancy Cook and Eleanor became fast friends almost immediately, and through Nancy, ER soon met Marion Dickerman, the first woman to run for legislative office in New York. Cook and Miss Dickerman had been partners since their days as graduate students at Syracuse in 1909 and shared an apartment in Greenwich Village. Ardent feminists and committed pacifists, they had served as Red Cross volunteers at a London hospital during the war. After the war ended, Cook managed Dickerman’s campaign for the legislature.⁵¹

Cook was short, athletic, and excitable, with close-cropped hair and expressive brown eyes. One biographer described her as “dashing and roguish, flirtatious and irreverent.” Dickerman, by contrast, was tall, calm, steady, and soft-spoken—a woman of “rhythmic regularity.”⁵² When ER met them, Dickerman was dean of New Jersey State College in Trenton and taught English at Bryn Mawr during the summer; Cook was assistant director of the women’s division of and an indefatigable organizer for the New York Democratic party. Eleanor, who sometimes lamented her lack of a university education, rejoiced in the company of these professional women. During the next dozen years, she, Nancy, and Marion would become almost inseparable.⁵³

At Franklin’s urging, Eleanor devoted as much time to Dutchess County politics as to her work with the state committee. FDR recognized that an upstate Democrat had to secure his base if he were to be effective statewide. He also believed that the dismal showing of the Democratic party upstate was the result of poor organization and neglect.⁵⁴ Franklin directed the local effort from his sitting room at Hyde Park, and Eleanor and Howe became his eager lieutenants.^* ER recruited several friends and set out to organize and register the women in the county. She spoke frequently to various civic groups. Initially, Howe accompanied her, sat in the back of the hall, and monitored her performance. When her hands shook, he told her to grip the lectern; when she felt nervous, he told her to breathe deeply. Howe was especially critical of ER’s penchant to giggle inappropriately. It sent the wrong message. His advice was terse: “Have something to say. Say it. And sit down.”⁵⁵

In the autumn, Franklin returned to the city. “I am just back in New York after a very successful summer at Hyde Park,” he wrote defeated presidential candidate James Cox, now titular head of the Democratic party. “The combination of warm weather, fresh air and swimming has done me a world of good.” To his friend and sometime hunting companion Richard E. Byrd he wrote, “By next autumn I will be ready to chase the nimble moose with you.” To General Leonard Wood he boasted that his leg muscles “were all coming back.”⁵⁶

ON OCTOBER 9, after an absence of fifteen months, FDR returned to the offices of Fidelity & Deposit on Lower Broadway. Franklin was determined to walk from the car across the sidewalk, in the front door, and through the lobby to the bank of elevators at the far end. As he heaved himself across the sidewalk, his chauffeur at his side, a crowd of passersby gathered to watch. Someone opened the door. Others stood aside to let him through. Drenched in sweat, Roosevelt began to crutch himself across the highly polished floor of the marble lobby. Suddenly his left foot gave way and he began to fall. The chauffeur reached out but was unable to hold him. Franklin crashed flat on the marble, his crutches clattering down beside him. Onlookers rushed in, then drew back, uncertain what to do.

With an enormous effort Roosevelt wrestled himself into a sitting position. He laughed reassuringly. “There’s nothing to worry about,” he told anxious spectators. “We’ll get out of this all right. Give me a hand there.” Two muscular young men stepped forward and with the help of the chauffeur lifted Franklin to his feet. His crutches were restored and his hat was replaced on his head. “Let’s go,” he said. The spectators opened a path and watched breathlessly as FDR hauled himself across the marble floor, smiling and nodding, one laborious step after another, his knuckles white on the handles of his crutches.⁵⁷

Describing the day to his friend Livingston Davis, Franklin said only that he’d had a “Grand reception at 120 Broadway where I lunched and spent 4–5 hours.”⁵⁸ In the future, FDR allowed himself to be whisked in by wheelchair. He initially came two days a week, then three, then four. But Roosevelt did not return to his law firm. “The partners are dear, delightful people,” he wrote Van Lear Black, “but their type of law business is mostly estates, wills, etc., all of which bore me to death.” Instead, Franklin decided to organize a new firm “with my name at the head instead of at the tail as it is now.”^* This, he told Black, would benefit F & D, “as our connections would be the type of corporations which would help in the bonding end of the game.”⁵⁹

One of the men who helped pull Franklin to his feet in the lobby at 120 Broadway was Basil O’Connor, a young red-haired attorney whose office was next door to Fidelity & Deposit. A live-wire graduate of Dartmouth (voted “most likely to succeed” by his classmates) and the Harvard Law School, O’Connor was exactly the type of energetic partner FDR was looking for. He had developed a successful one-man practice handling a variety of international clients in the oil and gas industry and thought nothing of working fifteen-hour days for weeks at a time.

The two men hit it off instantly. Franklin respected O’Connor’s aggressiveness and dedication; O’Connor admired the way Roosevelt handled his affliction—his grace under pressure—and saw the advantages that would flow from identifying himself with so illustrious a name. They agreed to form a partnership. The firm would be called “Roosevelt & O’Connor.”⁶⁰ FDR would be the front man and provide “general legal advice” at a salary of $10,000 a year. O’Connor would do the work.

As with Louis Howe, it was a case of opposites attracting each other. O’Connor’s father had been an impoverished tinsmith in Taunton, Massachusetts, and Basil had worked his way through Dartmouth playing violin in a dance orchestra. He and FDR became lifelong friends, and their partnership endured until Roosevelt’s death. The president often used O’Connor to transmit messages he did not wish to entrust to political associates—a confidential conduit he knew he could rely on. The fact that during the 1920s their law office was adjacent to Fidelity & Deposit made it easy for Franklin to dovetail both callings.

FDR kept close watch on the Democratic political scene. In December 1922 he counseled against the search for a charismatic figure to lead the party out of the wilderness. “Personal candidacies so rarely develop into anything tangible,” he wrote Byron R. Newton of the New York Herald. “In our own Party for the last 50 or 60 years the nomination for the Presidency has been nearly every time a matter of luck, or some eleventh hour opportunity boldly seized upon.” What was important, said Roosevelt, was “to make the nation understand again that Republican rule means government by selfish interests and powerfully entrenched individuals.”⁶¹

Friends and acquaintances bombarded FDR with home remedies. In February 1923 an old friend in England sent a new elixir that she was certain would effect a cure. “It may be monkey glands or perhaps it is made out of the dried eyes of the extinct three-toed rhinoceros,” Franklin wrote Dr. Draper. “You doctors have sure got imaginations. Have any of you thought of distilling the remains of King Tut-Ankh-Amen? The serum might put new life into some of our mutual friends. In the meantime, I am going to Florida to let nature take its course—nothing like Old Mother Nature anyway.”⁶²

Roosevelt rented a sixty-foot houseboat, the Weona II, for $1,500 and planned to spend several months cruising off the Florida Keys. Eleanor accompanied him for the first few days but did not enjoy herself and returned to New York. “I had never considered holidays in winter or escape from cold weather an essential part of living,” she remembered. “I tried fishing but had no skill and no luck. When we anchored at night and the wind blew, it all seemed eerie and menacing to me.”⁶³

Franklin, on the other hand, had a rollicking good time. Old friends came down to visit—Livingston Davis; Lewis Cass Ledyard, Jr., and his wife, Ruth; Henry and Frances De Rahm; and John Lawrence and his wife, Lucy. Ledyard had been an intimate friend of FDR since their clerkship days at Carter, Ledyard & Milburn; De Rahm was a Harvard classmate, and Frances, née Dana, had been one of Franklin’s early heartthrobs; Lawrence, another classmate, was now a prosperous New England wool manufacturer.

Except for Franklin, the men began each day with a swim au naturel. Frances De Rahm evidently went skinny-dipping too on occasion. As she jauntily wrote in the ship’s log:

A female went swimming—she was far from a peach.
She was as the Lord made her, so what could she do
But call herself, gaily, a true 32.

Louis Howe brought down some paperwork that needed FDR’s attention and spent a few days on board. Like Eleanor, he had little luck fishing; unlike ER, he gladly took refuge in the illicit rum that flowed freely. As Howe put it:

Colder, colder grew the night, we really suffered pain.
We’d sat and sat with rod and reel and fished and fished in vain.
And that we thought was reason fair to take to rum again.

In Miami, former presidential candidate James Cox came aboard for a visit. “Jim’s eyes filled with tears when he saw me,” FDR recalled years later. “I gathered from his conversation that he was dead certain that I had had a stroke and that another one would completely remove me. From that day on Jim always shook his head when my name was mentioned and said in sorrow that I was a hopeless invalid.”⁶⁴

Cox to the contrary, the voyage worked wonders for Franklin’s morale. “I am sure this warmth and exercise is doing lots of good,” he wrote his mother on March 15. “I am sunburned and in fine shape. My friends have been dear and look after me all the time. They are great fun to have on board in this somewhat negligée existence. All wander round in pyjamas, nighties and bathing suits.”⁶⁵ When the cruise ended at the end of March, FDR felt that his legs had improved so markedly that he might soon walk simply with a cane or crutches. “Except for the braces, I’ve never felt better in my life,” he wrote Virginia senator Carter Glass.⁶⁶

Kathleen Lake, Franklin’s physical therapist, examined him shortly after he returned and found him “immensely improved, looking at least ten years younger.” But the improvement was short-lived. The hectic pace of FDR’s life in New York soon wiped out the gains from the Florida trip. “If only his wife could be persuaded that he does not need urging on all day and entertaining all evening,” Mrs. Lake wrote Dr. Lovett. “He himself begins to understand how the city affects him … but he is so surrounded by family, all giving him advice and ordering him round that he gets quite desperate.”⁶⁷

In May 1923 FDR traveled to Boston for a final examination by Dr. Lovett. The doctor told Eleanor he was satisfied that Franklin “handles himself better than he ever had” but there was no improvement in his condition. His arms and neck were normal. So were his bowel, bladder, and sexual functions. Yet he remained paralyzed from the waist down. He was unable to flex his hips; there was no motion in his hamstrings and very little in his toes.⁶⁸ Six months later Dr. Draper confirmed Lovett’s diagnosis. “I am very much disheartened about his ultimate recovery,” wrote Draper. “I cannot help feeling that he has almost reached the limit of his possibilities. I only hope that I may be wrong on this.”⁶⁹ FDR refused to accept the medical judgments as final. He continued to search for miracle cures, devoting himself increasingly to swimming and exercise, but other than improving his ability to get around, his efforts effected no change in his condition.

Roosevelt believed that cruising the warm waters of the Florida Keys held the secret to recovery. “The water got me into this fix,” he was fond of saying, “and the water will get me out.”⁷⁰ Shortly after returning from his 1923 trip, he convinced John Lawrence to join him in purchasing a secondhand houseboat, the Roamer, for which they paid $3,750. They renamed it the Larooco—a contraction of Lawrence, Roosevelt, and Company—and planned to sail off the Florida coast each winter.

FDR went aboard for the first time on February 11, 1924. The Larooco was seventy-one feet long and according to John Lawrence looked like a floating tenement. The paint was peeling, the bulkheads leaked when it rained, and power was provided by two recalcitrant 35-horsepower engines that looked as though they might have been invented by Robert Fulton. “A great little packet,” Roosevelt proclaimed, believing that the boat simply suffered from “lots of bad luck.”⁷¹

Franklin’s stateroom, with an adjacent bath, was on the port side. Across a narrow passageway were two smaller cabins for guests, each with two beds. On the deck above was a large stateroom that doubled as wheelhouse. Above that was a broad deck, shaded by a ragged canopy. The ship’s crew consisted of an elderly couple from Connecticut, Robert and Dora Morris, who were paid $125 a month. Robert Morris sailed the ship; Dora did the cooking and housekeeping. They were assisted by George Dyer, a young mechanic who labored to keep the engines running.⁷²

Before FDR went south, Louis Howe presented him with an elegant black leather logbook embossed in gold letters: “Log of the Houseboat Larooco, Being a More or Less Truthful Account of What Happened (Expurgated for the Very Young).” It was dedicated to St. Ananias and St. Sapphira, “the patron saints of liars and fishermen.” Not to be outdone, Livingston Davis sent Franklin his old ensign as assistant secretary of the Navy. “A million thanks for the old astnav flag,” Roosevelt replied. “I will take it south with me and some day … ‘hist’ the old rag to the mast-head and salute it with 17 rum swizzles.”^73*

Franklin was accompanied on that first voyage by his Negro valet, LeRoy Jones, and Missy LeHand. Jones played a vital but unsung role in FDR’s life. He woke him in the morning, bathed him, dressed him, and took care of his most basic needs—a gentle caregiver without whom Roosevelt could not have functioned. Missy was FDR’s personal secretary and already a member of the family. She was totally devoted to the Roosevelts and they to her.

Marguerite A. LeHand, twenty-five in the winter of 1924, stood five feet, seven inches tall. She was warm and attractive, with ink-blue eyes, black hair already turning gray, and an engaging, throaty voice. She was also modest, well mannered, exceptionally capable, and thoroughly organized—“a compound of cunning and innocence forever baffling,” in the words of the author and editor Fulton Oursler. A native of Potsdam, New York, Missy had grown up in Somerville, Massachusetts, the third child of an Irish gardener. It was at Eleanor’s suggestion in 1921 that she left her employment with the Democratic National Committee to work full-time for FDR, clearing up his correspondence after the vice presidential race. In the three years since, she had become indispensable, not only managing Roosevelt’s office, screening his visitors, and keeping track of his varied interests but doing so with such charm and courtesy that even those turned away felt placated. In New York, she stayed with a relative on the East Side so she could reach the Roosevelt home at any hour and became almost as ubiquitous as Louis Howe.⁷⁴

Missy often accompanied FDR to Hyde Park for working weekends, and over the years she allowed her life to be taken over by his, assuming his likes and dislikes, his favorite drinks and games, even his turns of phrase. She called him “F.D.”—a name no one else dared use—and, like Louis Howe, she always leveled with him and said exactly what she thought. “She was one of the very, very few people who was not a yes-man,” remembered Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter. “She told [the president] not what she knew he wanted to hear, but what were, in fact, her true views and convictions.”⁷⁵

What is most remarkable is that Eleanor was completely supportive and solicitous of Missy. As her friend and biographer, Joseph Lash, noted, ER “was grateful to the young woman. She knew that lack of mobility made the daily routines of life cumbersome and difficult for Franklin, and Missy’s presence freed him from housekeeping anxieties and enabled him to stay in touch with the political world through a vast political correspondence, while it eased Eleanor’s sense of guilt because she was unable to do more for him.”⁷⁶

Aboard the Larooco, Missy served as combination hostess and secretary, doing her utmost to ensure Franklin enjoyed himself. That was not always easy. “There were days on the Larooco when it was noon before he could pull himself out of depression and greet his guests wearing his lighthearted façade,” she tearfully told Frances Perkins many years later.⁷⁷ Missy entertained graciously, encouraged FDR to tell his favorite stories, went fishing with him—though she sunburned easily—and was accepted naturally by Roosevelt’s many acquaintances. Once that spring she was called away suddenly by the death of her father and was gone almost two weeks. When Missy returned, Eleanor wrote Franklin, “I haven’t told Mama that Missy is back because she has more peace of mind when she doesn’t know such things.”⁷⁸

It was a unique arrangement.^* Franklin, Missy, and LeRoy Jones went back again to the Larooco in the spring of 1925 and again in 1926, after which FDR decided he had had enough. “The sharks make it impossible to play around in the deep water for any length of time, and the sand beaches are few and far between.”⁷⁹ After the 1926 cruise, Larooco was laid up at the Pilkington Yacht Basin on the Fort Lauderdale River while Roosevelt and Lawrence attempted to sell her. A September hurricane swept the boat upriver, where it came to rest high and dry at the edge of a pine forest, a mile from the nearest water. FDR tried to sell the boat as a hunting lodge, but there were no takers, and in 1927 Larooco was scrapped. “So ended a good craft with a personality,” he wrote Sara.⁸⁰

Franklin went back to New York toward the end of April 1924. The presidential campaign was heating up, and Al Smith, fresh from his overwhelming reelection as governor, was angling for the Democratic nomination. His principal opponent was Woodrow Wilson’s son-in-law (and former secretary of the Treasury) William Gibbs McAdoo. McAdoo was dry, Protestant, and old-stock American. Because of his support for Prohibition he enjoyed the support of Bryan and the rural wing of the party and had become the darling of the Ku Klux Klan, a potent force in national politics following the Red Scare of 1919–20.^† Smith was none of the above. Almost by default he became the candidate of the urban, progressive wing of the party, and FDR announced his support early on. “I have always supposed that if I went to the next Convention I would, in common with the rest of the [New York] delegation, be for Al,” he told the New York Post in January.

The 1924 convention would be held in New York City—a powerful advantage for Smith—and Charles Murphy was calling the shots for the campaign, another advantage given Tammany’s preeminence among the big-city organizations in the Democratic party. But on April 25, 1924, Murphy suffered a fatal heart attack, leaving the Smith campaign leaderless. “New York has lost its most powerful and wisest leader,” said FDR in a prepared statement released to the press by Louis Howe.⁸¹

Two days later, two of Al Smith’s closest advisers, Belle Moskowitz and New York Supreme Court justice Joseph Proskauer, called on Roosevelt at East Sixty-fifth Street. The Smith campaign needed a chairman, they said: someone with national standing, preferably Protestant, preferably dry (or at least not publicly identified as wet) who could appeal to the rural, dry, Protestant element in the party. FDR, they said, would be ideal. Would he take the job?

Roosevelt initially demurred. His disability would prevent him from dashing about from meeting to meeting as might be expected of a campaign chairman. Moskowitz and Proskauer assured him that would not be necessary. They would do the work for him. What they wanted was Franklin’s name and support.

Roosevelt accepted the position on those terms. Press coverage was generous. “What the campaign lost in practical political ability through the death of Murphy, it has now compensated for in prestige and principles,” wrote the New York Herald Tribune.⁸²

Back in the political spotlight, FDR worked diligently on Smith’s behalf. In so doing he helped eradicate the taint of anti-Catholicism that had clung to him since his fight against Blue-Eyed Billy Sheehan. As one historian put it, Roosevelt’s new list of political correspondents “read like a sampling of the Dublin telephone directory.”⁸³ FDR attempted to lessen the bitterness between Smith and McAdoo supporters but with little success. Smith was demonized by McAdoo’s backers because of his religion and opposition to Prohibition; McAdoo was castigated for his dependence on the Ku Klux Klan. As Franklin saw it, the personal vilification obscured the basic differences between Democrats and Republicans and virtually assured that Coolidge would be reelected in November.

Roosevelt sought support for Smith among Florida fishermen, middle western farmers, and Pennsylvania coal miners. Even Babe Ruth was mobilized in the cause. “Sure, I’m for Al Smith,” the Bambino wrote FDR.

There is one thing about your letter, Mr. Roosevelt, that went across with me good and strong—that was the take about the humble beginning of Governor Smith.

Maybe you know I wasn’t fed with a gold spoon when I was a kid. No poor boy can go any too high in this world to suit me.⁸⁴

The death of Charles Murphy had allowed FDR to reenter public life as chairman of the Smith campaign. And it was the death of a second Tammany stalwart that catapulted Franklin to the center of the political stage. Smith had originally counted upon Bourke Cockran, the legendary Irish orator who had nominated him at San Francisco four years earlier, to do the job again. But Cockran had died the year before, and Smith had yet to name a replacement. On the eve of the convention, the governor asked Judge Proskauer for advice. “Who ought to put me in nomination?”

Proskauer reflected a moment and said, “Frank Roosevelt.”

“For God’s sake why?” Smith asked.

“Because you’re a Bowery mick and he’s a Protestant patrician and he’d take some of the curse off you.”⁸⁵

Smith nodded his head, and the two men walked over to see FDR at campaign headquarters. “Joe and I have been talking this over, and I’ve come here to ask you to make the nominating speech,” Smith said.

“Oh, Al, I’d love to do it, but I’m so busy here working with delegates I have no time to write a speech.” Could Joe write it? Roosevelt asked. The fact was, Proskauer had already prepared a draft, concluding with a paraphrase of William Wordsworth’s encomium to the “Happy Warrior.” FDR thought the reference too poetic for the ordinary delegate on the floor but under the pressure of time agreed to deliver it. “It will probably be a flop,” he told Proskauer.⁸⁶

The Democratic convention convened in Stanford White’s Madison Square Garden on June 24, 1924, for what would prove the longest convention on record. With 1,098 delegates, and 732 votes required to nominate under the party’s two-thirds rule, the Democrats met for an unprecedented seventeen days and required 103 ballots before settling on West Virginia’s John W. Davis, a prominent Wall Street lawyer, as the most viable compromise between Smith and McAdoo. The 1924 convention was also the first covered by national radio and broadcast live across the country.⁸⁷

FDR was in his seat as chairman of the New York delegation when the opening gavel fell on June 24, and he attended every session thereafter. His arrival each day was carefully planned. He was driven to a side entrance of the Garden and wheeled inside by his sixteen-year-old son, James. When they reached the door to the hall closest to the New York delegation, James would lock his father’s braces and pull him to a standing position so he could enter the convention floor on his feet. FDR would then grasp his son’s upper arm with his left hand, place most of his weight on the crutch under his right arm, and ratchet himself forward one halting step at a time.

To make the passage up the aisle as easy as possible, the Roosevelts arrived early and left late. “So as not to scare everyone to death,” as FDR put it, he and James joked and bantered as they made their way along. “The process of getting into his seat was an ordeal for Father,” James recalled. “We practiced the awkward business standing together by a chair, with me supporting him and taking his crutch as he lowered himself into his chair. Once he was seated, it was my task to stand by, run errands, deliver messages, and help Father off the floor when he wanted to leave.”⁸⁸

The galleries, stuffed with Tammany supporters, recognized FDR and regularly broke into applause as he made his perilous way down the aisle each day. Over the radio, a national audience could hear the applause as the announcer intoned, “I don’t know what it is, but I rather imagine Franklin D. Roosevelt is coming in. He always gets a hand for the gallant fight he is making.… Yes, it is. There he comes slowly down the aisle on his crutches.”⁸⁹

Roosevelt was scheduled to speak at twelve noon on Thursday, June 26. Waiting expectantly in the gallery were Sara, Eleanor, and the four other children, plus Nancy Cook and Marion Dickerman, who joined the family for the occasion. Dickerman recalled how carefully Franklin had prepared himself: “Nobody knows how that man worked. They measured off in the library of the Sixty-fifth Street house the distance to the podium, and he practiced getting across that distance. Oh, he struggled.”⁹⁰

Shortly before noon Franklin and James left their seats on the floor and made their slow, awkward way up the aisle. “Outwardly, [Father] was beaming, seemingly confident and unconcerned, but I could sense his inner tenseness,” James recalled. “His fingers dug into my arms like pincers. His face was covered with perspiration.”⁹¹

Finally, they reached the platform. As FDR was introduced, he called out in a stage whisper to Pennsylvania’s Joseph Guffey, who stood nearby: “Joe, shake the rostrum.” Guffey evidently did not understand, and Roosevelt repeated his request: he wanted to be certain the speaker’s stand would support him when he leaned against it. Guffey tested and reported it was firm.

Then came the moment when FDR would have to walk alone: the moment he had been practicing for. James handed him his second crutch, and he began moving slowly toward the podium unassisted. Marion Dickerman held her breath and prayed. “It seemed like an hour,” she remembered. Frances Perkins, sitting near the platform, recalled that no one in the Garden seemed to breathe. Eight thousand delegates, alternates, and spectators watched spellbound as FDR fought his way across the stage, the personification of courage, defying pain with every forward thrust of his heavily braced legs.

When he finally reached the podium, unable to wave for fear of falling but flashing that famous smile, head thrown back, shoulders high, the Garden erupted with a thunderous ovation. Delegates rose to their feet and cheered for three minutes, admiration tinged with awe at the dramatic performance they had witnessed.

Roosevelt spoke for thirty-four minutes. His resonant tenor rang through the Garden with a new and telling passion, interrupted frequently by sustained cheering and applause. When he reached his peroration, his lilting cadence very nearly sang the phrases:

He has a power to strike at error and wrongdoing that makes his adversaries quail before him.

He has a personality that carries to every hearer not only the sincerity but the righteousness of what he says.

He is the “Happy Warrior” of the political battlefield.—Alfred E. Smith⁹²

Pandemonium. “The crowd just went crazy,” said Marion Dickerman. “It was stupendous, really stupendous.”⁹³ The New York Times called FDR the outstanding personality of the convention. The Herald Tribune hailed him as “the foremost figure on floor or platform.” Tom Pendergast, the no-nonsense head of the Missouri delegation, thought that if Franklin “had been physically able to withstand the campaign, he would have been nominated by acclamation.”⁹⁴

Roosevelt’s speech set off a demonstration that lasted more than an hour, delegates parading, galleries cheering, the Garden reverberating with chorus after chorus of Smith’s anthem, “The Sidewalks of New York.”

Franklin remained on his feet, glued to the rostrum. No one had considered how he was to exit. “I saw all around him all those fat slob politicians,” said Frances Perkins, “and I knew they wouldn’t think of it.” She enlisted the woman beside her, and they rushed onstage to stand in front of FDR and shield him from view as he turned to leave. As the cheering continued, Roosevelt finally permitted James to bring his wheelchair to the rear of the platform so that he could ease himself into it and be wheeled offstage.⁹⁵

That evening the Roosevelts gave a reception for the New York delegation at their Sixty-fifth Street home. Marion Dickerman went early to see if she could help Eleanor with the preparations. When she arrived, the butler told her Mr. Roosevelt was upstairs and wished to see her. “He was sitting upright in his bed and obviously was very tired. But his face lit up and he held out his arms.”

“Marion,” he said, “I did it.”⁹⁶

^* Moving the Roosevelt household from New York to Campobello each year was a logistical operation of considerable proportions, often involving as many as a dozen express crates, thirty or so barrels and trunks, plus a vast assortment of hand luggage. As described by FDR’s son James, “First, we would proceed from New York to Boston by train—six hours if we were lucky. We would arrive in Boston in mid-afternoon and go to a certain old-fashioned hotel to rest until train time.… [U]sually we took the 11 p.m. sleeper, arriving next morning at Ayers Junction, Maine. There we would change to an antique train—a real museum piece—and ride to Eastport [Maine]. We would reach Eastport at noon, then transfer to a carriage, which would take us to the dock. If the tide was right, we could get off fairly quickly; if not, we had to wait to board the ‘chug-chug’ that took us to Campobello. We switched there to a rowboat, which took us to our own pier. Those mountains of baggage, boxes, and trunks, which had been shipped by express, came across separately on a larger ferry and were brought by horse-drawn dray to the house on Campobello.” James Roosevelt and Sidney Shalett, Affectionately, F.D.R. 138 (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1959).

^* For his services, Dr. Keen sent ER a bill for $600, which, converted to today’s dollars, would be the equivalent of $6,000. ER to James Roosevelt Roosevelt, August 18, 1921. 2 The Roosevelt Letters 414, Elliott Roosevelt, ed. (London: George G. Harrap, 1950).

^* Writing in the Journal of Medical Biography in October 2003, Dr. Armond Goldman of the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston suggested that FDR might have suffered from Guillian-Barré syndrome (also known as acute ascending polyneuritis), not polio. “No one can be absolutely sure of the cause of Roosevelt’s paralysis because relevant laboratory diagnostic studies were not performed or were not available at the time of his illness,” Goldman said. Whatever the diagnosis, it would have made no difference since there were no effective treatments for either disease in 1921. Armond S. Goldman, Elisabeth J. Schmalstieg, Daniel H. Freeman, Jr., Daniel A. Goldman, and Frank C. Schmalstieg, Jr., “What Was the Cause of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Paralytic Illness?” 11 Journal of Medical Biography 232–240 (2003).

^* Years later, Dr. Draper told his sister, Alice Carter, that if it had not been for Eleanor and Louis Howe, FDR “would have really become an invalid.” Joseph P. Lash, interview with Alice Carter, cited in Lash, Eleanor and Franklin 276 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1971).

^* FDR soon designed his own wheelchair: an armless kitchen chair that was easy to slide onto, mounted on wheels, with a holder attached for his ashtray. He used this simple expedient for the remainder of his life.

^* The Democrats swept New York in 1922. Smith polled 55.2 percent of the vote—the largest plurality a gubernatorial candidate had ever received in the state—and carried the entire ticket to victory. In contrast to past years, the Democrats ran surprisingly well upstate. FDR called it “the reawakening of the Rip Van Winkle of upstate Democracy.” FDR to Smith, December 3, 1922, FDRL.

^* FDR’s former firm, Marvin, Hooker, & Roosevelt, had been established in 1911 with offices at 52 Wall Street. Other partners included Grenville Emmett and Albert de Roode, a classmate of FDR at Harvard. Franklin’s responsibility, as at Fidelity & Deposit, was to bring clients to the firm, but, as he told Black, “I get not one red cent out of my connection with them.” Remarkably, FDR’s withdrawal from the firm did not damage his friendship with any of the partners. “He was a very devoted and real friend,” said Langdon Marvin many years later. Langdon Marvin interview, Columbia Oral History Project, Columbia University.

^* Bermuda rum swizzles were a popular hot-weather drink in FDR’s time, Prohibition notwithstanding: two ounces dark rum, one ounce lime juice, one ounce pineapple juice, one ounce orange juice, and a generous dash of falernum. Shake with ice. Strain into a highball glass filled with ice. Garnish with a slice of orange and a cherry.

^* During the four-year period from 1925 to 1928, FDR spent 116 of 208 weeks away from home trying to regain his health. According to one biographer, “Eleanor was with him for four of those weeks, Sara for two, and Missy LeHand for 110. Thus Missy is the sole adult ‘member of the family’ to share an aggregate of more than two years of the most trying and self-searching four years of Roosevelt’s life.” Bernard Asbell, The F.D.R. Memoirs 244 (New York: Doubleday, 1973).

^† In an early showdown between McAdoo and Smith supporters, the 1924 Democratic convention narrowly rejected (542⁷⁄₂₀–543³⁄₂₀) a plank in the platform that would have condemned the Klan. It also rejected (353½–742½) a plank that called for immediate membership in the League of Nations and participation in the World Court.

ELEVEN
GOVERNOR

Now what follows is really private. In case of your election I know your salary is smaller than the one you get now. I am prepared to make up the difference to you.

—SARA TO FRANKLIN, OCTOBER 2, 1928

FROM 1925 TO 1928 Franklin and Eleanor were together infrequently.¹ The children were away, at either boarding school or university; Eleanor had begun her career teaching at the Todhunter School with Marion Dickerman; and FDR was in the South, either on the Larooco or at Warm Springs, Georgia, hoping to regain the use of his legs. Both remained in close contact with Democratic politics. Eleanor edited the newsletter of the Women’s Division (Women’s Democratic News), while Franklin continued his voluminous correspondence with party officials all over the country. In many respects ER operated as Roosevelt’s surrogate, but it was not always a frictionless relationship. “One of the great quarrels Eleanor had with her lot,” said Frances Perkins, “is that Franklin didn’t listen to her.… He liked her as a reporter, but when most men would have asked their wives what they thought, he didn’t.”²

FDR was genuinely fond of Eleanor’s friends Nancy Cook and Marion Dickerman—whom he called “our gang”—and often assumed the role of a gracious and generous paterfamilias.³ They, in turn, were devoted to promoting his career and enjoyed the bonds of friendship established through Eleanor. It was Franklin, in fact, who originated the idea of a home for the three women on Val-Kill at Hyde Park, donated the land, and supervised the construction.

Dickerman remembered a wonderful Saturday afternoon in the late summer of 1924 when she, Eleanor, Nan Cook, and FDR were picnicking on the wooded banks of Val-Kill, two miles east of the Roosevelt house. ER noted that it was likely their last picnic of the year because Sara would soon close the estate for the winter.

“But aren’t you girls silly?” said Franklin. “This isn’t mother’s land. I bought this acreage myself. And why shouldn’t you three have a cottage here of your own, so you could come and go as you please? If you’ll mark out the land you want, I’ll give you a life interest in it, with the understanding that it reverts to my estate upon the death of the last survivor.”⁴

A deed was drawn up and witnessed by Louis Howe, and on August 5 FDR wrote a contractor friend of his, “My missus and some of her female political friends want to build a shack on a stream in the back woods and want, instead of a beautiful marble bath, to have the stream dug out so as to form an old-fashioned swimming hole.”⁵ The resulting retreat was far from a shack in the backwoods. It was agreed that the cottage should be built of fieldstone in the traditional Hudson River Dutch style. Franklin handled the design, paid for a proper swimming pool, and added a big gray stucco building at the rear in which Eleanor and her friends hoped to establish a furniture workshop.

FDR christened the finished house “The Honeymoon Cottage,” which was not far off the mark. Initially Eleanor, Marion, and Nancy slept together in a single, loftlike dormitory bedroom. Much of the furniture, made by Nancy Cook and her assistants, bore the women’s initials: E. M. N. Eleanor embroidered towels and linens for the cottage, likewise emblazoned E. M. N., and the three women received housewarming gifts of silver, crystal, and china engraved with their initials intertwined. Franklin frequently gave Eleanor presents for the cottage, especially plantings and picnic accessories. He inscribed a children’s book, Little Marion’s Pilgrimage, to Dickerman: “For my little Pilgrim, whose progress is always upward and onward, to the Things of Beauty and the Thoughts of Love, and of Light, from her affectionate Uncle Franklin.”⁶ He autographed a favorite speech, “Another first edition for the library of the Three Graces of the Val Kill.”⁷

The cottage became the focus of the women’s lives. Nancy and Marion retained their Greenwich Village apartment, but it was merely a place to stay during the week until they could go home to Val-Kill. For Eleanor, the life she now led came close to re-creating the rebellious feminism she had enjoyed under the tutelage of Mlle. Marie Souvestre at Allenwood. The swimming pool was always open to Franklin and his friends, and there was a special barbecue pit where he could grill his hamburgers, but Val-Kill was a woman’s world, a place where shared confidences became the rule, where Eleanor’s earnest sense of duty yielded to spontaneous and casual pleasures.

Sara accepted the arrangement with remarkable grace. “Eleanor is so happy over there that she looks well and plump, don’t tell her so,” she wrote FDR soon after Val-Kill opened.⁸ When she saw that her daughter-in-law was fully committed to her new life, Sara became an ardent supporter. She appeared with Eleanor at political luncheons and dinners, and became a patron of almost all of ER’s activities, whether they advanced Franklin’s political career or not.⁹

On one such occasion Sara hosted a luncheon Eleanor was giving for thirty-five board members of the National Council for Women in the double dining room on East Sixty-fifth Street. Among the guests was Mary McLeod Bethune, president of the National Council of Negro Women. “I can still see the twinkle in Mrs. James Roosevelt’s eyes,” Bethune remembered,

as she noted the apprehensive glances cast my way by the Southern women who had come to the affair.

Then she did a remarkable thing. Very deliberately, she took my arm and seated me to the right of Eleanor Roosevelt, the guest of honor! I can remember too, how the faces of the Negro servants lit up with pride. From that moment on, my heart went out to Mrs. James Roosevelt. I visited her at her home many times subsequently, and our friendship became one of the most treasured of my life.¹⁰

While Eleanor settled in at Val-Kill, Franklin pursued his quest for a cure at Warm Springs, Georgia. He learned of the therapeutic effect of the thermal waters at the hill country resort during the Democratic convention in 1924. The Wall Street banker George Foster Peabody, a member of the New York delegation who wintered in Columbus, Georgia, told Franklin of the wondrous cures wrought by the warm mineral waters that bubbled from the earth. Peabody had recently bought the Merriweather Inn, a genteel ruin of a hotel that bordered the spring, and urged Franklin to go down and try the waters for himself.

FDR was initially unimpressed by the prospect, but during the summer of 1924 Peabody directed a stream of testimonials to Franklin that eventually piqued his interest. In October, he, Eleanor, and Missy went down to see for themselves. Eleanor stayed for a day, found the rigid segregation and tumbledown poverty not to her liking, and returned to New York to assist in the final days of Al Smith’s gubernatorial campaign. Franklin and Missy remained three more weeks.¹¹

Roosevelt found the magnesium-laced waters astonishingly buoyant. Swimming in the warm Merriweather pool, he found that his unbraced legs would hold him upright and that by thrashing his powerful arms and shoulders he could move himself back and forth across the water. In his three weeks at Warm Springs he felt that he had made more progress than in the preceding three years. For the first time since August 1921 he thought he felt life in his toes and rejoiced at being able to stay in the water two hours at a time without becoming fatigued.^12*

When Franklin returned to New York, he laid plans to purchase Warm Springs and convert it into an aftercare facility for polio victims. “I feel that a great ‘cure’ for infantile paralysis and kindred diseases could be established,” he told Sara.¹³ Eleanor fretted that Franklin was squandering his resources and lacked the patience to succeed at so ambitious an undertaking; Basil O’Connor was concerned that Franklin was overcommitting himself; and George Peabody was asking $200,000 for the property—roughly twice what he had paid for it a few years earlier. But Louis Howe was supportive and immediately set about raising funds for the project; Missy never questioned the effort; and, most important, Sara added her backing.¹⁴

For FDR, Warm Springs offered the opportunity to be in complete charge of a significant undertaking—a means of reestablishing his self-esteem. Warm Springs would be his alone, a haven much like Val-Kill was for Eleanor: a place where he could do as he pleased, when he pleased, free from the formality of Hyde Park and East Sixty-fifth Street. More to the point, it provided an opportunity to participate in the fight against polio. Roosevelt had no special training in physiotherapy, but he became an authentic pioneer in its application. His infectious enthusiasm galvanized polio victims hitherto without hope. By instinct and example he infused others with his own unconquerable spirit as he led exercises at the pool or lolled in the sun, chatting happily with anyone who passed by. He called himself “Old Doctor Roosevelt” and took a genuine interest in those who came to Warm Springs to exercise under his care.

In April 1926 FDR completed his negotiations with Peabody and purchased the Merriweather Inn, its cottages and pools, plus 1,200 acres of undeveloped land for $201,667.83—approximately two thirds of his fortune.¹⁵ Shortly afterward he bought an additional 1,750 acres. With the help of Sara—who organized exclusive dinners for potential donors—and the indefatigable Louis Howe, Roosevelt organized the Warm Springs Foundation (later the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis) with a panel of distinguished backers, including Wall Street bankers George Foster Peabody and Russell Leffingwell; businessmen Herbert Straus and William H. Woodin; his friends Henry Morgenthau, Jr., and Basil O’Connor; and John Jakob Raskob of General Motors.^* Edsel Ford personally contributed $25,000 to provide a glass enclosure for the swimming pool.¹⁶

Warm Springs provided a challenge, and Roosevelt threw himself into every detail. He persuaded Dr. LeRoy Hubbard, a respected orthopedic surgeon who supervised rehabilitation care for the New York State Department of Health, to come down and take charge of the patients’ treatment. Hubbard brought with him a trained nurse and physiotherapist, Miss Helena Mahoney, who hired a dozen young phys ed graduates from Peabody College in Nashville to work with the patients in the pool. “Our rate is $42 a week,” FDR wrote Paul Hasbrouck, a polio victim in Poughkeepsie. “This includes board, lodging, medical and therapeutic treatment, pool charges, etc.—in fact, everything except your traveling expenses and cigarette money.”¹⁷ But no one was turned away for lack of money. Indigent patients were supported by a Patients’ Aid Fund that Roosevelt established, and when that was depleted, he asked that the bills be sent to him personally at Hyde Park.¹⁸

From the fall of 1926 until the autumn of 1928, FDR spent well over half of his time at Warm Springs. He ordered a cottage built for himself, all on one level with a driveway designed so he could enter the house directly at grade level. He also engineered an ingenious set of hand controls for an automobile to drive through the Georgia countryside. A local mechanic converted an old Model T Ford to Roosevelt’s specifications, and by the end of 1926 Franklin was whizzing about Warm Springs at twenty-five miles an hour. Roosevelt was a confident driver and controlled the car with ease. And after five years of being dependent upon others, nothing gave him greater pleasure. He became as familiar to the people along the dusty roads of Merriweather County as the rural mail carrier—except, one resident remembered, “the mail carrier did take Sunday off.”¹⁹

Roosevelt became the leading citizen of Merriweather County, thrilled at his exposure to the life of ordinary people in rural Georgia. When he ran for president, he carried the county by margins ranging from 50 to 1 in 1932 to 16 to 1 in 1944—a result significantly different from Hyde Park and Dutchess County, which he never managed to win.²⁰ Georgians were open and friendly, FDR liked to say. He remembered their names and considered many of them his friends. He often ventured out alone in his Model T, pulling into farmyards to talk crops and cattle, parking in front of the drugstore, honking his horn and ordering a Coke, nosing into a hollow to buy corn liquor from the local bootlegger. “He was a man that could talk to you,” a farmer remembered. “He had sense enough to talk to a man who didn’t have any education, and he had sense enough to talk to the best educated man in the world; and he was easy to talk to. He could talk about anything.”²¹

Roosevelt also listened. The stories of low farm prices, failed banks, and rural poverty stayed with him into the White House. From the poor people of Merriweather County, Franklin learned what it meant to be without electricity and running water; for children to be without shoes and adequate clothing; for a simple grade school education to be beyond the reach of many who lived in the hardscrabble backwoods. Merriweather County raised corn and short-staple cotton, but drought, falling prices, and the boll weevil made it all but impossible to turn a profit. Farms were small, plowing was done by mules, not tractors, and mortgage indebtedness increased annually. FDR tried his hand at farming and experimented with cattle and timber, but without success. “It pleased him because it offered a challenge,” New Dealer Rexford Tugwell remembered. “But there was never a more dismal prospect than was offered by farming that ridge at Pine Mountain.”²²

Warm Springs, on the other hand, more or less held its own. “You needn’t worry about my losing a fortune,” Franklin assured Sara. “Every step is being planned either to pay for itself or to make a profit.”²³ The American Orthopedic Association approved Dr. Hubbard’s treatment program, and by the end of 1927 seventy-one patients had visited the resort. The number grew to eighty in 1928—as many as the facilities could accommodate—and the staff totaled 110.²⁴ Warm Springs would not be free of financial worry, however, until FDR became president and the March of Dimes was organized, first to raise money for the foundation, then to aid polio research nationally.^*

While Franklin toiled at Warm Springs, Eleanor found herself fully engaged teaching history, English, and current affairs at the Todhunter School for Girls on East Eightieth Street, just off Park Avenue. In 1927 ER, Marion Dickerman, and Nancy Cook purchased Todhunter—an elite private school for daughters of wealthy New Yorkers—from its founder, Winifred Todhunter, who was returning to England. Dickerman became principal and Eleanor associate principal. Todhunter resembled Allenwood in its commitment to female achievement, and, like Marie Souvestre, Eleanor set the tone for the school.²⁵ A naturally gifted teacher, she urged her students to challenge authority and, consciously or unconsciously, proselytized relentlessly for the social ideals of the Democratic party. “I am very anxious to send a class which has been studying with me … to see the various types of tenements in New York City,” she wrote her friend Jane Hoey, who directed the city’s Welfare Council. “I would like them to see the worst type of old time tenement. They need to know what bad housing conditions mean.”²⁶

Eleanor became a role model for many of her students and urged them to assume responsibility for their lives. “In the future,” she said, “there will be nothing which is closed to women because of their sex.”²⁷ For Eleanor herself, teaching at Todhunter represented enormous personal fulfillment. “I like it better than anything else I do,” she told The New York Times in 1932.^28*

While FDR exercised at Warm Springs and Eleanor taught at Todhunter, a great deal of the responsibility for the children fell to Sara. When James was confirmed at St. James’ Episcopal Church in Hyde Park, it was Sara who stood in for his parents, just as it was she and Cousin Susie Parish who chaperoned Anna’s social debut. Twice Sara took Anna and James to Europe, and Elliott, unhappy at Groton, asked permission to live with his grandmother and attend high school at Hyde Park. (Permission refused.) Anna and the two younger boys, Franklin Jr., and John, who were at school in New York City, usually spent each weekend at Hyde Park.²⁹ “Looking back on this period,” said James, “I must say in all honesty that neither Anna, my brothers, nor I had the guidance and training that I think father would have given us had he not been involved in his own struggle to re-establish a useful life for himself.”³⁰

That struggle was going remarkably well. By 1926 FDR had learned to walk short distances with a cane in his right hand and a crutch under his left arm. But the difference in height between the cane and crutch made him appear distressingly awkward. He also tried walking with two canes, but the lateral lurch that entailed was equally disconcerting and the slightest nudge could knock him to the ground. Neither method resembled normal walking, and neither would convince an audience that Roosevelt was on the road to recovery. Working closely with Miss Mahoney, FDR developed a technique of walking with a cane in one hand while tightly gripping the arm of a companion with the other. In 1924 he had made his way up the aisle at the Democratic convention leaning on a crutch while holding fiercely to James. By substituting a cane for the crutch the effort looked more natural, and it became Franklin’s chosen method of locomotion at public events.

Politics was never far from FDR’s mind at Warm Springs. In 1926 he came north to give the keynote address at the New York Democratic convention and successfully fended off well-wishers who sought to nominate him for the U.S. Senate. “Please try to look pallid and worn and weary,” counseled Louis Howe, “so it will not be too exceedingly difficult to get by with the statement that your health will not permit you to run for anything for 2 more years.”³¹

Al Smith was reelected overwhelmingly in 1926 and immediately became the front-runner for the party’s nomination for president.³² After the bloodletting in 1924, the rural and urban wings of the party papered over their differences, McAdoo chose not to run again, and, in a reciprocal gesture of party unity, the Smith forces accepted Houston, Texas, as the convention site—the first time since 1860 that the party would meet in a southern city. Once again Smith asked FDR to deliver the nominating speech at the convention. For Roosevelt, it was another turn in the spotlight and the opportunity to demonstrate to the delegates how far he had come since 1924. “I’m telling everyone you are going to Houston without crutches,” Eleanor wrote Franklin at Warm Springs, “so mind you stick at it.”^33*

FDR left Warm Springs early for the convention, traveling by train through the Middle West, speaking at whistle-stops on Smith’s behalf, and practicing with his son Elliott the cane-and-arm technique of walking to the rostrum. Franklin cautioned Elliott to appear jovial regardless of the tension he felt. No one should perceive the difficulty their effort entailed.

As in 1924, FDR was floor manager of Smith’s campaign. Except for a scattering of favorite sons from the South, there was no serious opposition, and Roosevelt tailored his nominating speech to the 15 million or so who would be listening on the radio. “I tried the experiment of writing and delivering my speech wholly for the benefit of the radio audience and the press,” Franklin wrote Walter Lippmann. “Smith had the votes anyway and it seemed to me more important to reach out for the republicans and independents throughout the country.”³⁴ FDR recognized the challenge of writing for the new medium, which required a significant departure from the forensic flourishes of traditional campaign oratory. In the years ahead, Roosevelt would master the technique of projecting his personality over the air better than any other American politician of the twentieth century.^*

FDR was in top form at the convention. As he and Elliott made their way to the platform, without the crutches that had been so evident in 1924, the 15,000 delegates and spectators roared their approval. Franklin’s healthy appearance and evident high spirits belied any impression that he was an invalid. At the podium he seemed perfectly relaxed, perfectly natural, nodding left and right, looking up at the galleries, waving with his right hand to acknowledge the applause.

The speech was one of Roosevelt’s finest. Again and again he described the qualities Smith brought to the race, culminating with what in retrospect seems an almost autobiographical refrain. To be a great president, said FDR, required “the quality of soul which makes a man loved by little children, by dumb animals, that quality of soul which makes him a strong help to those in sorrow or trouble, that quality which makes him not merely admired but loved by all the people—the quality of sympathetic understanding of the human heart, of real interest in one’s fellow man.”

The Roosevelt who delivered those lines was a far different man from the callow young assistant secretary of the Navy who had run for vice president in 1920. His concluding remarks invoking the image of the Happy Warrior brought the delegates to their feet in a remarkable display of party unity.³⁵ Smith was nominated on the first ballot with 849 votes.^† Senate Minority Leader Joseph T. Robinson of Arkansas accepted the nomination for vice president, and the convention adjourned ready to take on Herbert Hoover and Charles Curtis in November.

The convention bluster faded quickly. Except for the nation’s farmers, the United States basked in unprecedented prosperity. The GOP hold on the House and Senate seemed secure, and Herbert Hoover, dour though he might be, appeared positively scintillating compared to Calvin Coolidge, who had chosen not to run. Even worse for the Democrats, Smith’s candidacy found little resonance outside the cities of the East Coast. Catholic and wet, he alienated much of rural, fundamentalist America while his ties to big business did little to energize the party’s working-class base. On the stump, Smith proved even more parochial than his city slicker image suggested. As the acerbic Baltimore Sun columnist H. L. Mencken noted, “Al Smith’s world begins at Coney Island and ends at Buffalo.”³⁶

FDR declined Smith’s offer to become chairman of the Democratic National Committee and continued to resist efforts to nominate him for governor.³⁷ Both he and Howe recognized that 1928 would not be a good year for Democrats, and Franklin wished to concentrate on regaining the use of his legs so that he might seek the governorship in 1932 and perhaps run for president in 1936. (Roosevelt and Howe assumed that Hoover would be reelected in 1932).³⁸ When the New York State Democratic convention met in Rochester at the end of September, FDR was ensconced at Warm Springs determined not to be drawn into the fray.

By this time, party leaders recognized that Smith’s campaign was in trouble. Unless he could carry New York, with its forty-five electoral votes, he could not hope to win the presidency. And if Smith lost New York, he would likely take the entire ticket down with him. The Republicans had just nominated the state’s crusading attorney general, Albert Ottinger, for governor. Ottinger not only had amassed a superb record fighting price racketeers and stock manipulators but was also of working-class Jewish origin, up from the sidewalks of New York. A formidable campaigner, he would cut deeply into the traditional Democratic vote in the five boroughs. The unanimous consensus of the county chairmen who gathered at Rochester was that the only Democrat who stood a chance of beating Ottinger was Franklin D. Roosevelt. And Roosevelt, they believed, would add another 200,000 upstate votes to the ticket.

FDR was unmoved. On the eve of the gubernatorial nomination he sent a public telegram to Smith restating his decision not to run: AS I AM ONLY FORTY-SIX I OWE IT TO MY FAMILY AND MYSELF TO GIVE THE PRESENT CONSTANT IMPROVEMENT A CHANCE TO CONTINUE.³⁹

Smith was content to take FDR at his word, but Tammany and the upstate leaders refused to accept a substitute candidate. Roosevelt had no enemies within the party and only Roosevelt could rescue the ticket, they said. At the insistence of James A. Farley of Rockland County, secretary of the State Democratic Committee, Smith put in another call to FDR at Warm Springs. The call found Franklin at poolside but he declined to take it, saying “Tell the governor I’ve gone on a picnic and will not be back all day.”⁴⁰

That evening, with the vote for governor scheduled the next day, Smith sought out Eleanor and implored her to get Franklin on the phone: “He won’t take my calls.” ER told Smith that it was her husband’s decision and she would not attempt to influence him, but she agreed to get him on the phone. Eleanor eventually tracked FDR down, handed the receiver to Smith, and rushed from the room to catch the last train to New York, where she had to teach at Todhunter the next morning. She would not learn what transpired until she read the newspapers next day.

First, Smith put John Jakob Raskob on the phone. Raskob had taken the post of chairman of the National Committee and was one of the party’s principal contributors. (Smith’s campaign headquarters were in the General Motors Building in New York.) Raskob pleaded with Franklin to run on behalf of the national party. FDR replied that he had too much invested in Warm Springs to make that feasible.

“Damn Warm Springs!” Raskob shouted. “We’ll take care of it for you.” Raskob said he would personally underwrite Roosevelt’s losses.^* Then he handed the phone to Smith.

The governor bore down: “Take the nomination, Frank. You can make a couple of radio speeches and you’ll be elected. Then you can go back to Warm Springs. After you have made your inaugural speech and sent your message to the Legislature you can go back there again for a couple of months.”

“Don’t give me that baloney,” said FDR.

Herbert Lehman, a senior partner in Lehman Brothers investment bankers, an experienced labor negotiator and one of the most respected figures in the party, came on the phone. If Franklin would take the nomination, he would accept the nomination for lieutenant governor and fill in whenever needed.

Smith came back on. “Frank, I told you I wasn’t going to put this on a personal basis, but I’ve got to. As a personal favor, can I put your name before the convention?” Again Roosevelt declined. His health, Warm Springs, the need to regain the use of his legs, whatever reason he could think of.

The governor heard him out. “Frank, just one more question. If those fellows nominate you tomorrow and adjourn, will you refuse to run?”

FDR hesitated.

“Thanks, Frank. I won’t ask you any more questions.” Smith handed the telephone to Lehman, and in another minute the deal was done.⁴¹

Egbert Curtis, the Merriweather Inn manager, drove FDR back to his cottage that evening. Was he going to run? Curtis asked.

“Curt,” said Roosevelt, “when you’re in politics you’ve got to play the game.”⁴²

The following afternoon, Mayor Jimmy Walker of New York placed Roosevelt’s name in nomination. The vote was pro forma. There was no opposition, and FDR was chosen by acclamation. Eleanor telegraphed her condolences: REGRET THAT YOU HAD TO ACCEPT BUT KNOW THAT YOU FELT IT OBLIGATORY.⁴³ Louis Howe smelled disaster. MESS IS NO NAME FOR IT, he wired Franklin. FOR ONCE I HAVE NO ADVICE TO GIVE.⁴⁴

New York Republicans, taken aback by FDR’s nomination, immediately focused on the health issue. “There is something both pathetic and pitiless in the ‘drafting’ of Franklin D. Roosevelt,” asserted the New York Post. The Herald Tribune said, “The nomination is unfair to Mr. Roosevelt. It is equally unfair to the people of the state.”⁴⁵ The Democrats were primed and ready. “A Governor doesn’t have to be an acrobat,” Smith replied. “The work of the governorship is brainwork. Frank Roosevelt is mentally as good as he ever was in his life.”⁴⁶ FDR joked that most people ran for governor. “I am counting on my friends all over the state to make it possible for me to walk in.”⁴⁷

Despite his misgivings, Louis Howe set the campaign in motion, establishing headquarters at the Biltmore and organizing a statewide Independent Committee for Roosevelt and Lehman. Working hand in glove with Howe was Edward J. Flynn, the Democratic boss of the Bronx, who had detached himself from the national campaign to work exclusively on the gubernatorial race. An enlightened protégé of Charles Murphy, Flynn hailed from a prosperous Irish background, had graduated from Fordham Law School, and detested the backslapping and glad-handing endemic to the political fraternity. Courteous and cultivated in social relations, Flynn sought to keep his own machine honest and responsive. He hit it off instantly with both FDR and Howe. “Politics has never been my vocation,” Flynn once said, “but it’s been an avocation. I’ve had a lot of fun with politics but I’ve always been in the position where, if anything happened, it wouldn’t make a damned bit of difference to me.”⁴⁸

FDR was joined on the campaign trail by Frances Perkins and Sam Rosenman, a young member of the New York legislature assigned to bring Roosevelt up to date on state issues. Like Howe and Missy LeHand, Rosenman would become a permanent fixture of Roosevelt’s entourage, a walking file cabinet of legislative detail.^* For his part, Rosenman, who had been initially skeptical of FDR’s patrician origins, was immediately impressed by his uncanny ability to go to the heart of an issue. Rosenman reported that he “had never seen anybody who could grasp the facts of a complicated problem as quickly and as thoroughly as Roosevelt.”⁴⁹ Frances Perkins, who had not been thrilled by Franklin as a state senator, was also impressed by what she saw now. She was awed by FDR’s stamina and pleasantly surprised by his good humor. “If you can’t use your legs and they bring you milk when you wanted orange juice,” Franklin told her, “You learn to say ‘that’s all right’ and drink it.”⁵⁰

For four weeks FDR barnstormed the state, sometimes speaking as often as fourteen times a day. Rosenman marveled at his strength and courage, noting that merely to stand up and sit down was, for Roosevelt, “more exercise than the ordinary man takes during an entire day.”⁵¹ In Troy on October 26 Franklin delighted a cheering audience with a reference to the effort he was putting forth. He reminded his listeners of the “sob stuff” Republican editorial writers had published about his physical condition: “Too bad about that unfortunate sick man, isn’t it.”⁵² When he spoke in many upstate cities, the turnout was twice as large as the number of registered Democrats. Initially, bookmakers favored Ottinger 2 to 1. By the end of October the odds had reversed. “I am horribly afraid you are going to be elected,” Howe told Franklin a week before the election.⁵³ FDR ended the campaign in Poughkeepsie, where some 20,000 people paraded down Main Street in his honor.

On the morning of November 6, Roosevelt voted at Hyde Park and then went to campaign headquarters at the Biltmore to listen to the returns. By nine o’clock it was clear that the Democrats were going down, and as the evening wore on the avalanche accelerated. Even the Solid South, which Cox and Roosevelt had managed to hang on to in 1920, had split, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Tennessee, and Texas going Republican for the first time since Reconstruction.^* In New York, Smith trailed Hoover by 100,000 votes. FDR was running ahead of the ticket but was still 25,000 votes behind Ottinger, with much of the normally Republican upstate vote still to come in. Shortly after midnight the morning papers appeared, trumpeting a GOP sweep. Franklin browsed through them, took the loss philosophically, and said he was going home to East Sixty-fifth Street to get some sleep. Newsmen and campaign workers drifted away, and the big ballroom in which the Democrats had planned a victory celebration went dark.

One room stayed open. The pros continued to keep watch. Louis Howe, Jim Farley, and Ed Flynn, together with a team of tally clerks and telephone operators, kept a vigil over the late returns. Sitting quietly on a couch in the corner was Frances Perkins, determined to stay until the last vote was counted, hoping her presence might change the result. Beside her sat an elderly woman who was equally determined. “I’ll stay with you,” said Sara. “It’s not over by a long shot.”⁵⁴

The two women sat quietly, watching the professionals tabulate the results. At 1 A.M. Ed Flynn detected a stronger than expected showing from the returns trickling in from upstate. He telephoned Roosevelt to say there was a glimmer of hope. FDR was running far ahead of Smith and might squeak through. Franklin didn’t believe it. Flynn was “crazy to wake him up,” he said.⁵⁵

At two o’clock the mood in the room lightened. Flynn could recognize a trend as well as any politician in the country. But he worried about the slow count. It was an article of faith among Democratic politicians that the GOP bosses upstate delayed reporting their results until they knew how many votes they needed. Flynn issued a statement to the press threatening to dispatch a thousand lawyers upstate to prevent the Republicans from stealing the election. The threat evidently had the desired effect, and the laggard upstate counties began to report more rapidly. Sara and Miss Perkins listened as the men kept count. “Forty votes here, one hundred votes there, seventy-five votes somewhere else. They mounted up.”⁵⁶

By 4 A.M. FDR had pulled ahead. The Democrats would hold the governor’s mansion. The final results gave Roosevelt 2,130,238 votes to Ottinger’s 2,104,630—a majority of 25,608 out of more than 4 million votes cast. Sara and Frances Perkins joined the men in a toast. Then, as Miss Perkins recalled, she shared a taxi with Sara to East Sixty-fifth Street. The seventy-four-year-old matriarch bounded up the steps, eager to get inside and inform her son of his triumph.⁵⁷

^* The waters at Warm Springs have been traced to rain that falls on Pine Mountain, several miles away, runs down 3,800 feet into a vast pocket of rock, where it is warmed by the inner earth, and returns to the surface at a temperature of 88° at a rate of 800 gallons per minute. Editor’s note, 2 The Roosevelt Letters, 448 Elliott Roosevelt, ed. (London: George G. Harrap, 1950).

^* William H. Woodin, the president of American Car and Foundry and a registered Republican, became FDR’s first secretary of the Treasury in 1933 but resigned because of ill health a year later. He was succeeded by Henry Morgenthau, Jr., who served for the remainder of the Roosevelt administration.

^* The “March of Dimes” (the name suggested by the comedian Eddie Cantor) was the principal fund-raising arm of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, which FDR organized in 1938 and which the historian David Oshinsky called “the gold standard for private charities, the largest voluntary health organization of all time.” The pioneering research of Dr. Jonas Salk was supported in large measure by the foundation. His discovery of a vaccine against polio was announced by Basil O’Connor, chairman of the foundation, on April 12, 1955, the tenth anniversary of FDR’s death. David M. Oshinsky, Polio: An American Story 53–55 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); also see Richard Carter, Breakthrough: The Saga of Jonas Salk 268 ff. (New York: Trident Press, 1966).

^* Eleanor remained active at Todhunter until 1938, although she did not teach after FDR was elected president. In 1939 the school was absorbed by the Dalton School.

^* On the eve of the convention, FDR laid out the Democrats’ foreign policy in an article in Foreign Affairs. Scathingly critical of the GOP’s go-it-alone isolationism, Roosevelt urged greater cooperation with the League of Nations and membership in the World Court: “We Democrats do not believe in the possibility or the desirability of an isolated national experience or a national development heedless of the welfare, prosperity and peace of the other peoples of the world. The American people would never be willing consciously to handicap the League in its efforts to maintain peace. Yet since the war, our attitude is that we do not need friends, and that the public opinion of the world is of no importance.” Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Our Foreign Policy: A Democratic View,” 4 Foreign Affairs 573, 582 (July 1928).