Jean Edward Smith Page 2

  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 hypochondr
iac 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, an
d 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