Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume 3

by Blanche Wiesen Cook

  Many of ER’s friends, including Helen Rogers Reid, Isabella Greenway, and evidently Esther Lape, supported Willkie. So did many NAACP leaders, the boxing champion Joe Louis, and every Republican internationalist, led by Henry and Clare Boothe Luce and their publishing empire. Thousands of We Want Willkie clubs emerged from nowhere. Many believed he represented a new movement, like populism in the nineteenth century.

  But ER was unimpressed. She found his platform devoid of specifics. “Sometimes I wonder if we will ever grow up in our politics and say definite things which mean something,” implying that this was no time to support an unknown. There is something unreal, she wrote, “about all this political activity when the world seems toppling into chaos.”

  From her perch in the Democratic Party offices, Hick offered her impressions of Willkie: “I don’t care for the crowd that is backing him. And he is too darned plausible—too simple, etc. . . . I don’t know whether Willkie is a fascist or not, but I certainly do suspect the crowd behind him. By his charm and his smooth talk, he may win over a lot of women, young people, and even liberals.” From February to May, Hick had been on the road to assess and build public opinion for the party. She made a decent salary, all her expenses were paid, and she wrote splendid speeches for state and local politicians. She loved her new job, and she fully enjoyed the game. “This job is such fun dear. . . . I am having the time of my life.” Democratic Party chairman Jim Farley and the party’s publicity director, Charles Michelson, were pleased with her work.

  FDR, for his part, was relieved by Willkie’s nomination. Since he was an interventionist, it removed from the race the question of support for Britain. The Democrats soon decided upon a campaign strategy. Willkie represented “corporate, entrenched wealth, against the great mass of the people,” as Ickes put it. He and other Democratic leaders believed that on this issue “we can win . . . and [then] go far toward correcting some of the economic and social abuses that still exist in this country.”

  Only days before the Democratic National Convention was to open on 15 July in Chicago, nobody in FDR’s inner circle knew what he intended to do about a third term. His refusal to participate—to name floor leaders or to contribute platform positions—as well as his ongoing duplicity and coyness regarding his intentions, appalled and enraged his oldest friends and most ardent champions.

  Meanwhile at Hyde Park, ER and FDR were celebrating the Fourth of July with a group of family and friends. The president read the Declaration of Independence aloud with gusto, and ER in her column stirringly affirmed American values:

  I personally want to continue to live in a country where I can think as I please, go to any church I please, or to none if that is my desire; say what I please, and within the limits of any free society, do what I please. . . .

  I want to have within my own hands the choice of my leaders, and if the majority of opinion is against me at any time, I want the right to differ, while recognizing the necessity of cooperation . . . in order to prove fairly whether the majority opinion is right or not.

  Accompanied by Tommy, ER spoke at several political meetings in New York State. One of her destinations was a town on the Finger Lakes, and “my husband had a grand time asking everyone where Odessa was.” When the reply “In Russia and on the Black Sea” came, “he would gleefully remark: ‘My wife is going there on Friday and will be back Saturday night.’”

  FDR told ER he had decided to stay in Washington, so there was no need for her to go to Chicago. She counseled the party leaders to emphasize Willkie’s “essential indifference to labor.” She wrote Hick, “Don’t get tired & don’t get a defeatist attitude. Willkie can be beaten. The strategy must be good and the campaign well planned. But he isn’t so hard to beat—Of that I am sure.” Then she and Tommy went to Val-Kill for the week. They invited Tommy’s companion Henry Osthagen, Earl Miller, Earl’s fiancée Simone von Haver, and Joe Lash.

  As the obligations of politics were altered by war and carnage, ER sought to build an alternative network for action, comfort, and hope. Tommy, Earl Miller, Alice Huntington, Esther Lape and Elizabeth Read, Bernard Baruch, Isabella Greenway, and Elinor Morgenthau remained intimates she could rely on—they shared her evolving vision and priorities. Hick, politically engaged and always informative, retained a special place in ER’s heart. But she was not much interested in refugees, and was occasionally bigoted. Increasingly, ER’s quest for deep friendships that embraced personal and political interests was satisfied by Joe Lash and his vigorous circle of international activists.

  At Val-Kill, much of their conversation concerned the rifts among the convention delegates. Beyond the political commentary, it was a relaxing, easy week at Val-Kill, and they “had a gay time.” They swam and frolicked in the pool, and played ring tennis. ER and Earl defeated Joe and Simone, although, as Joe noted, “we had youth on our side.” They all enjoyed walks in the woods, despite the swarms of mosquitoes, and grilled picnics on the porch.

  In a private conversation one evening at dusk, ER was surprised to learn that Joe had lost his father when he was nine. Sharing their childhood griefs strengthened the growing bond between them.

  Then Joe also asked whether he could invite Trude Pratt to join them. She “was in trouble and might be helped” by a conversation, he explained. ER was eager to be useful. When she was young, she “never had anyone to whom she could go and talk,” and it was so important to be able to discuss things. But she warned Joe that “she never imposed advice.”

  When Trude arrived, she “turned shy” and avoided “talk about her personal affairs.” Instead, they spoke about politics, and how Trude might volunteer and work in some useful way during the campaign. They also spoke about her determination to help her friends in the German and Austrian underground, now stranded in Marseilles, flee to England, Sweden, or any open port of hope. ER was moved by Trude’s wide-ranging knowledge and charmed by her great wit and fun-loving nature.

  ER felt sure Joe and Trude were in the early stages of something serious, even though Trude was still married with three small children. When she asked Joe bluntly about his love life, she discovered that it was “in a mess.” Joe admitted he “was taken with Trude” but planned to marry Agnes Reynolds, yet he was not yet legally divorced from Nancy, his first wife. Married in 1935, they “had separated amicably in 1937.” ER offered to loan him any money he needed for Reno, where one could get a divorce easily after a six-week residency. “The more troubles I had, the more she insisted on helping me,” he wrote.

  While no one could doubt the immense respect and affection FDR felt for his wife, in her closest relationships ER revealed her own longings and desires and spoke about her own flaws. Joe felt that the first lady’s own marital realities and romantic longings were much on her mind as they talked. Her husband was often aloof and inapproachable, and perhaps most keenly she felt her limitations and failures as a mother. To Joe, she confided that she was making “every effort to improve her relationship with her children, and she was certain now that providing unconditional love and understanding was essential. She also filled Joe in on her past problems with her mother-in-law. “She was in rebellion against her mother-in-law but kept it bottled up,” he wrote, “[since] she had been taught to defer to the views of older people.”

  With Joe and Trude, ER felt a new level of hope as they negotiated complicated issues of love and loyalty, immediate questions of rescue and survival as the vicious war unfolded. They pondered short- and long-term political needs to strengthen democracy, and dreamed of a truly just and humane future.

  On 16 July ER and Tommy took SDR and Betty Roosevelt (Rosy Roosevelt’s widow) to dinner with Joe and Trude at Norrie Point, a Scandinavian restaurant on the Hudson shore. Joe finally met the formidable mother-in-law ER had told him so much about. At eighty-five, SDR was impressive—in his words, “spry” and “ever-curious,” even “adventurous.” SDR reminded Joe of the president, with fa
miliar hand gestures and facial expressions. When Betty Roosevelt referred to the vice president, SDR snapped, “Oh, Garner! A stupid man.” Altogether it was quite a “spree.”

  • • •

  Afterward they hurried home: FDR had told them that the one convention moment they should not miss was Kentucky senator Alben Barkley’s address late that first evening. Barkley’s nationally broadcast keynote included a message from FDR: “The President has never had, and has not today, any desire or purpose to continue in the office . . . , to be a candidate . . . , or to be nominated by the convention for that office. He wishes . . . to make it clear that all of the delegates . . . are free to vote for any candidate.”

  At first the delegates were silent, then bedlam erupted. From every loudspeaker throughout the convention hall, a powerful voice boomed: “We want Roosevelt!” The ensuing demonstration included music, marching bands, and shouts of “The world needs Roosevelt!” Every state delegation and all police and fire units present marched and sang “Happy Days Are Here Again!” Joe noted that when the demonstration began, ER “shook her head resignedly” and timed all fifty-three minutes of it.

  Harold Ickes, who had initiated the third-term movement in 1938 and “led the procession,” was furious to be bypassed by Harry Hopkins in Chicago. But he was even more furious when he saw that the impact of FDR’s strategy on the convention was to make it “dead and cold. Everything was dull and bogged down.” Many friends, legislators, and journalists including Herbert Agar and Ulric Bell begged Ickes to call the president: if FDR had “any hope of saving the international situation,” he needed to fly to Chicago “and lift the convention out of the gutter.”

  Eventually, Ickes sent a cable, an eloquent plea for FDR to attend: “this convention is bleeding to death,” and your “reputation and prestige may bleed to death with it. Prompt and heart-stirring action is necessary. A world revolution is beating against the final ramparts of democracy in Europe.” He assured FDR he was the only man to lead the country. The delegates in Chicago were “milling about,” anxious and leaderless, “waiting for the inspiration . . . that only you can give them.”

  If FDR were to remain silent, Ickes feared that “men who are determined to destroy you at any cost” would appropriate the convention. “It is the strangest sight in American politics to see a convention dominated by men who are bent upon betraying their leader, their party, and their country.” He referred to the party’s isolationist wing, led by Burton Wheeler, but he feared that Jim Farley and “the Farley coalition” would join them. To “clear away the sordid atmosphere,” Ickes appealed to FDR to fly to the convention and to send immediately his platform for democracy’s international and domestic future. If he did not, “a ticket will emerge that will assure the election of Willkie, and Willkie means fascism and appeasement.” FDR did not answer Ickes’s cable.

  Then Frances Perkins called him, frantic. The situation was out of control. He must come. But it was impossible, he told her: people would “get promises out of me. . . . If I don’t make promises, I will make new enemies. If I do make promises, they’ll be mistakes. . . . It is better not to go.”

  What was there to do? He told Perkins to ask Eleanor. That would be an “excellent” contribution, he said. As always, she was his beacon in a storm. At times, she was also his canary sent out to gauge the public mood, at others the voice of reason that he could count on to prevail above all others. Throughout his presidency, FDR never lost his faith in her. She “always makes people feel right,” he told Perkins. “She has a fine way with her. . . . Telephone her. I’ll speak to her too, but you tell her so that she will know I am not sending her on my own hunch, but that some of the rest of you want her.” He advised Perkins to speak to several of ER’s friends before she called.

  A call from Frances Perkins interrupted their dinner. ER at first hesitated, but Perkins was insistent: the party, and the future, absolutely required her presence.

  ER called her husband, who said it would be grand if she went. But how would Jim Farley feel about it? she worried. “I certainly am not going out there unless he invites me.” FDR encouraged her to call Farley, since “she could say things to Jim Farley he could not.”

  ER’s consideration for Jim Farley was genuine. During his years as the Democrats’ party chairman, his dedication to the party had been steadfast, and his leadership had been effective and far-seeing. Now he was actually being “frozen out” by Harry Hopkins, who had no official role except as FDR’s personal surrogate. Hopkins was rude and self-centered and barked orders to Farley, disregarding his advice. It was wrong, and ER was incensed at Hopkins for it.

  When she called Farley for his advice that night, he was “overcome with emotion” and could not continue the conversation. Hick and her boss, publicity director Charles Michelson, happened to walk into the room and heard Farley say agitatedly into the phone, “But I do mean it! You have got to come. We need you—badly.” In tears, he could not continue. He saw Hick, said she would call her right back, and hung up. Then he grabbed Hick’s arm: “Call her back and tell her I meant every word . . . and wasn’t just being polite. . . . And tell her I’ll get up a committee of delegates to meet her.”

  Hick called ER and was adamant: the future of the Democratic Party—of everything they cared about—depended on her presence at the convention. FDR would be nominated, but he had chosen Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace for his running mate—and the stadium had exploded in opposition. But FDR said that if he could not have Wallace, he would not run. The convention would hold off on the vice-presidential roll-call vote until after ER arrived and spoke, Hick said. Persuaded that “Jim Farley really wanted me,” ER agreed to fly to Chicago the next morning: “Tell Jim to meet me at the airport, alone. No delegation.”

  That night at Val-Kill ER’s party stayed up until three a.m. “We sat thru the nominating speeches,” Lash wrote in his journal. “I tallied votes, while ER sewed initials on sheets and Tommy knitted. Henry made us scotches. Mrs. R was unhappy when Sen [Carter] Glass did not do a good job of nominating Farley. [But] the convention sang ‘When Irish Eyes Are Smiling’” in Farley’s honor, and ER “sang along in a low voice.”

  The final vote was overwhelming: FDR, 946 votes; Farley, 72; Vice President Garner, 61; Maryland’s Senator Millard Tydings, 9; Cordell Hull, 5. After the votes were announced, Farley moved that FDR be nominated by acclamation.

  But there was nothing unanimous about the battle that brewed over FDR’s decision on Wallace as his candidate for vice president. Hopkins urged the boss to go with Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. House Speaker William Bankhead believed he was FDR’s choice, and so did Indiana’s former governor Paul McNutt, business leader Jesse Jones, South Carolina’s Jimmy Byrnes, Alben Barkley, Cordell Hull, Harold Ickes, Sam Rayburn. Actually more than seventeen men believed they were in line, or even preferred.

  Diving into that maelstrom, ER’s friend C. R. Smith of American Airlines sent a Piper Cub to Wappingers Falls for her trip to New York City. Smith’s pilot, she noted, “allowed me to fly the plane for a while, following the Hudson River, which gave me a real sense of exhilaration.” In New York, Smith met her and flew her to Chicago.

  At sunset she stepped off the plane in Chicago, to be greeted by the women’s press corps. Farley insisted she speak with them, and the first question was: “‘Are you happy about the nomination?’ ‘Happy!’” she exclaimed, without a trace of a smile, her demeanor reflecting “an unusual gravity.” “‘I don’t know how anyone could be happy [about this nomination] . . . in the present state of the world.’” Why, ER wondered, “would anyone want to carry such a burden” of responsibility—not only for our people but to preserve the nation’s “place among the peoples of the world”? Told that her own name had been placed in nomination for vice president that afternoon, “she laughed heartily.” I can “imagine nothing more foolish or less wanted.”

 
Jim Farley drove her from the airfield to the hotel for dinner. She was surprised to learn that “Franklin had not talked to him since the convention opened and had never told him . . . his choice for vice-president. I was horrified to realize that things had come to this . . . because I always had a feeling of real friendship for Jim Farley.”

  ER persuaded Jim to talk with FDR. They called from the hotel, and the two men had a tense conversation. FDR said that only Wallace would do as his running mate, since he cared both about the New Deal and about the international situation. “It must be Wallace,” because he “could be trusted to carry out our policies.” Farley said, “You are the boss. If you say so I will do all I can . . . but I will have to work fast.” With that, the first lady and Farley left immediately for the convention hall, “and I could see Jim was much disturbed.” Farley handed ER over to Perkins and Hick, and left immediately.

  According to Frances Perkins, ER’s very presence “sweetened the convention.” Even before her speech, “she made friends, shook hands with thousands of people,” and began to warm up the entirely divided room. Hick’s observation differed: “The Stadium was packed to the rafters . . . half the state of Indiana had moved into the galleries to root for McNutt. . . . [Every] mention of Wallace started a roar of boos and catcalls. . . . The convention was out of control. In the uproar hardly anyone was aware of Mrs. Roosevelt’s presence.”

  At ten-thirty p.m., as “the State delegations were still at fever heat,” Jim Farley escorted ER to the podium, and the entire convention—delegates, spectators, reporters—rose to its feet. She “moved forward,” Hick wrote, “through the haze of dust and tobacco smoke under the glaring lights to the speakers’ stand—tall and proudly erect, her head held high. For a split second the crowd stared at her in astonishment. Abruptly the boos and catcalls stopped. In dead silence she started to speak.”