by FDR
On a soggy country road behind enemy lines near Pffeffenhausen, Germany, a band of American prisoners of war was being marched to a new enclosure, presumably to prevent their liberation by advancing Allied forces. From the German guards they learned that President Roosevelt was dead. At noon the ranking American officer climbed a nearby hill, accompanied by a bugler. He turned and addressed his fellow prisoners: “I have been told that President Roosevelt died yesterday, April the 12th. The sergeant will now play Taps, then we will have a moment of silence.”
“It was the saddest Taps I had ever heard,” remembered Bill Livingstone, who had been captured by the Germans after bailing out of his damaged B-17 in 1944. “Tears ran down my face, as they did on the faces of the rest of the group. When the sergeant finished playing, we all stood silently, with our heads bowed. Then we marched on.”179
* Hopkins and his young daughter, Diana, had lived in the Lincoln Suite down the hall from FDR since the death of Hopkins’s wife in May 1940. When Hopkins remarried in July 1942, his new wife, Louise Macy, joined them. But the inevitable friction that developed between Mrs. Roosevelt and Mrs. Hopkins in such close quarters caused Hopkins to seek other accommodations, and in December 1943 he, Louise, and Diana moved to a town house near 33rd and N Streets in Georgetown.
* According to FDR’s medical history, as reported by Dr. Howard G. Bruenn, the president had not had his blood pressure checked since February 27, 1941—three years previously—when it had measured 188/105. By current standards Admiral McIntire would be considered guilty of egregious neglect for failing to consult a cardiologist and recommend remedial treatment at that time. But in the 1940s—and indeed, even into the 1960s—a majority of physicians believed that rising blood pressure was a necessary physiological response by an aging body to force blood through hardened arteries.
According to Dr. Daniel Levy, the director of the Framingham Heart Study, “Leading physicians believed that it was dangerous and irresponsible to lower high blood pressure. That position grew out of scientific dogma from the nineteenth century which suggested that with normal aging elevated blood pressure was necessary … to supply enough blood to organs, especially the kidneys.” Dr. Daniel Levy and Susan Brink, A Change of Heart 45 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005); Howard G. Bruenn, “Critical Notes on the Illness and Death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt,” 72 Annals of Internal Medicine 580 (1970). Also see Ray W. Gifford, Jr., “FDR and Hypertension: If We’d Only Known Then What We Know Now,” 51 Geriatrics 29–32 (1996).
* Roosevelt’s medical file, including all clinical notes and test results, was kept in the safe at Bethesda Naval Hospital. It disappeared immediately after the president’s death. Supposition holds that the file was removed by Admiral McIntire and later destroyed.
* American anti-Semites, of whom there were many, often referred to FDR as “Rosenfeld” and the New Deal as the “Jew Deal.” Some to this day continue to believe that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was Jewish, and the limericks that circulated about his and ER’s racial attitude, particularly during the 1940 election, were truly revolting.
* Dr. Stephen S. Wise, a Reform rabbi and longtime Zionist, was the foremost Jewish spokesman in the 1930s and 1940s. A longtime leader of the interfaith social justice movement, Wise was a crusader for political change and in that capacity strongly endorsed FDR for governor in 1928 against Albert Ottinger, New York’s Jewish attorney general. Roosevelt’s narrow victory was no doubt assisted by Jewish voters influenced by Wise. Wise believed in FDR and trusted him, and Roosevelt for his part respected Wise and always appreciated his political assistance. Many writers on the holocaust, particularly the noted scholar David S. Wyman of the University of Massachusetts (Amherst), are critical of Wise for placing so much faith in FDR. David S. Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews 69–70 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984).
† The United States did not establish official diplomatic relations with the Holy See until January 10, 1984, during the administration of Ronald Reagan.
* In issuing the statement Roosevelt overrode the objections of the State Department, which believed it too strong and too definite. “In the first place, these reports are unconfirmed,” wrote R. Borden Reams, a specialist on Jewish matters in the Division of European Affairs. “The way will then be open for further pressure from interested groups for action that might affect the war effort.” Reams to [John D.] Hickerson and [Ray] Atherton, December 8, 1942. For background, see Kenneth S. Davis, F.D.R.: The War President 739–740 (New York: Random House, 2000).
* Roosevelt’s views about Palestine were revealed to Henry Morgenthau in December 1942. According to Morgenthau’s diary entry, the president said he “would call Palestine a religious country … leave Jerusalem the way it is and have it run by the Orthodox Greek Catholic Church, the Protestants, and the Jews—have a joint committee run it. [He] would put a barbed wire around Palestine … begin to move the Arabs out” and “provide land for the Arabs in some other part of the Middle East. Each time we move out an Arab we would bring in another Jewish family. Palestine would be 90 percent Jewish and an independent nation.” Morgenthau Diary, MS, December 3, 1942, FDRL.
* Leonard Dinnerstein, in his careful study Antisemitism in America, notes that “Roosevelt always dealt with the Jews as an issue in the context of a broader agenda. His primary goal was to end the war as quickly as possible, his British allies were pressuring him to do nothing to help Jews escape from Europe, and he wanted to retain Congressional good will to insure support for a United National organization after the war.… The country had elected an extremely conservative group of men and women to the House of Representatives in 1942. When he sought permission from Congress to permit him to allow people into the country who would not qualify under existing legislation, the members emphatically rejected his request.” Antisemitism in America 143–144 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).
* An important collateral issue pertained to the currency Allied forces would use in France. In January 1944 Morgenthau and McCloy met with Roosevelt and suggested that the bills (which were to be printed by the Bureau of Engraving) be emblazoned “Républic Française.” FDR overruled them. “How do you know what kind of a government you will have after the war is over?” he asked. “De Gaulle is on the wane.” At the president’s insistence the new currency proclaimed “La France,” with the Tricolor supported on either side by British and American flags. The FCNL objected strenuously. “Allez, faites la guerre avec votre fausse monnaie [Go make war with your counterfeit money],” said de Gaulle contemptuously. The issue was not resolved until de Gaulle’s visit to Washington in July, when it was agreed that only the government of the Republic of France could issue currency. Charles de Gaulle, 3 The War Memoirs of Charles de Gaulle 253, 275 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1959); G. E. Maguire, Anglo-American Policy Towards the Free French 133–135 (London: Macmillan, 1995); Ted Morgan, FDR: A Biography 717–719 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985); McCloy to FDR, June 10, 1944, FDRL.
* Dewey received 1,056 of the 1,059 votes, two delegates being absent and one from Wisconsin voting for Douglas MacArthur. The allusion is to Nebraska’s William Jennings Bryan, known at the inception of his career as the Boy Orator of the Platte.
* Roosevelt normally was seen in public either standing with his braces locked, or seated in an open car. On only one other occasion did he allow strangers to witness his infirmity. That was in 1936, when he dedicated a new building at Washington’s Howard University. Howard’s president, Dr. Mordecai Johnson, asked Roosevelt if the students could see that he was crippled. They had been so crippled because of their race, said Johnson, the president’s example would inspire them. “Roosevelt agreed. He let himself be lifted from his car and set down in public view, and then he proceeded to walk slowly and painfully to the platform.” Doris Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Time 532–533 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994).
* “You know, the President is a man of great vision—once things are explained to him,” Ma
cArthur is alleged to have told the newspaper correspondent Clark Lee. William Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur, 1880–1964 370 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1978).
* The reference is to FDR’s 1937 speech to the Daughters of the American Revolution. 5 Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt 214–217, Samuel I. Rosenman, ed. (New York: Macmillian, 1939).
* The exception came after a particularly stressful session on February 8 when Poland was discussed. Bruenn reported that the president suffered pulsus alternans (alternating strong and weak beats) that night but soon recovered. Howard G. Bruenn, “Clinical Notes on the Illness and Death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt,” 72 Annals of Internal Medicine 589 (1970). Also see Jay Kenneth Herman, “The President’s Cardiologist,” 82 Navy Medicine 6–13 (1990).
Notes
THE INITIAL EPIGRAPH is from Mario Cuomo’s keynote address to the Democratic National Convention in 1984. The Preface is written without endnotes. The quotations appear elsewhere in the text and are fully cited at that point. I am indebted to Michael Barone for the final observation concerning FDR.
ONE | Heritage
The epigraph is from Michael Teague, Mrs. L: Conversations with Alice Roosevelt Longworth 18–19 (New York: Doubleday, 1981). As governor and later as president, Franklin enjoyed teasing his mother about the family’s forebears. According to FDR’s son James, when important people were dining at Hyde Park, the president would often hint that “old Claes left Holland because he was a horse thief or worse … or would take off on the subject of the Delanos who went into the China trade, implying that they smuggled everything from opium to immigrants. Sometimes he sounded as if he were taking his text, chapter and verse, from the columnist Westbrook Pegler.” James Roosevelt and Sidney Shalett, Affectionately, F.D.R. 18 (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1959).
1. The most accessible sources for the history of the Roosevelt family are Kenneth S. Davis, FDR: The Beckoning of Destiny, 1882–1928 17–26 (New York: Putnam, 1972); Frank Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt: The Apprenticeship 5–9 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1952); Geoffrey C. Ward, Before the Trumpet: Young Franklin Roosevelt, 1882–1905 13–60 (New York: Harper & Row, 1985). Also see Karl Schriftgiesser, The Amazing Roosevelt Family: 1613–1942 (New York: W. Funk, 1942); Nathan Miller, The Roosevelt Chronicles (New York: Doubleday, 1979); Alvin Page Johnson, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Colonial Ancestors (Boston: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard, 1933); Allen Churchill, The Roosevelts: American Aristocrats (New York: Harper & Row, 1965); Bellamy Partridge, The Roosevelt Family in America (New York: Hillman-Curl, 1936). The Herald Tribune quotation is by Gerald W. Johnson. A more disparaging observation is by Mrs. Schuyler van Rensselaer, who in her History of New York in the Seventeenth Century noted that “at no pre-Revolutionary period was the Roosevelt family conspicuous nor did any member of it attain distinction.”
2. Theodore Roosevelt, Autobiography 1 (New York: Macmillan, 1913). TR’s emphasis.
3. Clara and Hardy Steeholm, The House at Hyde Park 38–39 (New York: Viking, 1950).
4. The quotation is from Dr. Isaac’s brother-in-law, William Henry Aspinwall, reported in Ward, Before the Trumpet 21. Also see Steeholm, House at Hyde Park 46.
5. Quoted in Ted Morgan, FDR: A Biography 27 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985).
6. Steeholm, House at Hyde Park 40. John Aspinwall Roosevelt, Dr. Isaac’s second and last child, was born in 1840.
7. 3 FDR: His Personal Letters 1224, Elliott Roosevelt, ed. (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1950). Like many family stories told by FDR, the Garibaldi tale was artfully embellished. Roosevelt records show that James was in Naples in March 1849, but Garibaldi was encamped at the time at Rieti, some forty miles northeast of Rome. The siege of Naples did not begin until 1860. See Christopher Hibbert, Garibaldi and His Enemies 275–293 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1966).
8. For Silliman’s eminence at the New York bar, see 6 National Cyclopedia of American Biography 54–55 (New York: J. T. White & Co., 1879).
9. Steeholm, House at Hyde Park 54–55.
10. Anna “Bamie” Roosevelt’s reminiscences, quoted in David McCullough, Mornings on Horseback 57 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981). Also see Edmund Morris, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt 8–10 (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1979). Theodore, Sr., did not serve in the war in deference to his wife, Mittie Bulloch, the daughter of a prominent Georgia family. Indeed, Mittie’s brother, James Dunwody Bulloch, was the principal Confederate agent in London, and it was he who arranged for construction of the Alabama and other rebel raiders. At the same time, William Henry Aspinwall, Isaac Roosevelt’s brother-in-law, was Lincoln’s confidential agent in the British capital.
I am grateful to Professor John Y. Simon, editor of the Grant Papers, for alerting me that it was James Roosevelt who first notified the U.S. government of James Bullock’s presence in London to arrange for construction of the Alabama. On July 10, 1861, Hiram Barney, the collector of customs in New York, advised Secretary of State William Henry Seward, “These vessels will sail from Liverpool under the flag of the Confederacy and will operate upon our merchantmen and navy ships.… Of course I know not the grounds of this apprehension, but give it on Mr. Roosevelt’s authority exclusively. Mr. Roosevelt is an ardent Union man and would feel bound to denounce a brother probably to save the government, but he does not wish his name used if it can be avoided.” 2 Official Records of the War of the Rebellion (Series 2) 18. James Bullock was excluded from the general amnesty President Johnson proclaimed at the end of war and lived out his life in Liverpool. He occasionally visited the United States under an assumed name and once asked James Roosevelt to dine with him. The president’s father refused, horrified at the thought of dining with a traitor. 2 Roosevelt Letters 23n.
11. McClellan graduated from West Point in 1845 and quickly established a reputation as a brilliant engineer and mapmaker. He resigned from the army in 1855 to become superintendent of the Illinois Central. See Stephen W. Sears, George B. McClellan: The Young Napoleon 64–70, 388–390 (New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1988).
12. During his wedding trip abroad in 1853, James briefly worked as Buchanan’s private secretary. Buchanan was then American minister in London. He suddenly found himself shorthanded and asked James to pitch in until additional help arrived. James admired Buchanan personally, which may have facilitated his switch to the Democrats. For FDR’s version of the episode, see President’s Personal File 3012, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library (FDRL).
13. James Roosevelt to John Roosevelt, December 23, 1865, in John Aspinwall Roosevelt’s Collection of Roosevelt Family Papers, FDRL.
14. For FDR’s notes on Leland Stanford’s purchase of Gloster, see his “History of the President’s Estate,” FDRL.
15. John Gunther, Roosevelt in Retrospect 172 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950).
16. As quoted in Ward, Before the Trumpet 52. James’s marriage to Rebecca is lovingly described in Aileen Sutherland Collins’s Rebecca Howland & James Roosevelt: A Story of Cousins, based on Rebecca’s diary. (Virginia Beach, Va.: Parsons Press, 2005).
17. Ibid. 55.
18. With respect to marrying advantageously, the Roosevelts were not unlike the Hapsburgs, of whom it was said:
Bella gerant alii! Tu, felix Austria, nube,
Nam quae Mars aliis dat tibi regna Venus.
(Let others make war. Thou, happy Austria, marry,
for Venus gives thee those realms which on others Mars bestows.)
19. Dollar conversions are from Robert G. Sahr, “Inflation Conversion Factors for Years 1700 to Estimated 2012,” Political Science Department, Oregon State University, 2002.
20. Ward, Before the Trumpet 59–60, 350–351. Eleanor Roosevelt called Bamie “one of the most interesting women I have ever known. [She] had a mind that worked as a very able man’s mind works. She was full of animation, was always the center of any group she was with.” Eleanor Roosevelt, This Is My Story 57–58 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1937).
21. Davis
, Beckoning Destiny 34. Also see Peter Collier with David Horowitz, The Roosevelts: An American Saga 53–54 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994).
22. “The Delanos,” said Eleanor, “were the first people I met who were able to do what they wanted to do without wondering where to obtain the money.” Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt 47 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961).
23. Rita Halle Kleeman, Gracious Lady 5–6 (New York: D. Appleton–Century, 1935).
24. Daniel W. Delano, Jr., Franklin Roosevelt and the Delano Influence 31–33 (Pittsburgh: J. S. Nudi Publications, 1946).
25. Steeholm, House at Hyde Park 13; Freidel, Apprenticeship 13–14; James MacGregor Burns and Susan Dunn, The Three Roosevelts 19 (New York: Grove Press, 2001). Warren Delano’s million-dollar fortune would translate into roughly $24 million in 2006. Perhaps a more accurate gauge would be that when John Jacob Astor, the nation’s first millionaire, died in 1848 he left an estate valued at somewhat less than $20 million: a sum “as incomprehensible as infinity,” according to one obituary writer. Ward, Before the Trumpet 130.
26. Colonnade Row was designed in the 1830s by Ithiel Town and Alexander Jackson Davis, noted Greek Revival architects whose work included the New York Customs House and state capitols in Connecticut, Indiana, North Carolina, and Ohio.
27. Within the family, Sara was called “Sallie” to distinguish her from Aunt Sarah, Warren’s sister. For simplicity, I have referred to the president’s mother as “Sara” throughout.
28. Downing’s Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening Adapted to North America, published in 1840, is an American classic. Also see his The Architecture of Country Houses (New York: D. Appleton, 1850).
