Flight of the Eagle: The Grand Strategies That Brought America from Colonial Dependence to World Leadership

by Conrad Black

55 Ibid. p. 162.

  56 Daniel Ruddy, Theodore Roosevelt’s History of the United States in His Own Words, New York, Harper Collins, 2010, p. 1.

  57 Wood, op. cit., p. 234.

  58 Wood, op. cit., p. 208.

  59 Wood, op. cit., p. 240.

  60 Wood, op. cit., p. 267.

  61 Wood, op. cit., p. 265.

  62 Wood, op. cit., p. 285.

  63 By the time Jefferson was inaugurated, Poland had been carved up entirely by the Russian, Prussian, and Austrian Empires and had no king.

  64 Pope Pius VII said, as the Barbary pirates regularly seized hostages and held them for ransom, that “the United States had done more for the cause of Christianity than the most powerful nations of Christendom have done for ages.” (Christopher Hitchens, “Jefferson Versus the Muslim Pirates,” City journal, Spring 2007.)

  65 Ruddy, op. cit., p. 89.

  66 Talleyrand had concluded that Napoleon was mad and he had retired and made his peace with the Bourbons.

  67 Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic 1789–1815, Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, 2009, p. 660.

  68 Wood, op. cit., p. 695.

  69 Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848, Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 71.

  70 Wood, op. cit., p. 737.

  71 Ibid.

  72 Wood, op. cit., p. 738.

  73 Jasper Riley, Lord Palmerston, London, Constable, 1970, p. 263.

  74 Richard B. Morris, Encyclopedia of American History, Sixth Edition, New York, Harper and Row, 1932, p. 209.

  75 Howe, op. cit., p. 406.

  76 Howe, op. cit., p. 79.

  77 It was the constant mournful tolling over Marshall’s death that caused Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell famously to crack irreparably.

  78 Robert V. Remini, Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union, New York, Norton, 1991, p. 609.

  79 Ibid. p. 610. (The raccoon was the symbol of the Whig Party, as the elephant and the donkey are today of the Republicans and the Democrats.)

  80 This was a step Jackson had feared to take when he had the chance in his two terms, and was somewhat emulated by Dwight D. Eisenhower 125 years later, when he dodged Indochina completely but became a war hawk as an ex-president.

  81 Richard B. Morris, Encyclopedia of American History, Sixth Edition, New York, Harper and Row, 1982, p. 241.

  82 In Lincoln’s notes for speeches for September 1859, there appears: “Negro Equality! Fudge!! How long in the government of a God, great enough to make and maintain this Universe, shall there continue knaves to vend and fools to gulp, so low a piece of demagoguism as this?” The Collected Works of Abraham, Lincoln, New Brunswick, New Jersey, Rutgers University Press, 1953, vol. 3, p. 399.

  83 The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, op. cit., p. 454.

  84 John Russell Grant, Around the World with General Grant, New York, Subscription Book Department, The American News Company, vol. 1, pp. 416–417.

  85 Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, New York, Simon and Schuster, 2005, p. 237.

  86 Goodwin, op. cit., p. 533.

  87 Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, New Brunswick, New Jersey, Rutgers University Press, 1953, vol. 6, pp. 319–320.

  88 U.S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant, New York, Charles L. Webster, 1885, p. 624.

  89 Ibid. p. 630.

  90 Goodwin, op. cit., p. 719.

  91 Ibid.

  92 Tammany Hall was the headquarters of the New York City Democratic political machine into the second half of the twentieth century. Aaron Burr was one of the founders. It was traditionally an Irish American organization, but grew large Italian and Jewish branches also.

  93 Cleveland would prove a durable presidential figure, as would a succession of those who followed him. In the 31 presidential elections from 1884 to 2004, a candidate bearing the name Cleveland, Bryan, Roosevelt, Nixon, Dole, or Bush would win electoral votes to national office in 27 of them and be elected in 17 of them, on 12 occasions as president.

  94 Daniel Ruddy, Theodore Roosevelt’s History of the United States, New York, Harper Collins, 2010, p. 218.

  95 This was the Interoceanic Canal Company (later the New Panama Canal Company) founded by the French in 1876, after the success with the Suez Canal, completed in 1869. It excavated about a quarter of the canal length, and had very valuable maps and surveys, but had not been a financial success.

  96 The prime minister of Israel in the late seventies, Menachem Begin, at a high-level Israeli-Mexican meeting in the 1980s, joked that Israel had the opposite problem: “So close to God and so far from the United States.”

  97 Conrad Black, Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom, New York, PublicAffairs, 2003, p. 80.

  98 Black, op. cit., pp. 77–80.

  99 This was the beginning of the Democratic practice of nominating a northern liberal for president and a southerner (usually somewhat conservative and segregationist) for vice president, which made for some incoherence in ticket-balancing, and continued for more than 30 years.

  100 Franklin D. Roosevelt, letter to Margaret Suckley, September 26, 1938, author’s collection.

  101 Franklin D. Roosevelt, letter to Margaret Suckley, March 8, 1936, author’s collection.

  102 Franklin D. Roosevelt, letter to Margaret Suckley November 24, 1936, author’s collection.

  103 Martin Gilbert, editor, Winston S. Churchill: Companion Volume V, Part 3, The Coming of War 1936–1939, London, Heinemann, 1982, pp. 1117, 1155.

  104 As was referred to in Chapter 2, the theory has arisen that Hitler deliberately withheld pressure on the Dunkirk perimeter to make it less humbling for Britain to accept subsequent peace terms. There is no evidence to support this, and if all available German armor had been committed to the assault, it is not clear that it would have much hastened the fall of the beachhead against the total effort of the Royal Navy and Air Force, which would certainly have been more than a match for German mechanized forces, especially if heavy units of the Royal Navy had been deployed for close-up shore bombardment.

  105 Conrad Black, Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom, New York, PublicAffairs, 2003, p. 616.

  106 Black, op. cit., p. 321.

  107 August 9, 1941, author’s collection.

  108 Black, op. cit., p. 679.

  109 Charles de Gaulle, War Memoirs, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1955, p. 88.

  110 Conrad Black, Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom, New York, PublicAffairs, 2003, p. 826.

  111 Ibid. p. 855.

  112 Black, op. cit., p. 831.

  113 Black, op. cit., p. 833.

  114 Henry L. Stimson and McGeorge Bundy, On Active Service in Peace and War, New York, Harper, 1947, pp. 431–438.

  115 Keith Eubank, Summit at Tehran, New York, Morrow, 1985, p. 144.

  116 Black, op. cit., p. 854.

  117 Black, op. cit., pp. 832, 859.

  118 Black, op. cit., p. 864.

  119 Black, op. cit., p. 866.

  120 Black, op. cit., p. 870; Sir Alexander Cadogan, Diaries, New York, Putnam, 1972, p. 582; Lord Alanbrooke, War Diaries: 1939–1945, London, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 2001, pp. 483–485.

  121 Black, op. cit., p. 865.

  122 George E Kennan, Memoirs 1925–1950, Boston, Little Brown, 1967, pp. 170–171.

  123 Black, op. cit., p. 941.

  124 The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt 1944–1945 Volume, Victory and the Threshold of Peace, New York, Harper, 1950, p. 153.

  125 Black, op. cit., p. 954.

  126 Black, op. cit., p. 703.

  127 Black, op. cit., p. 1004.

  128 Ted Morgan, FDR: A Biography, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1985, p. 735.

  129 James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt: Soldier of Freedom, New York, Harcourt, 1970, p. 459.

  130 David McCullough, Truman, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1991, p.
412.

  131 McCullough, op. cit., p. 419.

  132 McCullough, op. cit., p. 427.

  133 McCullough, op. cit., p. 432.

  134 Ibid. p. 445.

  135 Ibid. p. 443.

  136 McCullough, op. cit., p. 452.

  137 In the course of the war, the U.S. provided the USSR with 385,833 trucks, 51,503 jeeps, 7,056 tanks, 5,071 tractors, 1,981 locomotives, 11,158 freight cars, 14,834 airplanes, 2,670,000 tons of petroleum products, and each Soviet soldier more than “one-half pound of fairly concentrated food per day.” Vincent J. Esposito, editor, West Point Atlas of American Wars, New York, Praeger, 1959, vol. 2, text accompanying map 41.

  138 McCullough, op. cit., p. 642.

  139 McCullough, op. cit., p. 742.

  140 McCullough, op. cit., p. 744.

  141 McCullough, op. cit., p. 779.

  142 McCullough, op. cit., p. 779.

  143 Ibid. p. 781.

  144 McCullough, op. cit., pp. 788–789.

  145 Ibid. p. 793.

  146 McCullough, op. cit., p. 834.

  147 Ibid. p. 835.

  148 Conrad Black, Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full, New York, PublicAffairs, 2007, p. 171.

  149 Speech by Senator Joseph McCarthy, June 14, 1951, in The Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the 82nd Congress, First Session, vol. 97, part 5.

  150 Conrad Black, Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full, New York, PublicAffairs, 2007, p. 183.

  151 Black, op. cit., p. 184.

  152 Ibid. p. 202.

  153 Black, op. cit., pp. 265–266.

  154 Conrad Black, Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom, New York, PublicAffairs, 2003, pp. 312, 1129.

  155 Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower: The President, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1984, p. 175.

  156 William B. Ewald Jr., Eisenhower the President: Crucial Days: 1951–1960, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, Prentice Hall, 1981, p. 119.

  157 Ambrose, op. cit., p. 183.

  158 January 14, 1943, author’s personal collection.

  159 Claude Mauriac, The Other de Gaulle, London, Angus and Robertson, 1973, p. 356.

  160 Black, op. cit., pp. 298, 302.

  161 Black, op. cit., p. 308.

  162 Ambrose, op. cit., p. 202.

  163 Ambrose, op. cit., p. 214.

  164 Ambrose, op. cit., p. 230.

  165 Ibid. p. 230.

  166 Ambrose, op. cit., p. 282.

  167 Blanche Wiesen Cook, The Declassified Eisenhower, Garden City, New York, Doubleday, 1981, p. 77.

  168 Ambrose, op. cit., p. 317.

  169 Ibid. p. 321.

  170 Ambrose, op. cit., p. 317.

  171 Ambrose, op. cit., p. 332.

  172 Ambrose, op. cit., p. 339.

  173 Ibid. p. 351.

  174 Ambrose, op. cit., p. 357.

  175 Mollet had replaced Faure a few months before; such was the revolving door of the Fourth Republic—four premiers in less than three years.

  176 Ambrose, op. cit., p. 359.

  177 Ibid. p. 360.

  178 Ambrose, op. cit., p. 30.

  179 Ambrose, op. cit., p. 369.

  180 James C. Duram, A Moderate Among Extremists: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the School Desegregation Crisis, Chicago, Nelson-Hall, 1981, pp. 159–160.

  181 Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower: The President, New York, Simon & Schuster, 1984, p. 471.

  182 Ambrose, op. cit., p. 485.

  183 Ambrose, op. cit., p. 496.

  184 Ambrose, op. cit., p. 511.

  185 Ibid. p. 533.

  186 David Eisenhower and Julie Nixon Eisenhower, Going Home to Glory: A Memoir of Life with Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961–1969, New York, Simon & Schuster, 2010, p. 86.

  187 Ambrose, op. cit., p. 565.

  188 Charles de Gaulle, Memoirs of Hope, 1958–1962, London, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1972, p. 244.

  189 David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest New York, Random House, 1972, p. 53.

  190 Ambrose, op. cit., p. 614.

  191 Conrad Black, Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full, New York, PublicAffairs, 2007, p. 570.

  192 Black, op. cit., p. 438.

  193 U Thant was elected to succeed Hammarskjöld, who died in an air crash in the Congo in 1961, while secretary-general of the United Nations.

  194 Richard Reeves, President Kennedy: Profile of Power, New York, Simon & Schuster, 1993, p. 444.

  195 Reeves, op. cit., p. 537.

  196 A much-quoted comment; Mrs. Lyndon Johnson confirmed to the author that her husband occasionally expressed such sentiments.

  197 Conrad Black, Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom, New York, PublicAffairs, 2003, p. 1060.

  198 Conrad Black, Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full, New York, PublicAffairs, 2007, p. 518.

  199 Anna Chennault was romantically involved at the time with Thomas Corcoran, former chief of staff of Franklin D. Roosevelt and law partner of Humphrey’s campaign co–manager, James Rowe.

  200 Black, op. cit., pp. 635–638.

  201 Black, op. cit., p. 660.

  202 Black, op. cit., pp. 670–671.

  203 Black, op. cit., p. 743.

  204 Black, op. cit., pp. 767–771.

  205 Ibid. pp. 787, 791–792.

  206 Black, op. cit., p. 796.

  207 Black, op. cit., p. 853.

  208 Conrad Black, Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full, New York, PublicAffairs, 2007, p. 887.

  209 Black, op. cit., p. 924.

  210 Reagan’s entire range of carefully designed harassments of the Soviet Union is well described by Martin and Annelise Anderson in Reagan’s Secret War, New York, Crown, 2009.

  211 Black, op. cit., p. 1049.

  212 Obama and Biden received 65.47 million votes (51 percent and 332 electoral votes) to 60.78 million votes for Romney and his running mate, Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin (47.3 percent and 206 electoral votes). Given the scope of the country’s problems, there was little discussion of serious issues.