The Definitive FDR

by James Macgregor Burns

  2. Interviews by the author with the following: Louis Brownlow (August 5 1955); Benjamin Cohen (August 3, 1955); Thomas G. Corcoran (August 4, 1955); James A. Farley (April 1955); Felix Frankfurter (December 17, 1955); Ernest K. Lindley (August 4, 1955); Randolph Paul (March 1955); Eleanor Roosevelt (July 28, 1955); James H. Rowe (December 19, 1955). Interviews conducted in 1946 for earlier research which have been useful for this work are those with Paul H. Appleby, Hugo L. Black, Robert M. La Follette, Jr., Frances Perkins, and Donald R. Richberg.

  3. Transcripts of interviews, Oral History Project, Columbia University, as follows: Henry Bruere, Edward J. Flynn, James W. Gerard, Arthur Krock, Langdon P. Marvin, Herbert C. Pell, William Phillips, J. David Stern, George S. Van Schaick. I am grateful for permission to use these most useful, well organized and indexed materials.

  4. Minutes of the Executive Council, July 11, 1933–November 13, 1934, and of the National Emergency Council, December 19, 1933–April 28, 1936. These two councils served as somewhat enlarged cabinets, and unlike the case with the Cabinet, transcripts were made of the proceedings. Transcripts of those sessions presided over by Roosevelt provide an intimate and vivid picture of the President’s month-to-month attitudes on domestic problems and personalities. These transcripts are available at the National Archives, Washington, D. C.

  5. Correspondence with a number of persons participating in, or familiar with, New Deal programs or activities; these are noted in chapter bibliographies below.

  6. Doctoral dissertations. I have exploited as thoroughly as I could the fund of information and ideas contained in these theses, which have been made available through that admirable institution, the Inter-Library Loan Service. Citation of such dissertations will be found in chapter bibliographies.

  7. I will not try to list separately the secondary material that I have used; this too will be cited in chapter bibliographies. I do wish to pay tribute to the high caliber and enormous value of so many of the memoirs produced in the last decade or so; I have made extensive use of them. Two documentary collections that merit special mention are: Samuel I. Rosenman (ed.). The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, a well edited and superbly produced set of thirteen volumes; and Elliott Roosevelt (ed.), F. D. R.: His Personal Letters (4 vols., New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1947-50). The first two volumes are subtitled “Early Years” and “1905-1928,” and are referred to as Vols. I and II, respectively, in chapter bibliographies; the second two volumes, covering 1928-1945, are referred to below only by page number.

  1 For a highly useful description of the nature of the collections and some of the problems and opportunities in their use, see Herman Kahn, “World War II and Its Background: Research Materials at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Policies Concerning Their Use,” paper delivered at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association, Chicago, December 29, 1953.

  CHAPTER BIBLIOGRAPHIES

  The following abbreviations are used in citations in the chapter bibliographies:

  FDRL Franklin D. Roosevelt Library

  LC Library of Congress

  OF Official Files (FDRL)

  OHP Oral History Project (Columbia University)

  PC Press Conference

  PLFDR Elliott Roosevelt (ed.), F. D. R.: His Personal Letters (4 vols., New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1947-50)

  PPAFDR Samuel I. Rosenman (ed.), The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt (13 vols., New York, 1938-50)

  PPF President’s Personal Files (FDRL)

  PSF President’s Secretary’s File (FDRL)

  Books cited in the chapter bibliographies are published in New York City unless otherwise noted. A citation like “Rossiter [chap. 11]” means that a complete citation for the Rossiter work in question will be found in the bibliography for chapter 11. When the author’s name alone is used, it means that earlier in the bibliography of that same chapter will be found either a complete citation of the book in question, or a bracketed reference (as above) to the chapter bibliography containing the complete citation.

  The following list is a basic list of books which are frequently cited in the chapter bibliographies; a (B) following an author’s name in the bibliographies indicates that the book referred to is cited in full in this list. An author’s name with a superior number (Farley1) is used when the basic list contains more than one book by that author; the list provides the key to the particular book.

  Barkley, Alben W., That Reminds Me (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1954)

  Beard, Charles A., American Foreign Policy in the Making, 1932-1940 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1946)

  Burns, J. M., “Congress and the Formation of Economic Policies” (Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1947)

  Cantril, Hadley (ed.), Public Opinion 1935-1946 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951)

  Connally, Tom, and Alfred Steinberg, My Name Is Tom Connally (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1954)

  Creel, George, Rebel at Large (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1947)

  Eccles, Marriner S., Beckoning Frontiers (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1951 )

  Farley, James A., Behind the Ballots (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1938). Farley1.

  ———, Jim Farley’s Story, the Roosevelt Years (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1948). Farley2.

  Flynn, Edward J., You’re the Boss (New York: The Viking Press, 1947)

  Flynn, John T., Country Squire in the White House (New York: Doubleday, Doran and Company, Inc., 1940)

  Freidel, Frank, Franklin D. Roosevelt (2 vols., Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1953-54)

  Goldman, Eric, Rendezvous with Destiny (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952)

  Gosnell, Harold F., Boss Platt and His New York Machine (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1924). Gosnell1.

  ———, Champion Campaigner: Franklin D. Roosevelt (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1952). Gosnell2.

  Gouldner, Alvin W. (ed.), Studies in Leadership (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950)

  Gunther, John, Inside U. S. A. (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1947). Gunther1.

  ———, Roosevelt in Retrospect (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950). Gundier2.

  Hoover, Herbert, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover. Vol. III, The Great Depression, 1929-1941 (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1952)

  Hull, Cordell, The Memoirs of Cordell Hull (2 vols., New York: The Macmillan Company, 1948)

  Ickes, Harold L., The Secret Diary of Harold L. Ickes (3 vols., New York: Simon and Schuster, 1953-54). Vol. I, The First Thousand Days, 1933-1936 (1953): Ickes1. Vol. II, The Inside Struggle, 1936-1939 (1954): Ickes2. Vol. III, The Lowering Clouds, 1939-1941(1954): Ickes3.

  Jackson, Robert H., The Struggle for Judicial Supremacy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1941)

  Langer, William L., and S. Everett Gleason, The World Crisis and American Foreign Policy (2 vols., New York: Harper & Brothers, 1952-53)

  Lindley, Ernest K., Franklin D. Roosevelt (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1931). Lindley1.

  ———, Half Way with Roosevelt (New York: The Viking Press, 1936). Lindley2.

  ———, The Roosevelt Revolution: First Phase (New York: The Viking Press,1933). Lindley3.

  Michelson, Charles, The Ghost Talks (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1944)

  Moley, Raymond, After Seven Years (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1939)

  Morgenthau, Henry, Jr., “The Morgenthau Diaries,” Collier’s, Sept. 27–Nov. 1, 1947

  Moscow, Warren, Politics in the Empire State (New Y01 k: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948)

  Perkins, Frances, The Roosevelt I Knew (New York: The Viking Press,1946)

  Richberg, Donald R., My Hero (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1954). Richberg1.

  ———, The Rainbow (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1936). Richberg2.

  Roosevelt, Eleanor, This I Remember (New York: Harper & Brothers,1949). Roosevelt1.

  This Is My Story (New York: Harper &
Brothers, 1937). Roosevelt2.

  Rosenman, Samuel I., Working with Roosevelt (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1952)

  Sherwood, Robert E., Roosevelt and Hopkins (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1948)

  Stiles, Lela, The Man behind Roosevelt (Cleveland: World Publishing Company, 1954)

  Tansill, Charles C., Back Door to War (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1952)

  Timmons, Bascom N., Garner of Texas (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1948)

  Tully, Grace G., F. D. R., My Boss (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1949)

  CHAPTER ONE

  The most important material on Roosevelt’s early years is in PLFDR, Vol. I (Early Years), which includes a score of his letters to parents and relatives in the years before he went to Groton. See also Sara Delano Roosevelt, My Boy Franklin (Crown Publishers, 1933), remembrances of things past from the perspective of many years; Olin Dows, Franklin Roosevelt at Hyde Park (American Artists Group, 1949), a colorful account; Clara and Hardy Steeholm, The House at Hyde Park (Viking, 1950); Noel F. Busch, What Manner of Man? (Harper, 1944), an interesting attempt at a psychological interpretation of Roosevelt; and John T. Flynn, which is a useful corrective to some superficial generalizations about Roosevelt’s early years, but offers some questionable interpretations of its own.

  The Seed and the Soil. On Roosevelt’s family background, see Karl Schriftgiesser, The Amazing Roosevelt Family (Funk and Wagnalls, 1942), important for the Roosevelt family; and Daniel Webster Delano, Franklin Roosevelt and the Delano Influence (Pittsburgh: Nudi, 1946), which, while it implicitly assigns too much weight to the role of heredity, provides useful information on the other side of the family. See also Alvin Page Johnson, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Colonial Ancestors (Boston: Lathrop, Lee, & Shepard, 1933), an earlier account; Rita Halle Kleeman, Gracious Lady: The Life of Sara Delano Roosevelt (Appleton-Century, 1935), a sympathetic biography filled with noteworthy sidelights; and Hall Roosevelt, Odyssey of an American Family (Harper, 1939). The contrast on page 5 between industrialists and politicians as doers and talkers is from Matthew Josephson, The Politicos (Harcourt, Brace, 1938), p. vii. Gerald W. Johnson, writing in the New York Herald Tribune, is the source of the quotation on page 6 in regard to the remarkable seventh generation of Roosevelts. The quotation about the tendency of the Delanos to carry their way of life around with them, on page 7, is from the first volume of Frank Freidel’s distinguished biographical series on Roosevelt, (B) p. 17. On the relation between intermarriage and the importance of heredity, page 8, see Ralph Linton, The Cultural Background of Personality (Appleton-Century, 1945), p. 136, although Linton refers especially to the role of intermarriage in isolated “primitive” societies. The concept of the family as the psychological broker of society is taken from Robert MacIver, The Web of Government (Macmillan, 1947), p. 294.

  Groton: Education for What? On Groton and Peabody see Frank D. Ashburn’s loving but judicious Peabody of Groton (Coward-McCann, 1944), and Ellery Sedgwick’s reflective The Happy Profession (Boston: Little, Brown, 1946). George Biddle, “As I Remember Groton School,” Harper’s Magazine, Vol. 179, August 1939, pp. 292-300, and George W. Martin, “Preface to a Schoolmaster’s Autobiography,” in the same magazine, Vol. 188, January 1944, pp. 156-162, offer somewhat more critical views of Rector and school. PLFDR, Vol. I, includes a remarkably full set of letters from FDR during the Groton period. The Groton file (Group 14) in FDRL contains some useful data. On education for leadership in Greece see Werner Jaeger, Paideia: the Ideals of Greek Culture (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1939), Vols. I-III. I am indebted to Professor William H. Brubeck for calling my attention to literature in this field. For the history of books of advice to princes see Allan H. Gilbert, Machiavelli’s Prince and Its Forerunners (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1938), and for a typical “prince’s book,” John M. S. Allison (ed.), Concerning the Education of a Prince (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1941). It has been argued that while Groton contributed only a tiny fraction of her sons to the public service, the quality was high. So it was: Bronson Cutting, Joseph C. Grew, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., Sumner Welles, Dean Acheson, and others. Two things must be noted, however: the politicians who graduated from Groton, aside from Franklin D. Roosevelt, were not very successful in electoral politics, i.e., in winning elections; and men like Cutting, Welles, and Acheson had conspicuous trouble getting along with the very type of politician whom Roosevelt could either win over by charm, or defeat.

  Harvard: The Gold Coast. On Roosevelt’s Harvard years the Personal Letters remain of central importance, although the letters are not so frequent as in the Groton years and large gaps occur each time Sara Roosevelt takes up her Boston residence. Particularly in the Harvard years these letters raise a difficult problem: to what extent do they picture Roosevelt’s activities not as they were, but as he wished his mother to see them? For example, did he ignore the intellectual side of Harvard in his letters because he thought Sara would be uninterested in it? The answer is probably not. In the first place, Roosevelt kept a diary during some of his Harvard days (now in FDRL Group 14) and this document reveals no more interest in intellectual matters than do his letters. Secondly, the other available material does not contradict—and often reinforces—the picture given in the letters. Freidel (B), Gunther2 (B), Lindley1 (B), op. cit., are useful for the Harvard years, and Earle Looker, This Man Roosevelt (Brewer, Warren & Putnam, 1932) offers some interesting material. See also Harvard File, Group 14, FDRL (which throws a good deal of doubt on some published views that Roosevelt took an active part in student reform at Harvard). On the Harvard of Roosevelt’s time see Samuel E. Morison, Three Centuries of Harvard (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1936), whom I have quoted on page 16 above; Samuel E. Morison (ed.), The Development of Harvard University (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1930); Henry Aaron Yeomans, Abbott Lawrence Lowell (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1948); Cleveland Amory, The Proper Bostonians (Dutton, 1947), a wise and witty work; Edwin E. Slosson, Great American Universities (Macmillan, 1910), chap. 1; “Report of the Committee on Improving Instruction in Harvard College” (Briggs report), Harvard Graduates Magazine, Vol. XII, June 1904, pp. 611-620. On the problem of formal education for political leadership two different approaches are Arthur J. Jones, The Education of Youth for Leadership (McGraw-Hill, 1938), and Karl Mannheim, Freedom, Power, and Democratic Planning (Oxford University Press, 1950). I am indebted to La Rue Brown of Boston, a classmate of Roosevelt’s, for information and counsel on the Harvard of Roosevelt’s day; and to Eleanor Roosevelt (interview, Hyde Park, N. Y., July 28, 1955) for her views on Roosevelt’s early development.

  CHAPTER TWO

  On the reformist turmoil of the early 1900’s the literature is voluminous and fascinating; only a few items can be listed here. Louis Filler, Crusaders for American Liberalism (Harcourt, Brace, 1939) is a richly detailed study of the muckrakers, their exposés, and their editors. The muckrakers’ own writings are important if read critically; most notable, of course, is Lincoln Steffens’ Autobiography (Harcourt, Brace, 1931), but the books of Brand Whitlock, Ray Stannard Baker, Ida Tarbell, Upton Sinclair, and their colleagues are also significant. More general works are John Chamberlain, Farewell to Reform (Liveright, 1932); Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition (Knopf, 1948); Russel B. Nye, Midwestern Progressive Politics (Lansing: Michigan State College Press, 1951); Mark Sullivan, Our Times (6 vols., Scribner, 1926-35); Frederick Lewis Allen, The Big Change (Harper, 1952); Eric Goldman (B), to whom I am indebted for the quotation about Theodore Roosevelt on page 25.

  Uncle Ted and Cousin Eleanor. Henry F. Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Harcourt, Brace, revised ed., 1956) remains the best biography, at least on the period up to 1910. The volumes of Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, edited by Elting E. Morison (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1951 et seq.), were of more general usefulness than Roosevelt’s autobiography (Macmillan, 1913), although neither has important direct reference to FDR. As for Ele
anor Roosevelt, her own wonderfully frank and poignant This Is My Story (B) is indispensable, although discursive and sometimes trivial. The Personal Letters, while of course episodic, throw some light on the three-way relationship among FDR, his wife, and his mother. My source for Roosevelt’s description of his political ambitions on page 25 is Grenville Clark, a fellow law clerk, writing in the Roosevelt memorial issue of the Harvard Alumni Bulletin, Vol. XLVII, No. 14, April 28, 1945. The material at FDRL on the 1904-1909 period is relatively sparse; there are some papers and letters from FDR’s law practice (Group 14, FDRL). A well-preserved set of FDR’s notes on Burgess’s lectures on constitutional development (Group 14, FDRL) is of some interest, for they show that Burgess neglected—or Roosevelt failed to take notes on—some of the major political aspects of constitutional development, such as John Marshall’s brilliant establishment of the precedent for judicial review in Marbury v. Madison. In general, however, Roosevelt’s years between Harvard and the senatorship are the most difficult to document of any of his major phases. On his Saturday afternoon poker playing, see Charles C. Auchincloss to Roosevelt, August 1, 1933, PPF 707, FDRL.

  The Race for the Senate. FDRL has published a most useful Calendar of the Speeches and Other Published Statements of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1910-1920 (1952), compiled by Robert L. Jacoby, hereafter referred to as Calendar of Speeches. This document not only lists speeches, statements to the press, occasional letters quoted in the press, etc., but in almost all cases provides a brief summary. Group 9, FDRL, contains newspaper clippings on the 1910 election campaign, correspondence, campaign material, some of FDR’s own notes and drafts for his speeches, accounts of campaign expenses, and a number of letters to FDR and occasionally his replies. Group 21, FDRL, includes interviews by George A. Palmer, former superintendent of National Park Service at Hyde Park, of old political associates of FDR, most notably John E. Mack, Mr. and Mrs. Grant Dickinson, and Thomas F. Leonard. See also Eleanor Roosevelt1 (B), Morgan H. Hoyt, “Roosevelt Enters Politics,” The Franklin D. Roosevelt Collector (May 1949), a reminiscent piece by a man who accompanied FDR in some of his 1910 campaigning; The New York Red Book, Albany, 1911, for the official voting record; and Gosnell2. The most important secondary sources on the senatorial years are Freidel (B), and Alfred B. Rollins, “The Political Education of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1909-1928” (Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1953), a phenomenally thorough and carefully researched study of these years, based not only on FDRL material but also on the papers of contemporary New York State politicians.