Man of Destiny: FDR and the Making of the American Century
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Worst of all, from Roosevelt’s perspective, Bryan knew next to nothing about the navy. In later years, he told of the secretary of state rushing into his office excitedly and declaring, “White people are being killed in Haiti, and I must send a battleship there within twenty-four hours.” When the assistant secretary responded that it would be impossible to move a battleship so rapidly, but a gunboat could be quickly dispatched, Bryan agreed that would be sufficient and added, “Roosevelt, after this, when I talk about battleships don’t think I mean anything technical.”6
Roosevelt’s sense of superiority to Bryan and Daniels verged on arrogance. He openly criticized the secretary’s evangelical pacifism and hostility to drink. At dinner parties, he sometimes entertained guests by doing an impression of his hayseed boss. On one such occasion, Roosevelt’s closest friend among the cabinet members, the easygoing secretary of the interior, Franklin K. Lane, had had enough: “You should be ashamed of yourself. Mr. Daniels is your superior and you should show him loyalty or you should resign your office.” The rebuke had an impact. Roosevelt in later years told the story approvingly.7
Roosevelt and Daniels, by all accounts, instinctively liked each other, but they came from enormously different backgrounds and had conflicting visions of America’s future. Daniels surely got wind of Roosevelt’s scorn. He appears to have simmered quietly from time to time but always decided against any action. His young subordinate, long on confidence and often short on tact, was fortunate to have so patient a boss. Only years later would Roosevelt come to understand that millions of voting Democrats idolized both Bryan and Daniels and that any prospective leader of the party would have to appeal to their constituency.8
The US Senate confirmed Franklin Delano Roosevelt as assistant secretary of the navy on March 16, 1913. The next day, his eighth wedding anniversary, he took the oath of office. Soon afterward, he was at his desk in the State, War, and Navy Building, the great, rococo Gilded Age structure just west of the White House that a later generation would know as the Executive Office Building. He wrote a typically flippant note to his mother: “I am baptized, confirmed, sworn in, vaccinated—and somewhat at sea! For over an hour I have been signing papers which had to be accepted on faith—but I hope luck will keep me out of jail.” He ended with a slightly more serious thought: “I will have to work like a new turbine to master this job—but it will be done even if it takes all summer.”9
Roosevelt, of course, had no doubt about his ability to handle a complex and difficult job. As the one and only assistant secretary, he was the service’s chief civilian operating officer, tasked with a bewildering assortment of responsibilities, including oversight of navy shipyards around the country and all the jobs they performed. Daniels was the chief policy-making official. Guarding his prerogatives zealously, the secretary dealt with numerous long-serving desk admirals, whom he perceived as potential obstructionists, by transferring them to sea duty. He bluntly rejected repeated reorganization plans that would have put all consequential decisions in the hands of senior uniformed officers. He sought in various ways to make the navy more democratic, most notably by setting aside a few US Naval Academy appointments every year for outstanding enlisted men. He handled effectively the southern Democratic congressmen who wielded much of the power on Capitol Hill. The assistant secretary did whatever the secretary did not want to do. Roosevelt accepted the numerous assignments and did his determined best to influence policy.
On many matters, he could rely on the recommendations of a seasoned career staff, headed up by Charles McCarthy, a professional civil servant. Louis Howe came down to Washington as his other chief aide. Howe handled a multitude of duties capably, but unlike the careerists, who had dedicated their lives to the department, he devoted himself solely to the advancement of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Frequently abrasive and sometimes downright disruptive, he was not liked by the rest of the senior staff. Roosevelt overlooked his faults, appreciated his loyalty, and considered him indispensible.10
Following the example of Theodore Roosevelt, the assistant secretary fully intended to speak his mind, get noticed, and advance his career. He consistently sided with big navy admirals and developed close ties to the Navy League, a private organization of corporate leaders (many of whom had direct interest in navy contracts), retired naval officers, foreign affairs experts, and miscellaneous boosters of the service. The admirals and the Navy Leaguers had one primary objective: rapid expansion of the battleship fleet over a decade to forty-eight dreadnoughts. Daniels, positioning himself between big navy advocates and peace-minded economizers, wanted only a measured and economical expansion of US naval strength. President Wilson and Secretary Bryan shared his skepticism toward the expansionists.11
International crises that seemed to validate Roosevelt’s push for a stronger navy erupted during his first year and a half in office. In 1913, Japan responded with outrage to discriminatory actions against Japanese immigrants by the state of California. Some military officials worried, not for the first time, about the vulnerability of the Philippines and perhaps Hawaii to attack and seizure. They recommended dispatch of the navy’s small Asiatic Squadron, based off Shanghai, to the Philippines. Roosevelt quietly backed them.12
Daniels and Wilson, however, rejected any movement of the squadron as potentially provocative and ultimately useless in the face of Japan’s vastly superior regional naval power. Roosevelt privately feared war but was careful in his public comments. Visiting the Boston Navy Yard on May 19, he declared, “We are not mobilizing our ships to fight Japan.”13
In fact, he feared pressures from California to send half the battleship fleet from the East Coast to the Pacific. In May 1913, Theodore Roosevelt wrote to him, “We shall be in an unpardonable position if we permit ourselves to be caught with our fleet separated.” Fourteen months later, Franklin privately asked Theodore and the great naval strategist Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan to publish articles on the importance of concentrating the fleet. Both did so.14
The exchange with Mahan touched off a correspondence on naval strategy and world politics. Roosevelt floated the idea of a squadron of heavy, well-armed cruisers assigned to one ocean and a dreadnought fleet assigned to the other, on a rotating basis, with the new Panama Canal providing relatively quick access between the Pacific and the Atlantic. The case for a cruiser fleet, which would likely be destroyed quickly in an engagement with dreadnought-class battleships, was dubious. Mahan was nonetheless sympathetic and seems to have been impressed with the young assistant secretary. It was unfortunate that they never had a chance for a personal meeting before Mahan’s death in late 1914.
Fears of Japanese imperialism remained in the back of Roosevelt’s mind and foreshadowed the authorization of a genuine two-ocean navy during his presidency. More immediately, the crisis with Japan sputtered out with no increase in the modest US naval construction program.15
By the spring of 1914, revolutionary chaos in Mexico had become a more urgent problem. Roosevelt openly expected hostilities and worried about the support capabilities of his service. In April, he traveled across the country by train to inspect West Coast naval installations. On April 21, Wilson ordered the marines to occupy the Mexican port of Vera Cruz. In tune with the president’s determination to provide democratic guidance to the Mexicans, Roosevelt told a reporter, “If it means war, we are ready.”16
Wilson pulled back, accepted mediation, and eventually withdrew from Vera Cruz. By mid-July, Mexican dictator Victoriano Huerta was compelled to resign, but his successor, Venustiano Carranza, could not pacify an increasingly anarchic country. The navy would be called on episodically to evacuate US citizens from Mexican ports. Attacks on American interests and numerous cross-border raids by Mexican insurgents would finally lead to an American intervention commanded by General John J. Pershing in the spring of 1916.17
Haiti was another nearby trouble spot. In July 1915, Wilson ordered the marines to occupy the chronica
lly unstable island, where they quickly found themselves facing a nasty and fanatical insurgency. About a year later, marines were deployed to the Dominican Republic. By virtue of his office, Roosevelt oversaw both endeavors. Although more distractions than significant naval operations, they stretched American capabilities.
Almost from the beginning, Franklin was the Wilson administration’s most vociferous advocate of a greatly enlarged navy. Although at clear cross-purposes with Daniels here, he minced no words. Correctly dismissing arguments that gunboats were sufficient for coastal defense, he warned that the United States possessed only sixteen battleships capable of standing up against the numerically superior first-line fleets of Britain or Germany. “Any petty officer of a foreign country, if our first fleet was destroyed, could effect a landing on the East Coast of the United States,” he warned a New York audience. In Milwaukee he declared, “The policy of our congress should be to buy and build dreadnoughts until our navy is comparable to any other in the world.”18
Daniels and Wilson could not have been pleased with Roosevelt’s behavior, but they neither reprimanded him nor gave serious consideration to dismissing him. Possibly they felt that so high profile a firing would create more trouble than it was worth. Moreover, Roosevelt was in many respects an outstanding assistant secretary. Only Wilson could have sacked him—the post of assistant secretary was a presidential appointment—and Wilson may have seen him as a useful counterpoint to Daniels. Above all, Roosevelt and Daniels continued to like each other, often meeting at the end of a busy day for a relaxing chat.
Roosevelt spent his first six months as assistant secretary living alone in hotels. Eleanor remained in New York with the children, dividing her time between their Manhattan town house, Hyde Park, and, for much of the summer, Campobello, with Sara usually in close proximity. Franklin spent as many weekends with them as possible.
He never lacked company in Washington. Among his many friends were TR’s daughter Alice and her husband, Nicholas Longworth, a prominent Republican congressman; Eleanor’s Aunt Bamie and her husband, retired admiral William Sheffield Cowles; and Lathrop Brown, his Harvard roommate, now a Democratic congressman from suburban Long Island. He also socialized with numerous Harvard or Groton acquaintances. He quickly joined the prestigious Metropolitan Club, the Army and Navy Club, and the Chevy Chase Club, where he pursued his addiction to golf on a near daily basis.
Month by month, his associations grew richer, many of them facilitated by his connection to Cousin Ted. He was soon a guest at periodic Sunday lunches given by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes for prominent young men in government. Sir Cecil Spring-Rice, the British ambassador and long a chum of TR, became a good friend. So did the French ambassador, Jules Jusserand. Henry Adams, a direct descendant of John and John Quincy Adams, an eminent historian, and a longtime mordant observer of the Washington scene, was another prominent acquaintance. (“Young man,” Adams once told Franklin as they dined at the old man’s residence on Lafayette Square, “I have lived in this house many years and seen the occupants of that White House across the square come and go, and nothing that you minor officials or the occupants of that house can do will affect the history of the world for long.”) Roosevelt also enjoyed a good relationship with Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts (another close friend of TR) and Lodge’s son-in-law, Representative Augustus Peabody Gardner.19
Reunited in September 1913, the Roosevelts rented the Washington house of Aunt Bamie and Admiral Cowles at 1733 N Street. (The Cowles removed to their home in Connecticut.) The commodious four-story structure, just south of DuPont Circle, had a tiny front lawn and a small walled garden in the rear. Having been a guest there before her marriage, Eleanor found their new home comfortable and reassuring. Still, it was barely adequate for a household that included three children, four servants, a nurse, a governess, and a Scottish terrier.
The neighborhood was heavily populated by political policy intellectuals, retired senior military officers, and civil servants, many of them listed in the local social register. Connecticut Avenue and Eighteenth Street intersected at the west end of the block, where the most prominent building was the large and imposing British embassy. Nick and Alice Longworth lived close by at 2009 Massachusetts Avenue. Roosevelt customarily walked to work.20
Eleanor, to her dismay, learned that a complex Washington etiquette imposed manifold social obligations on her, including introductory calls on the wives of public officials and diplomats and the hosting (or cohosting with Mrs. Daniels) of various receptions. She found it all daunting but went about her duties with determination. Chauffeured by one of the servants in the family car, she spent weeks making calls all over Washington: “I am Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt. My husband has just come as Assistant Secretary of the Navy.” With those ladies who were at home, she exchanged some pleasantries but kept the visit short; her rule was no more than six minutes. However trying, the experience helped her overcome a still strong shyness and left her more confident in her ability to deal with a wide variety of people.
Few evenings were free. Among the brighter stars in Washington’s “smart, young set,” the Roosevelts customarily attended dinners at least three or four nights a week. Acceptance of invitations from eminences such as Justice Holmes, from high-ranking administration officials, and from the established leaders of Washington society was mandatory. Eleanor and Franklin reserved two Sunday nights a month for close friends, to whom they served light suppers. They also were expected to give their own elaborate dinners for up to two dozen people at a time. Other functions—balls, receptions, garden parties—required their presence. Socializing lubricated the inevitable political conflicts and rivalries that permeated the government. Invitations had to be sent and answered; carefully devised seating charts reflected the rank and importance of each guest at events one hosted.21
Eleanor understood that she had to accept social responsibilities as a wife’s obligation, but she clearly found them unsatisfying. The pressures may have contributed to painful migraine headaches that periodically plagued her during the first decade of her marriage. In the spring of 1914, she engaged a young woman from a good but impecunious family to work three mornings a week as her social secretary. The new employee, Lucy Mercer, six years younger than Eleanor, was well-bred, efficient, beautiful, and vivacious. Anna, eight years old when Lucy was hired, recalled a “warm and friendly manner and smile” that made people happy. In March 1915, with Franklin and Eleanor away on an extended trip, Sara stayed at the house on N Street to take care of the children. “Miss Mercer is here,” she reported in a letter, “she is so sweet and attractive and adores you Eleanor.”22
The family continued to grow. On August 17, 1914, Eleanor gave birth to a baby boy, the second to be christened Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr. Their last child, named John Aspinwall Roosevelt for Franklin’s paternal uncle, arrived on March 13, 1916. Both children thrived, but Eleanor seems to have become increasingly dissatisfied. She would recall with ill-concealed ruefulness in her autobiography, “For ten years I was just getting over having a baby or about to have one.”23
She had given Franklin the large family he had always wanted and may have decided that she had done her duty. Every mainstream religious denomination, including the Roosevelts’ Episcopal Church, forbade artificial contraception, which was illegal in most jurisdictions. Abstinence was the only option, even for married couples. Eleanor and Franklin may have begun to sleep in separate beds, at least when they were at Hyde Park. Many middle- and upper-class marriages of the time took the same course. They continued to have an affectionate relationship, but their union was in peril. Eleanor was happy enough to put the sexual/childbearing phase of her life behind her. Franklin was in his mid-thirties, handsome, prominent, and more attractive to women than ever.24
Roosevelt’s new post heightened his public visibility and widened the range of his political contacts. He probably got more public attention than any other n
umber two person in the cabinet. The position frequently took him out of Washington on inspection trips and other navy department business, mostly to large coastal states. Local newspapers were invariably interested, and Franklin, as adept at self-promotion as TR, usually provided a good story.
Roosevelt controlled or strongly influenced a wide variety of jobs and promotions in the shipyards. As an important Wilson Democrat, he had input into the allocation of many New York federal jobs, but patronage had to be shared with the locals—reformers and machine regulars. The president knew he could not ignore Tammany and cultivated Senator O’Gorman, whose relationship with Roosevelt seems to have grown frostier. Secretary of the Treasury William Gibbs McAdoo fancied himself the New York reform leader and aspired to succeed Wilson in the White House. He won not only a fair share of appointments but also one of Wilson’s daughters, whom he married on May 7, 1914. Both friends and enemies began to call him “the Crown Prince.” The president’s closest informal adviser, Colonel Edward M. House, a Texan resident in New York, helped block the candidacy of Roosevelt’s longtime backer, Poughkeepsie mayor John Sague, for collector of the Port of New York. Wilson’s secretary and chief aide, Joe Tumulty, grabbed many jobs and promotions in the Brooklyn and Philadelphia shipyards. Thanks in no small measure to Howe’s hard work and acumen, Roosevelt laid claim to most of the fourth-class postmaster jobs in Republican upstate New York, but the big-city post offices generally went to other grandees.25
Although far from insubstantial, the jobs and favors available to the assistant secretary of the navy were not enough to build a truly impressive organization capable of advancing a fledgling political career. For this endeavor, Roosevelt had to rely on his considerable personal assets, avoid overconfidence, and pick his fights carefully.