10. Frank B. Freidel, interviews with Charles H. McCarthy, June 8, 1948, and R. H. Camalier, May 28, 1948, FDRL.
11. NYT, February 24, 27, April 11, May 25, June 25, 1913. On the Navy League, see http://www.navyleague.org/about_us/history.php. On the position of Daniels, Wilson, and Bryan, see NYT, March 2, 10 (editorial), April 12, 21 (editorial), May 25, October 28, December 1, 1913.
12. The early months of the Japanese crisis are detailed in Cronon, Cabinet Diaries, 48–72.
13. Freidel, FDR, I, 225; NYT, May 20, 1913.
14. TR to FDR, May 10, 1913, July 23, 1914, in The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, ed. Elting E. Morison et al. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1954), 7:729, 779; FDR to TR, July 17, 1914, and FDR to Alfred Thayer Mahan, May 28, 1914, FDR Papers (Assistant Secretary of the Navy), FDRL.
15. FDR to Mahan, June 16, July 17, 1914; Mahan to FDR, June 26, 31, August 3, 4, 18, 1914, FDR Papers (Assistant Secretary of the Navy).
16. NYT, April 19, 27, 1914.
17. See, e.g., NYT, June 22, 1916.
18. NYT, January 18, 1914; Milwaukee Sentinel, April 27, 1914, cited in Freidel, FDR, I, 227.
19. FDR to ER, March 19, July 29, 1913, in Roosevelt, Personal Letters, II, 200, 209–210; ER, This Is My Story, 234–237; Freidel, FDR, I, 167, 169.
20. For the rental agreement, see Anna Roosevelt Cowles to ER, April 7, 1913, Roosevelt Family Papers (Donated by the Children), Family Correspondence, FDRL. For the description of the neighborhood, see Daniels, End of Innocence, 77–79, and James Srodes, On Dupont Circle (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2012), chs. 1–2.
21. FDR, Engagement Diary, FDR Papers (Assistant Secretary of the Navy).
22. Anna Roosevelt Halsted, draft article about Lucy Mercer (1966), Anna Roosevelt Halsted Papers, FDRL; SDR to ER and FDR, March 24, 1915, Roosevelt Family Papers (Donated by the Children), Correspondence, SDR, FDRL; Ward, A First-Class Temperament, 358–362; Blanche Wiesen Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol. 1: 1884–1933 (New York: Viking Penguin, 1992), 16, 210.
23. ER, This Is My Story, 163.
24. Ward, A First-Class Temperament, 312–313, quotes Anna as having been told by her mother that John’s birth marked “the end of any marital relationship, period.” This seems plausible, but Ward does not cite the source.
25. For pressure from the New York reformers, see NYT, April 11, 1913. Roosevelt Papers (Assistant Secretary of the Navy) contains an extensive but highly fragmented correspondence about political patronage. My brief account conforms to the conclusions of Freidel, FDR, I, chs. 9–10, and Alfred B. Rollins Jr., Roosevelt and Howe (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962), ch. 7.
26. NYT, May 23, 1913; Freidel, FDR, I, ch. 11; Rollins, Roosevelt and Howe, 140–145. See Washington Post [hereafter WP], October 10, 1913, for an example of the type of labor dispute Roosevelt faced.
27. For the development of FDR’s attitudes toward big business in this and the following paragraphs, see esp. Freidel, FDR, I, ch. 12. On problems of procuring armor plating and the possibility of expanded government manufacturing, see, e.g., NYT, May 17, 21, 22, 25, June 3, July 15, August 24, 28, 29, 30, September 17, 18, 23, 27, October 10, 15, 1913, January 9, 15, March 22, 1914. The development of the issue, culminating in authorization of a government-owned armor manufacturing plant, is traced in Cronon, Cabinet Diaries, 81, 83, 96, 126.
28. This and the following paragraph are based on Freidel, FDR, I, 272–273; Cronon, Cabinet Diaries, 97 (February 5, 1915); NYT, March 19, 1909, September 24, 1911, February 18, 21, 1915.
29. FDR to Charles Schwab, February 11, 1915, Roosevelt Papers (Assistant Secretary of the Navy). There is a wonderful story to the effect that Roosevelt dealt with Joseph P. Kennedy at the Fore River shipyard, actually sent marines to seize the ship, and caused Kennedy in consequence to break into tears. Michael Beschloss recounts this story in Kennedy and Roosevelt (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1980), 44–47, but notes he could find no contemporary verification for it. Roosevelt and Kennedy do seem to have had acrimonious relations during the 1917–1918 period, but even then it does not appear that Roosevelt had to send in the marines.
30. NYT, June 15, 17, 1913; Freidel, FDR, I, 218–219.
31. NYT, January 23, July 22, 23, 24, 1914.
32. FDR to ER, July 19, 1914, in Roosevelt, Personal Letters, II, 228–230, 250–252; Rollins, Roosevelt and Howe, ch. 8; Daniels, End of Innocence, 138–139.
33. NYT, September 11, 21, 22, 1914.
34. Frances Perkins, The Roosevelt I Knew (New York: Viking Press, 1946), 24–25; Freidel, FDR, I, 190–191, 338.
Chapter 6: Armageddon
1. FDR to ER, August 1, 1914, in F.D.R.: His Personal Letters, 1905–1928 [hereafter Personal Letters, II], ed. Elliott Roosevelt, assisted by James N. Rosenau (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1948), 232–233.
2. FDR to ER, August 2, 1914, in Roosevelt, Personal Letters, II, 237–240.
3. NYT, October 22, 1915; WP, October 26, 1914; FDR to ER [Wednesday, probably October 21, 1914] in Roosevelt, Personal Letters, II, 256–257.
4. NYT, December 6, 1914.
5. For Gardner, see WP, December 11, 1914, and NYT, December 15, 1914; for the testimony, see FDR to SDR, December 17, 1914, and NYT, December 17, 1914, article on the testimony reproduced in Roosevelt, Personal Letters, II, 261–265.
6. NYT, January 31, May 15, November 20, 1915, January 18, 24, March 29, 30, April 14, 1916; WP, May 15, 1915, January 15, 18, March 30, April 13, 14, October 8, 1916.
7. This and subsequent paragraphs on President Wilson and his policies draw primarily on the work of Wilson’s major biographer, Arthur S. Link, especially Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1954) and volumes 3 to 5 in his multivolume biography, Wilson (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1947–1965).
8. FDR to ER [June 10, 1915], in Roosevelt, Personal Letters, II, 270–271.
9. FDR to Josephus Daniels, n.d. [1915], in Roosevelt, Personal Letters, II, 299.
10. NYT, March 30, 1916; WP, March 30, 1916; Link, Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era, 185.
11. See Link, Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era, chs. 7–8, for a concise account of the preparedness controversy and diplomatic issues. Wilson quote on 185.
12. WP, February 12, 1916.
13. Frank B. Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt: The Apprenticeship [hereafter FDR, I] (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1952), 262.
14. See NYT, August 16, 1916, for provisions of the act. Authoritative data on US battleships is available online at the website of the Naval History and Heritage Command (http://www.history.navy.mil). Joseph L. Morrison, Josephus Daniels: The Small-d Democrat (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1966), 83–89, 100–103, covers Daniels’s tussles with private industry.
15. FDR to ER, November 9, 1916, in Roosevelt, Personal Letters, II, 338–339.
16. Josephus Daniels to Woodrow Wilson with attached memo from FDR, both dated February 10, 1917, and Daniels, Diary, March 13, 1917, in The Papers of Woodrow Wilson ed. Arthur S. Link (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), 41:189–190, 403.
17. FDR, Diary, March 11, 1917, in Friedel, FDR, I, 298–299.
18. Barbara Tuchman, The Zimmermann Telegram (New York: Viking Press, 1958), provides a full account of this event.
19. Elliott Roosevelt and James Brough, An Untold Story: The Roosevelts of Hyde Park (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1973), 80.
20. FDR to ER, July 25, August 20, 1917, in Roosevelt, Personal Letters, II, 352, 358.
21. ER, This Is My Story (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1937), 209–210, 253–265; NYT, July 17, 1917; FDR to ER, July 18, 1917, in Roosevelt, Personal Letters, II, 349.
22. ER, This Is My Story, 300–301.
23. ER to Isabella Ferguson, June 21, 1916, quoted in Blanche Wiesen Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol. 1: 1884�
�1933 (New York: Viking Penguin, 1992), 1:207–208.
24. Jonathan Daniels, The End of Innocence (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1954), 223.
25. This and the paragraphs that follow rely very heavily on Frank Friedel’s penetrating and authoritative account in FDR, I, chs. 18–19. On Howe’s role, see Alfred B. Rollins Jr., Roosevelt and Howe (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962), ch. 10.
26. Camp to FDR, July 25, 1917, FDR Papers, quoted in Freidel, FDR, I, 321; FDR to ER, July 16, 25, 26, September 9, 1917, and editor’s note (348–349), in Roosevelt, Personal Letters, II, 347–349, 352–354, 360–361.
27. The page at http://www.angelfire.com/in/shiphistory/subchasers.html usefully assesses the 110-foot subchasers.
28. On the mine barrage, see “The North Sea Mine Barrage,” Doughboy Center, http://www.worldwar1.com/dbc/nsminebr.htm; Byron Farwell, Over There: The United States in the Great War, 1917–1918 (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1999), 73.
29. FDR to Woodrow Wilson, October 29, 1917, in Link et al., The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 44:464–466. The American Churchill was no relation to the English statesman. The two of them met on the Englishman’s first lecture tour of America in 1900. The English visitor told his new American acquaintance that he should go into politics. “I mean to be Prime Minister of England; it would be a great lark if you were President of the United States at the same time.” Martin Gilbert, Churchill and America (New York: Free Press, 2005), 39–40.
30. Freidel, FDR, I, 302, 308.
31. Freidel, FDR, I, 318–319.
32. Freidel, FDR, I, 367n.
33. FDR to ER, August 20, 1918, in Roosevelt, Personal Letters, II, 439–440.
34. FDR, Trip Diary, July 20, 1918, in Roosevelt, Personal Letters, II, 383.
35. FDR, Trip Diary, July 22, 30, 1918, in Roosevelt, Personal Letters, II, 385, 391.
36. Amanda Smith, ed., Hostage to Fortune: The Letters of Joseph P. Kennedy (New York: Viking Press, 2001), 411.
37. FDR, Trip Diary, July 30, 1918, in Roosevelt, Personal Letters, II, 392–393.
38. FDR, Trip Diary, August 2, 1918, in Roosevelt, Personal Letters, II, 409–410.
39. FDR, Trip Diary, August 2, 1918, in Roosevelt, Personal Letters, II, 411–412.
40. FDR, Trip Diary, August 4, 1918, in Roosevelt, Personal Letters¸ II, 412–422, quotes at 416, 417.
41. FDR, Trip Diary, August 5, 7, 1918, in Roosevelt, Personal Letters, II, 422–432.
42. FDR, Trip Diary, August 10, 11, 1918, in Roosevelt, Personal Letters, II, 433–434; Josephus Daniels, Diary, September 3, 1918, in The Cabinet Diaries of Josephus Daniels, 1913–1921, ed. E. David Cronon (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1963), 333.
43. Geoffrey Ward, A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt (New York: Harper & Row, 1989), 405–407. On the guns themselves, see “United States Navy Railway Batteries,” World War I Document Archive, http://www.gwpda.org/naval/wusrw000.htm; “US Navy Railway Guns France 1918,” Christopher Eger, http://militaryhistory.suite101.com/article.cfm/us_navy_railway_guns_france_1918; “World War I: About This Creation: 14-Inch Naval Railway Battery Mark I,” MOCpages, http://www.mocpages.com/moc.php/12871.
44. Freidel, FDR, I, 367–368.
45. Freidel, FDR, I, 369; Ward, A First-Class Temperament, 408–410; ER, This Is My Story, 267–268.
46. TR to FDR, September 23, 1918, FDR Papers (Freidel, FDR, I, 369n).
47. Original draft reports, October 16, 21, 1918, FDR Papers, FDRL.
48. Freidel, FDR, I, 370; Ward, A First-Class Temperament, 417.
49. ER, This Is My Story, 272; FDR to H. H. Richards, June 28, 1921, FDR Papers, quoted in Freidel, FDR, I, 337.
50. Joseph P. Lash, Eleanor and Franklin: The Story of Their Relationship (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1971), ch. 21; Joseph Alsop, FDR: A Centenary Remembrance (New York: Viking Press, 1982), 67–72. Joseph E. Persico, Franklin and Lucy (New York: Random House, 2008), is the most thorough account of the relationship.
51. Ward, A First-Class Temperament, 416.
52. Ward, A First-Class Temperament, 448–451; Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt, I, 254–256.
53. ER, This Is My Story, 275; ER to SDR, January 3–9, 1919, in Roosevelt, Personal Letters, II, 444–446.
54. ER to SDR, January 11, 1919, in Roosevelt, Personal Letters, II, 448–453, quote at 450.
55. ER, This Is My Story, 289.
Chapter 7: Victory in Defeat
1. Geoffrey Ward, A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt (New York: Harper & Row, 1989), 455–457, excellently describes this incident.
2. This and following paragraphs draw heavily on Frank B. Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt: The Ordeal [hereafter FDR, II] (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1954), ch. 2.
3. Arthur S. Link, Wilson the Diplomatist (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1957), ch. 5; John Milton Cooper, Breaking the Heart of the World: Woodrow Wilson and the Fight for the League of Nations (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
4. ER to Isabella Ferguson, quoted in Ward, A First-Class Temperament, 464; E. David Cronon, ed., The Cabinet Diaries of Josephus Daniels, 1913–1921 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1963), 497.
5. For Lansing’s dismissal and reaction to it, see NYT, February 14, 15, 26, 1920.
6. FDR to Mrs. William S. Sims, December 24, 1919, FDR Papers (Assistant Secretary of the Navy). Friedel, FDR, II, ch. 3, and Ward, A First-Class Temperament, 465–490, 568–574, provide good accounts of these investigations.
7. Sims’s memorandum was published in its entirety in WP, January 18, 1920; his life and career are nicely summarized in the American National Biography sketch by Mark Russell Schulman, most readily available at http://www.anb.org.
8. Sims to FDR, August 26, 1919, FDR Papers (Assistant Secretary of the Navy); NYT, February 2, 1920.
9. Ward, A First-Class Temperament, 475–478; Cronon, Cabinet Diaries, 490–498, esp. entries of February 2, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 18, 20, 21, 1920; NYT, February 6, 1920; Cronon, Cabinet Diaries, 491 (February 5, 1920).
10. NYT, June 5, 1920.
11. New York Sun, May 22, 1919 For the Dana connection, see Geoffrey Ward, Before the Trumpet: Young Franklin Roosevelt, 1882–1905 (New York: Harper & Row, 1985), 602; New York Herald, November 26, 1919; FDR to Henry M. Heymann, November 26, December 2, 1919, and Heyman to FDR, November 29, 1919, cited in Freidel, FDR, II, 51, 55.
12. FDR to Hugh Gibson, January 2, 1920, quoted in Freidel, FDR, II, 57.
13. NYT, June 29, July 1, 1920.
14. For FDR and Davis, see Freidel, FDR, II, 60–61.
15. WP, July 12, 1920.
16. Walter Lippmann to FDR, July 8, 1920, and Herbert Hoover to FDR, July 13, 1920, both quoted in Freidel, FDR, II, 68n; NYT, July 7, 1920 (editorial).
17. Alfred B. Rollins Jr., Roosevelt and Howe (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962), 156; James M. Cox, Journey Through My Years (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1962), 238.
18. FDR to ER, July 20, 1920, in F.D.R.: His Personal Letters, 1905–1928 [hereafter Personal Letters, II], ed. Elliott Roosevelt, assisted by James N. Rosenau (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1948), 495–497; Freidel, FDR, II, 73–74; Cronon, Cabinet Diaries, 542 (August 3, 1920).
19. NYT, August 7, 1920; FDR to Daniels, August 6, 1920, and Daniels to FDR, August 7, 1920, in Roosevelt, Personal Letters, II, 489–491; Cronon, Cabinet Diaries, 542–543 (August 6, 1920).
20. NYT, August 10, 1920. See also Roosevelt, Personal Letters, II, 499–508.
21. Freidel, FDR, II, 78–79.
22. NYT, September 2, 1920. See, e.g., clips from Philadelphia Record, September 19, 1920; Buffalo Evening Times, September 21, 1920; Baltimore Sun, September 29, 1920; 1920 Campaign Clippings File, FDRL.
23. NYT, August 14, September 3, 18, 1920.
24. NYT,
August 19, 1920.
25. Freidel, FDR, II, 81–83; NYT, September 3, 22, 1920.
26. NYT, August 25, 1920.
27. Harold L. Ickes, The Secret Diary of Harold L. Ickes, Vol. 1: The First Thousand Days, 1933–1936 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1953), 699 (October 30, 1936).
Chapter 8: Paralysis and Philanthropy
1. Geoffrey Ward, A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt (New York: Harper & Row, 1989), 560–575.
2. NYT, January 13, 22, March 9, 16, 22, May 1, 15, June 27, July 4, 9, 11, 21, August 6, 1921.
3. Alfred B. Rollins Jr., Roosevelt and Howe (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962), 190–191.
4. The short sketch of Missy LeHand by Lois Scharf in Franklin D. Roosevelt: His Life and Times, an Encyclopedic View, ed. Otis L. Graham (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1985), 236–237, is useful. Joseph Persico, Franklin and Lucy (New York: Random House, 2008), esp. ch. 19, speculatively discusses her relationship with FDR, as does Frank Costigiola, Roosevelt’s Lost Alliances (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 68–78.
5. NYT, July 20, 1921.
6. Photograph in the FDRL Archive.
7. The following pages, covering Roosevelt’s polio attack and his initial responses to it, rely heavily on the baseline narratives established by Frank B. Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt: The Ordeal (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1954), ch. 6; Ward, A First-Class Temperament, chs. 13–14; James Tobin, The Man He Became (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013), chs. 1–4. They also draw on John Gunther, Roosevelt in Retrospect: A Profile in History (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950), ch. 13, especially the long excerpts from the correspondence of doctors Robert Lovett and George Draper (225–227).
8. NYT, September 16, 1921.
9. Gunther, Roosevelt in Retrospect, 226; Frank B. Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt: The Ordeal [hereafter FDR, II] (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1954), 103.
10. James Roosevelt and Sidney Shalett, Affectionately, F.D.R.: A Son’s Story of a Courageous Man (London: George G. Harrap & Company, 1960), 136–137.
Man of Destiny: FDR and the Making of the American Century Page 61