FDR - Jean Edward Smith [195]
After his press conference Roosevelt met with Harvard’s Felix Frankfurter, hoping to entice him into becoming solicitor general—the number two post in the Justice Department and the government’s primary advocate before the Supreme Court. Frankfurter declined but in the course of the conversation told FDR he was planning to call on retired Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who was celebrating his ninety-second birthday. Roosevelt, who knew Holmes from the Wilson years, was intrigued and told Frankfurter he would like to pay his respects as well. That afternoon, breaking with protocol,† the president took time off from the banking crisis to visit Justice Holmes at his I Street home. Negotiating the front steps was difficult for Roosevelt, but he found Holmes in a convivial mood, slightly tipsy on bootleg champagne. They chatted amiably about old times, including prizefighters they had known, and when it was time to leave FDR asked the old justice for his advice. Holmes, who friends said had never been psychologically mustered out of the Union Army after the Civil War, drew himself slowly to attention and said, “Mr. President, you are in a war. Form your battalions and fight.”18
When FDR came out on the street, hundreds of citizens cheered and clapped uproariously. “Gosh, it sounds good to hear that again,” whispered Richard Jervis, chief of the White House Secret Service detail, who had served four years under Hoover.19
Roosevelt’s decision to visit Holmes was purely personal. “Your kind thoughtfulness in coming sets me free to express my congratulations and good wishes,” wrote Holmes afterward. “They are very sincere, and follow what seems to me a most fortunate beginning of the term.”20 Holmes is alleged to have observed that Roosevelt had a second-class intellect but a first-class temperament. The story was propagated principally by the literary critic Alexander Woollcott but is as apocryphal as Andrew Jackson’s supposed comment after the Supreme Court’s 1832 decision in Worcester v. Georgia: “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.” There is absolutely no basis for the statement attributed to Jackson nor any reason for him to have made it.21 The words were put into Old Hickory’s mouth by Horace Greeley in 1864, nineteen years after Jackson’s death, just as the Holmes quote was put into the justice’s mouth by journalists intent on good copy.22*
Wednesday evening, Roosevelt called congressional leaders of both parties to the White House to brief them on the banking bill he would submit when Congress convened the next day. Earlier he had met separately with Huey Long and California’s newly elected Democratic senator, William Gibbs McAdoo. Both would be key players Thursday: Long, a perennial loose cannon, and McAdoo, who had been Wilson’s longtime secretary of the Treasury. Either could cause trouble, and Roosevelt flattered them with a half hour’s personal attention.
The text of the bill was not yet in final form, but FDR, flanked by Woodin and Attorney General Cummings, carefully reviewed a draft with the legislative leaders. As Roosevelt explained it, the bill would confirm his actions under the Trading with the Enemy Act, give the president added powers to regulate gold and foreign exchange, provide for the issuance of Federal Reserve notes to restore the nation’s currency supply, authorize the secretary of the Treasury to review and reopen all banks found to be solvent, and reorganize those in trouble so they too could eventually reopen. The meeting lasted from 8:30 until shortly before 1 A.M. Drafters at the Treasury were still working on the statutory language, but from his presentation it was clear that Roosevelt had decided to preserve the banking system more or less as it was rather than