FDR - Jean Edward Smith [404]
30. Lindley, Franklin D. Roosevelt 48; SDR, My Boy Franklin 27.
31. No detail of the St. James’ operation escaped FDR’s attention. In 1941, when the church treasurer resigned, the president proposed a candidate of his own. “What would you think of the young man who runs the drug store?” he wrote his neighbor Gerald Morgan. “He seems up and coming. He is a violent Republican!” President’s Secretary’s File (PSF) 154, FDRL. Also see Ward, Before the Trumpet 156–157.
32. Eleanor Roosevelt, This Is My Story 149–150 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1937). After the president’s death, Eleanor wrote, “I think he felt that in great crises he was guided by a strength and wisdom higher than his own, for his religious faith, though simple, was unwavering and direct.… I have always felt my husband’s religion had something to do with his confidence in himself.” This I Remember 69–70 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1949).
33. FDR to Muriel and Warren Robbins (Aunt Kassie Delano’s children by her first marriage), May 30, 1891. 1 Roosevelt Letters 35. FDR remained in contact with the Robbinses for the rest of his life and in 1933 appointed Warren to be U.S. minister to Canada.
34. The New York Times, January 17, 1933. Also see Christian Bommersheim to Roosevelt family, July 1, 1891, FDRL.
35. Kleeman, Gracious Lady 166. On the eve of World War II, when he was under fire from isolationist critics for being pro-British and pro-French, Roosevelt could not resist alluding to his youthful days in imperial Germany. “I did not know Britain and France as a boy,” the president said, “but I did know Germany. If anything, I looked upon the Germany I knew with far more friendliness than I did on Great Britain or France.” 3 Roosevelt Letters 943.
36. Quoted in Bernard Asbell, The F.D.R. Memoirs 24 (New York: Doubleday, 1973).
37. September 18, 1896, 1 Roosevelt Letters 47–48.
38. Ibid. 45. Also see Frank D. Ashburn, Peabody of Groton 45 (New York: Coward McCann, 1944). “We had a sad shooting affray the other day,” Peabody wrote to a friend back east on July 8, 1882. “[A] worthy young deputy sheriff was murdered by a drunken Mexican. They tried to get up enough excitement among the populace to lynch the murderer—but there was no leader. I really think that an example of frontier justice with the next white murderer would be a good thing—for the place is full of desperados who hold the lives of others and themselves very cheap.” Ibid. 59.
39. Statistical History of the United States 91.
40. Quoted in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Crisis of the Old Order 321 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957).
41. Roosevelt was so impressed with the elder Peabody’s reading of A Christmas Carol that as soon as he had a family of his own he undertook to read a condensed version every year on Christmas Eve, insisting that the assembled family join him in repeating the final words of Tiny Tim, “God bless us every one.” James Roosevelt, Affectionately, F.D.R. 57. Also see Rexford G. Tugwell, The Democratic Roosevelt 510 (New York: Doubleday, 1957).
42. Peabody to Camp, November 23, 1909, reproduced in Ashburn, Peabody 195.
43. The New York Times, June 3, 1934. Shortly after he became president, FDR wrote Peabody, “I count it among the blessings of my life that it was given to me in my formative years to have the privilege of your guiding hand and the benefit of your inspiring example.” Reprinted in Ashburn, Peabody 349.
44. Quoted in 1 Roosevelt Letters 47. Not all students fared as well as FDR. For example, Peabody considered Dean Acheson [Groton