FDR - Jean Edward Smith [418]
15. Edmund Morris, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt 606 (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1979).
16. Transcript, October 1, 1919, House of Representatives Select Committee on the Budget, FDRL. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, FDR preempted traditional congressional support for the bureaus with a masterly two-step maneuver. On December 20, 1941, he appointed Admiral Ernest J. King to the newly established post of commander in chief, U.S. Fleet (COMINCH), and placed the bureaus under him (Executive Order 8984). In March 1942, Roosevelt named King to be chief of naval operations (CNO) as well, in effect combining the two posts (Executive Order 9096). That gave King command of the entire Navy, similar to the authority General Marshall exercised as Army chief of staff. It was wartime, and no one on Capitol Hill questioned the president’s decision. And in the Navy no one dared question King—a hard-drinking, self-styled sonofabitch who gave no quarter. For King’s discussion of the transition, see Ernest J. King and Walter Muir Whitehill, Fleet Admiral King: A Naval Record 349–359 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1952).
17. Paragraph 2 (1) of section 415 of the Revised Statutes of the United States provided that there be “an Assistant Secretary of the Navy … and he will perform such duties as may be prescribed by the Secretary.”
18. Josephus Daniels, The Wilson Era: Years of War and After 253 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1946).
19. As acting secretary of the Navy on February 25, 1898, TR cabled Dewey:
ORDER THE SQUADRON, EXCEPT THE MONOCACY, TO HONG KONG. KEEP FULL OF COAL. IN THE EVENT OF DECLARATION OF WAR SPAIN, YOUR DUTY WILL BE TO SEE THAT THE SPANISH SQUADRON DOES NOT LEAVE THE ASIATIC COAST, THEN OFFENSIVE OPERATIONS IN THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS. KEEP OLYMPIA UNTIL FURTHER ORDERS.
ROOSEVELT
20. New York Sun, March 19, 1913. Beginning with TR, five Roosevelts (Theodore, 1897–1898; Franklin, 1913–1920; TR, Jr., 1921–1924; Theodore Douglas Robinson [son of Corinne Roosevelt, TR’s sister], 1924–1929; Henry L., 1933–1936) have served as assistant secretary of the Navy. TR’s birthday, January 27, was officially celebrated as Navy Day from 1922 until the unification of the services in 1949.
21. “He was young then and made some mistakes,” Daniels wrote many years later. “Upon reflection, although I was older, I made mistakes too.” Daniels, Wilson Era: Years of Peace 129.
22. On November 9, 1932, Daniels, who had always written to FDR as “Dear Franklin,” posted a letter to the president-elect with the salutation “My dear Chief.” Roosevelt would not hear of it. “My dear Chief,” he replied. “That title still stands! And I am still Franklin to you.” And so it continued until Daniels’s death. Quoted in Joseph L. Morrison, Josephus Daniels: The Small-d Democrat 167 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1966). The extensive twenty-two-year correspondence between FDR and Daniels was collected and edited by Carroll Kilpatrick and published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1952 under the title Roosevelt and Daniels: A Friendship in Politics.
23. Rex Tugwell, an early brain truster, remembers the deference FDR exhibited toward Daniels on the train carrying the president-elect’s party from Albany to Washington for the inauguration in 1933. “Rex, this is the man who taught me a lot that I needed to know,” said Roosevelt as he introduced Daniels to Tugwell. Rexford G. Tugwell, The Democratic Roosevelt 105 (New York: Doubleday, 1957). For Daniels’s contribution as ambassador to Mexico, see E. David Cronon, Josephus Daniels in Mexico (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1960).
24. Daniels, Wilson Era: Years of Peace 124.
25. When FDR first met Daniels at the 1912 Baltimore