• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1829 0

as Assistant Secretary.… [W]ith mutual regard and mutual consecration, we have spent seven and a half years in the service of our country. We little thought then of the great responsibility we were assuming.… I always counted on your zeal, your enthusiasm, your devoted patriotism, and efficient and able service.… [W]e will be brothers in all things that make for the good of our country.” FDR to Daniels, August 6, 1920 (FDR’s emphasis); Daniels to FDR, August 7, 1920. 2 Roosevelt Letters 388–389.

71. Ibid. 402.

72. FDR speech at Waukegan, Illinois, August 12, 1920, FDRL.

73. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., joined the GOP attack. “Franklin is a maverick. He does not wear the brand of our family,” the president’s son told a band of former Rough Riders at Sheridan, Wyoming, September 16, 1920. The New York Times, September 19, 1920.

74. Quoted in Cook, 1 Eleanor Roosevelt 278.

75. Harold L. Ickes, 1 The Secret Diary of Harold L. Ickes 699 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1953).

76. Press releases, FDR addresses at Helena, Montana, and Butte, Montana, August 18, 1920. Stenographic transcript, speech at San Francisco, August 23, 1920, FDRL.

77. The New York Times, August 19, 1920. Harding added that this was “the first official admission of the rape of Haiti and Santo Domingo by the present Administration. To my mind, moreover, it is the most shocking assertion that ever emanated from a responsible member of the government of the United States.” Ibid., September 18, 1920.

78. Ibid., September 3, 1920; New York Telegraph, August 28, 1920.

79. Cox and Roosevelt received 781,238 votes in New York to Harding’s 1,871,167. By contrast, and thanks to Tammany’s efforts in New York City, Al Smith polled 1,261,812 versus 1,335,878 for his Republican opponent. The Democratic national ticket did even worse in California (24.3%), Illinois (25.5%), Iowa (25.5%), Minnesota (19.4%), North Dakota (18.3%), South Dakota (19.8%) Washington (21.1%), and Wisconsin (16.2%). Congressional Quarterly, Guide to U.S. Elections 286 (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, Inc., 1975).

80. Robert H. Jackson, That Man: An Insider’s Portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt 6 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).

81. “It’s becoming almost impossible to stop F. when he begins to speak,” Eleanor wrote Sara. “Ten minutes is always 20, 30 is always 45, and the evening speeches are now about 2 hours! The men all get out and wave at him and when nothing succeeds I yank his coat tails! Everyone is getting tired but on the whole the car is still pretty good natured.” ER to SDR, October 19, 1920, FDRL.

82. Eleanor Roosevelt, Autobiography 110.

83. Ibid., 109–110.

84. Cook, 1 Eleanor Roosevelt 285.

85. Lash, Eleanor and Franklin 258.

86. FDR to Cox, November 6, 1920; FDR to Mathew Hale, November 6, 1920; FDR to Willard Saulsbury, December 9, 1920; FDR to Early, December 21, 1920. FDRL. In 1933 Roosevelt appointed Cox a delegate to the World Monetary Conference in London. Thereafter he offered him various government appointments, all of which Cox graciously declined.

87. ER to FDR, April 11, 1921, FDRL.

TEN | Polio

The epigraph is from the “Character of the Happy Warrior” written by William Wordsworth in 1806. Wordsworth’s Poems in Two Volumes (1807): A Facsimile (London: British Library, 1984).

1. Missy to ER, August 5, 1921, quoted in Joseph P. Lash, Eleanor and Franklin 267 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1971).

2. SDR to ER, July 20, 1921, FDRL. Franklin and Eleanor were appalled when they learned of Sara’s flight. “Don’t do it again,” FDR cabled. But Rosy and his wife were delighted. “We put her up to it before she left,” he wrote. “I knew Franklin would have a fit!! I think it a splendid thing for her to have done and will make her feel years younger.” James Roosevelt Roosevelt Papers, FDRL.

3. Quoted in Earle Looker, This Man Roosevelt 111 (New York: Brewer, Warren & Putnam, 1932).

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

6. Anna Roosevelt, “How Polio Helped Father,” Woman 54 (July 1949); Ross T. McIntire, White House Physician 31 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1946).

7.