FDR - Jean Edward Smith [47]
FDR’s house, just one block from the capitol, became insurgent headquarters. It was our “harbor of refuge,” said Kings County assemblyman Edmund R. Terry.79 Every morning the insurgents gathered in the Roosevelts’ library, walked together to the legislature, cast their votes against Sheehan, returned after the session, went out again for supper, and came back for a long evening of drinks and cigars. The sessions were as much social as political. “There is very little business done at our councils of war,” FDR confided to a Times reporter. “We just sit around and swap stories like soldiers at a bivouac fire.”80 There were shouts and laughter and a blue haze of cigar smoke that engulfed everyone and everything. The smoke became so pervasive that Eleanor eventually moved the children to the third floor so they might breathe more easily.
The fight against Sheehan gave Eleanor her initial taste of political life. “It was a wife’s duty to be interested in whatever interested her husband, whether it was politics, books or a particular dish for dinner. That was the attitude with which I approached that first winter in Albany,” she said later.81 Eleanor watched proceedings from the Senate gallery, entertained the insurgents at home, prepared their drinks and snacks, and forged some unlikely friendships. Veteran Tammany pols like Tom Grady and Tim Sullivan—who had little use for Franklin—found Eleanor delightful. “Be with the insurgents, and if needs be with your husband every day in the year but this,” wrote Grady to ER on Saint Patrick’s Day. “But this day be with us.”82 Eleanor’s understanding of the personal aspects of politics seemed instinctive. She softened Franklin’s self-righteousness and made him appear less arrogant. When Lord Bryce, Great Britain’s ambassador to the United States, addressed a joint session of the legislature, ER stepped forward and hosted a massive reception where Tammanyites, insurgents, and Old Albany society mingled freely. That first year in the state capital was a seminar in practical politics, and Eleanor enjoyed every minute. As one of her most sympathetic biographers has written, “Franklin’s entrance into politics saved them both from the kind of ordinary upper-class life, vapid and fatuous, that ER associated with society—at least that part of society where she had never felt welcome, comfortable, or understood.”83
Tammany exerted maximum pressure on the insurgents. Pet projects were shelved, patronage dried up, hometown constituents were mobilized, local newspapers counseled against delay, county chairmen, bankers, and prominent businessmen threatened to withdraw support. More than once, FDR had to raise funds for his colleagues to pay off mortgages called suddenly by their banks.84 When intimidation failed, the Sheehan forces turned to favors and inducements. Al Smith did not say “to get along, you have to go along,” but the capital was rife with rumors of judicial posts and other perks offered to the rebels. Charles Murphy journeyed to Albany to meet with FDR; Sheehan and his wife had lunch with Franklin and Eleanor—all to no avail. At the end of March the rebels still held out. The legislature had been in session ten weeks, and not one measure of substance had been enacted.
Both sides were becoming restive. Governor John Dix, in despair for the state budget, called for Sheehan to withdraw. A number of compromise candidates emerged, and finally Charles