FDR - Jean Edward Smith [48]
When Smith and Wagner promised there would be no reprisals, the insurgents broke ranks. A majority voted to accept O’Gorman. FDR sought to hold out, but with his troops thinning, further resistance was futile. He embraced the inevitable: “We would have taken Justice O’Gorman at the very beginning and been perfectly satisfied,” he later told the Times.85
On the afternoon of March 31, 1911, when the rebels filed into the chamber for the final vote, jubilant regulars let out a raucous cheer. There were cheers and more cheers, and then an Irish voice burst into song: the rhythmic anthem of the New York City organization: “Tam-ma-nee … Tam-ma-nee.” The regulars joined in, chorus after chorus, including the improvised
Tam-ma-nee, Tam-ma-nee
Franklin D., like Uncle “The,”
Is no match for Tam-ma-nee;
Tam-ma-nee, Tam-ma-nee
Eventually order was restored and the clerk called the roll—the sixty-fourth ballot for U.S. senator. When his name was called, Roosevelt stood to explain his vote, struggling to make himself heard above an undercurrent of hisses. “We have followed the dictates of our consciences and have done our duty as we saw it. [Hisses.] I believe that as a result the Democratic Party has taken an upward step. [Groans and hisses.] We are Democrats—not irregulars, but regulars. [Silence]. I take pleasure in casting my vote for the Honorable James A. Gorman. [Tepid applause.]”86 The results were predictable. One hundred twelve Democrats voted for O’Gorman; eighty Republicans for Depew. The insurgency was broken. All but three of the twenty-one members who had rebelled with FDR would be defeated in upcoming elections.
The fight against Sheehan became another myth Roosevelt could not resist embellishing. Two days after the vote in Albany, Franklin addressed the YMCA of Greater New York and claimed victory. “I have just returned from a big fight,” he announced. “A fight that went sixty-four rounds. This fight was a free-for-all … and many of the other side got good and battered.… The battle ended in harmony, and we have chosen a man for the people who will be dictated to by no one.”87
Over the years the public forgot how ignominiously the insurgents had been beaten and remembered only that Sheehan had not been elected. This became gospel for FDR, who never tired of retelling the tale of his first political victory.* “Do you remember the old Sheehan fight of 1911?” he asked a longtime friend in 1928 when he was running for governor. “When the final Murphy surrender came, the flag of truce was brought to me by Assemblyman Alfred E. Smith and State Senator Bob Wagner. What a change has taken place all along the line.”88
FDR harvested a bumper crop of national publicity from the Sheehan fight, and for some he became a youthful symbol of political reform. The Cleveland Plain Dealer tabbed Franklin as TR’s successor: “May it not be possible that this rising star may continue the Roosevelt dynasty? Franklin D. Roosevelt is, to be sure, a Democrat, but this is a difference of small import. In other respects, he seems to be thoroughly Rooseveltian.”89 In North Carolina, Josephus Daniels, editor of the Raleigh News & Observer, wrote an editorial praising FDR’s stand against Tammany entitled “A Coming Democratic Leader.”90 In Trenton, New Jersey’s reformist governor Woodrow Wilson took notice, and TR wrote his congratulations: “Just a line to say that we are really proud of the way you have handled yourself.”91
The downside of the Sheehan struggle was that FDR was tagged as anti-Catholic and anti-Irish—a label that proved hard to shake. The