FDR - Jean Edward Smith [61]
In the final week of the campaign, Jacob Southard, Franklin’s Republican opponent, attacked FDR as anti-Catholic—an unfortunate legacy of the 1911 fight against Sheehan. Howe enlisted a number of Catholic friends to put out the fire. He told Franklin not to worry. “Everyone is happy and singing the doxology.”55 Howe was as good as his word. Without ever setting foot in his district, Franklin won by a larger margin than he had two years before.56
FDR’s victory was part of a Democratic sweep. Wilson defeated TR by 2 million votes and Taft by almost 3 million.* In the electoral college, Wilson carried forty of the forty-eight states with 435 votes, Roosevelt carried six states with 88 votes, while Taft carried only Utah and Vermont for a total of 8 votes. The Democrats added 61 seats in the House of Representatives, giving them a lopsided 291–127 majority, and regained control of the Senate for the first time since 1895.57 In New York, Tammany’s “Plain Bill” Sulzer easily won a three-cornered race for governor and the Democrats regained control of both houses of the legislature. FDR led the ticket in the Twenty-sixth Senatorial District, running 700 votes ahead of both Wilson and Sulzer. “Congratulations on your deserved and notable victory,” wrote FDR’s Dutchess County friend John Walker. “When a bull moose and an elephant are both outrun by a man sick-a-bed it would seem ‘Manifest Destiny.’ ”58
Franklin returned to Albany in January 1913, still so frail and pallid that Eleanor worried about his ability to carry on. “I’m very well and taking care of myself,” he wrote reassuringly. “Wearing rubbers, brushing my teeth, etc., etc.” As Howe had predicted, FDR became chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee and the ranking member of Forest, Fish, and Game. “This isn’t bad,” he wrote Eleanor. “I am particularly glad that the other members of Agriculture gave me control of the committee as against our N.Y. City friends.”59
Roosevelt evidently assumed he would be joining the Wilson administration when it took office on March 4. Instead of the opulent houses they had rented in previous sessions, he and Eleanor took a two-room suite at the Ten Eyck Hotel. They commuted to Albany Tuesday through Thursday while the children remained at the town house on East Sixty-fifth Street.
The first hint that FDR might go to Washington came on January 13, 1913, when he received a telegram from Joseph Tumulty, Wilson’s private secretary, summoning him to Trenton for a conference with the president-elect.60 Patronage matters were discussed, and Tumulty pressed Roosevelt on his willingness to join the administration. Tangential evidence suggests that FDR expressed his preference for the number two post in the Navy Department.* No formal offer was extended, yet Eleanor recalled that in the weeks leading up to the inauguration Franklin was confident he would be going to Washington. Whether he would become the assistant secretary of the Navy was less clear.61
Wilson chose his cabinet primarily to reward the faithful, repay obligations, and punish his opponents. Little attention was paid to professional expertise or even a modest awareness of the subject matter of each portfolio. William Jennings Bryan had never been outside the United States when he became secretary of state. Lindley M. Garrison of New Jersey, the secretary of war, knew precious little about the military but had a distinguished record as a conservative jurist and was given as hostage to the strict-constructionist wing of the party.62 When Garrison departed the cabinet in 1916, he was succeeded by Newton D. Baker, the mayor of Cleveland. Baker too knew little about the Army but had played a key role in swinging Ohio behind Wilson at a crucial moment in Baltimore.63
As secretary of the Navy, Wilson chose North Carolina newspaper editor Josephus Daniels. Daniels, from landlocked