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By Root 1701 0

his place in the Senate to FDR, and he assented readily. The Senate, he said, would confirm the appointment promptly.69 Out of courtesy Daniels also touched base with the Empire State’s distinguished senior senator, Republican Elihu Root. Root, who had served as secretary of war under McKinley and secretary of state under TR, had just been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. As Daniels recalled, a queer look came over Root’s face when he mentioned FDR. “You know the Roosevelts, don’t you?” Root asked. “Whenever a Roosevelt rides, he wishes to ride in front.” Root told Daniels he knew Franklin slightly and the appointment would be fine, “though, of course, being a Republican, I have no right to make any suggestion.” Daniels replied that he wasn’t worried about FDR and that he wanted a strong man as assistant secretary. “A chief who fears that an assistant will outrank him is not fit to be chief.”70

After the inauguration FDR returned briefly to Albany to wind up his affairs. He paid a courtesy call on Senate leader Robert Wagner and asked whether he thought it was wise to go to Washington. “Go, Franklin, go,” Wagner said, delighted to have Roosevelt in the nation’s capital rather than Albany. “I’m sure you’ll be a big success down there.”71

* Sullivan ran the gambling and prostitution rings south of Fourteenth Street in Manhattan, and he thrived on the intensely personal side of politics. Every year on his mother’s birthday, he distributed tickets entitling each of the two thousand children in his Bowery constituency to a free pair of shoes, and he could always be counted upon in the legislature to support measures that would benefit the poor.

Sullivan served one term in Congress but left in disgust because it was too far removed from the voters and too anonymous. “There’s nothing in this Congress business,” he told a reporter. “They know ’em in Washington. The people down there use them as hitching posts. Every time they see a Congressman on the street they tie their horse to them.”

When Sullivan died in 1913, twenty-five thousand people, including three United States senators and twenty members of the House of Representatives, followed his casket to the grave. Charles F. Murphy and the mayor of New York headed the pallbearers. The high requiem mass was celebrated by Monsignor Kearney, rector of the old St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Sullivan’s estate, estimated at $2 million to $3 million dollars, was placed in trust for charitable purposes. M. R. Werner, Tammany Hall 508–510 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1968).

* Howe, who covered Albany for years for the New York Herald, knew his account could not be disproved because the Senate Journal recorded votes only and not speeches. But four New York City newspapers, three Albany papers, and one from Poughkeepsie covered the debate. Five mentioned the Sullivans being called back, but not one mentioned Roosevelt taking part. New York Herald, The New York Times, New York World, New York Tribune, Albany Knickerbocker Press, Albany Daily Argus, Albany Evening Journal, Poughkeepsie Daily Eagle, March 30, 1912.

* Thomas Woodrow Wilson, Princeton class of 1879, received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins in 1885, was appointed to the Princeton faculty in 1890, and became president in 1902. His first few years as president were punctuated by a flurry of educational reforms, but by 1906 his welcome had worn thin. He alienated alumni by attempting to abolish the eating clubs on Prospect Avenue, and his academic certitude turned faculty against him. In 1909–10 he lost a showdown battle with Dean Andrew West ’74 over the location and role of the graduate school (Wilson wanted it in the midst of the campus; West preferred a bucolic location). Trustees, faculty, and important donors sided with West, and Wilson recognized that his authority as president was fatally compromised. New Jersey Democrats had been urging him to run for governor, and after West’s triumph Wilson had little choice. He accepted the party’s nomination in September 1910. Arthur S. Link, “Woodrow Wilson,” in A Princeton Companion 512