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would remain abroad for the next three years. At thirty-nine, McClellan was just two years older than James, and the two hit it off from the start. A common interest in railroading broke the ice. As superintendent of the Illinois Central, McClellan had been the highest-paid railroad executive in the United States when the Civil War began.11 And they were both Democrats. Originally, the Roosevelts had been Federalists, then Whigs. When the Whig party fell apart over the issue of slavery, TR’s branch of the family, staunchly abolitionist, went Republican. The Hudson River clan preferred the moderation of James Buchanan and became Democrats.12 James voted for Stephen A. Douglas in 1860 and backed McClellan in 1864. Party loyalty was something the Roosevelts took seriously, and James found special pleasure discussing politics with the party’s most recent nominee. For the next eight months they managed to take a stroll or have a smoke almost every day. “I see a good deal of General McClellan, and like him very much,” James wrote his brother, John, at Christmastime.13

The Roosevelts left Dresden May 17, 1866, a year to the day after they had departed from New York. Five months later, after meandering from Karlsbad to St. Moritz to Paris, London, and Liverpool, they were home. James chose not to rebuild Mount Hope and sold the land to the State of New York as the site for the state mental institution. With the proceeds he hoped to buy the opulent estate of John Jacob Astor III at Rhinebeck, but when the price proved more than he could afford, James settled for a lesser property just over the boundary from Poughkeepsie in Hyde Park.

This was Brierstone, a 110-acre estate that belonged to railroad executive Josiah Wheeler. The property was partially wooded and sloped to the river bank. The house was not large as Hudson River manors went—there were only seventeen rooms—and it was in poor repair. But the view of the river was majestic. And there was a lovely rose garden surrounded by a tall hemlock hedge. Wheeler had never taken to farming, and the fields had been neglected. The fences were down, and the outbuildings required immediate attention.

James was in his element. Within less than a year the manor house, renamed Springwood, had been put in order. Indoor plumbing was installed, new carpets laid, draperies hung, and furniture purchased to replace that lost at Mount Hope. James placed great store on restoring the fields to productivity and eventually would expand the farm to almost a thousand acres. To maintain a monthly cash flow, he purchased a sizable herd of dairy cattle from the Channel Islands—Jersey, Guernsey, and Alderney—but his primary interest was trotting horses. By the 1870s Springwood had become one of the leading stables in the East. In 1873 James’s magnificent gelding Gloster, foaled at Springwood, set a new trotting record for the mile at two minutes, seventeen and a quarter seconds. That autumn, former governor Leland Stanford of California, president of the Central Pacific Railroad and founder of Stanford University, bought Gloster from James for $15,000. The horse was shipped west, but before it could race again it was killed in a train wreck. (Gloster’s tail, mounted on a wooden plaque, hung in FDR’s White House bedroom.)14 After the Panic of 1873 James withdrew from the trotting world, although he continued to maintain a stable of horses at Springwood and rode daily until shortly before his death.

Life at Springwood took on the affectations of an English country manor. A none-too-kind acquaintance observed that James patterned himself on the Whig leader Lord Lansdowne “but what he really looked like was Lord Lansdowne’s coachman.”15 James prided himself that the estate broke even and undertook a modest role in community affairs—commodore of the local yacht club, vestryman at St. James’ Episcopal Church, the Hyde Park school board, the board at the state mental hospital. In 1871 he was elected as a Democrat to a two-year term as one of the town supervisors. Three years later party officials asked him to