Roosevelt (90 page)

———,
The Rainbow
(Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1936). Richberg
²
.

Roosevelt, Eleanor,
This I Remember
(New York: Harper & Brothers,1949). Roosevelt
¹
.

This Is My Story
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1937). Roosevelt
²
.

Rosenman, Samuel I.,
Working with Roosevelt
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1952)

Sherwood, Robert E.,
Roosevelt and Hopkins
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1948)

Stiles, Lela,
The Man behind Roosevelt
(Cleveland: World Publishing Company, 1954)

Tansill, Charles C.,
Back Door to War
(Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1952)

Timmons, Bascom N.,
Garner of Texas
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1948)

Tully, Grace G.,
F. D. R., My Boss
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1949)

The most important material on Roosevelt’s early years is in PLFDR, Vol. I (
Early Years
), which includes a score of his letters to parents and relatives in the years before he went to Groton. See also Sara Delano Roosevelt,
My Boy Franklin
(Crown Publishers, 1933), remembrances of things past from the perspective of many years; Olin Dows,
Franklin Roosevelt at Hyde Park
(American Artists Group, 1949), a colorful account; Clara and Hardy Steeholm,
The House at Hyde Park
(Viking, 1950); Noel F. Busch,
What Manner of Man?
(Harper, 1944), an interesting attempt at a psychological interpretation of Roosevelt; and John T. Flynn, which is a useful corrective to some superficial generalizations about Roosevelt’s early years, but offers some questionable interpretations of its own.

The Seed and the Soil.
On Roosevelt’s family background, see Karl Schriftgiesser,
The Amazing Roosevelt Family
(Funk and Wagnalls, 1942), important for the Roosevelt family; and Daniel Webster Delano,
Franklin Roosevelt and the Delano Influence
(Pittsburgh: Nudi, 1946), which, while it implicitly assigns too much weight to the role of heredity, provides useful information on the other side of the family. See also Alvin Page Johnson,
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Colonial Ancestors
(Boston: Lathrop, Lee, & Shepard, 1933), an earlier account; Rita Halle Kleeman,
Gracious Lady: The Life of Sara Delano Roosevelt
(Appleton-Century, 1935), a sympathetic biography filled with noteworthy sidelights; and Hall Roosevelt,
Odyssey of an American Family
(Harper, 1939). The contrast on page 5 between industrialists and politicians as doers and talkers is from Matthew Josephson,
The Politicos
(Harcourt, Brace, 1938), p. vii. Gerald W. Johnson, writing in the New York
Herald Tribune
, is the source of the
quotation on page 6 in regard to the remarkable seventh generation of Roosevelts. The quotation about the tendency of the Delanos to carry their way of life around with them, on page 7, is from the first volume of Frank Freidel’s distinguished biographical series on Roosevelt, (B) p. 17. On the relation between intermarriage and the importance of heredity, page 8, see Ralph Linton,
The Cultural Background of Personality
(Appleton-Century, 1945), p. 136, although Linton refers especially to the role of intermarriage in isolated “primitive” societies. The concept of the family as the psychological broker of society is taken from Robert MacIver,
The Web of Government
(Macmillan, 1947), p. 294.

Groton: Education for What?
On Groton and Peabody see Frank D. Ashburn’s loving but judicious
Peabody of Groton
(Coward-McCann, 1944), and Ellery Sedgwick’s reflective
The Happy Profession
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1946). George Biddle, “As I Remember Groton School,”
Harper’s Magazine
, Vol. 179, August 1939, pp. 292-300, and George W. Martin, “Preface to a Schoolmaster’s Autobiography,” in the same magazine, Vol. 188, January 1944, pp. 156-162, offer somewhat more critical views of Rector and school. PLFDR, Vol. I, includes a remarkably full set of letters from FDR during the Groton period. The Groton file (Group 14) in FDRL contains some useful data. On education for leadership in Greece see Werner Jaeger,
Paideia: the Ideals of Greek Culture
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1939), Vols. I-III. I am indebted to Professor William H. Brubeck for calling my attention to literature in this field. For the history of books of advice to princes see Allan H. Gilbert,
Machiavelli’s Prince and Its Forerunners
(Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1938), and for a typical “prince’s book,” John M. S. Allison (ed.),
Concerning the Education of a Prince
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1941). It has been argued that while Groton contributed only a tiny fraction of her sons to the public service, the quality was high. So it was: Bronson Cutting, Joseph C. Grew, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., Sumner Welles, Dean Acheson, and others. Two things must be noted, however: the politicians who graduated from Groton, aside from Franklin D. Roosevelt, were not very successful in electoral politics,
i.e.
, in winning elections; and men like Cutting, Welles, and Acheson had conspicuous trouble getting along with the very type of politician whom Roosevelt could either win over by charm, or defeat.

Harvard: The Gold Coast.
On Roosevelt’s Harvard years the Personal Letters remain of central importance, although the letters are not so frequent as in the Groton years and large gaps occur each time Sara Roosevelt takes up her Boston residence. Particularly in the Harvard years these letters raise a difficult problem: to what extent do they picture Roosevelt’s activities not as they were, but as he wished his mother to see them? For example, did he ignore the intellectual side of Harvard in his letters because he thought Sara would be uninterested in it? The answer is probably not. In the first place, Roosevelt kept a diary during some of his Harvard days (now in FDRL Group 14) and this document reveals no more interest in intellectual matters than do his letters. Secondly, the other available material does not contradict—and often reinforces—the picture given in the letters. Freidel (B), Gunther
²
(B), Lindley
¹
(B),
op. cit.
, are useful for the Harvard years, and Earle Looker,
This Man Roosevelt
(Brewer,
Warren & Putnam, 1932) offers some interesting material. See also Harvard File, Group 14, FDRL (which throws a good deal of doubt on some published views that Roosevelt took an active part in student reform at Harvard). On the Harvard of Roosevelt’s time see Samuel E. Morison,
Three Centuries of Harvard
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1936), whom I have quoted on page 16 above; Samuel E. Morison (ed.),
The Development of Harvard University
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1930); Henry Aaron Yeomans,
Abbott Lawrence Lowell
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1948); Cleveland Amory,
The Proper Bostonians
(Dutton, 1947), a wise and witty work; Edwin E. Slosson,
Great American Universities
(Macmillan, 1910), chap. 1; “Report of the Committee on Improving Instruction in Harvard College” (Briggs report),
Harvard Graduates Magazine
, Vol. XII, June 1904, pp. 611-620. On the problem of formal education for political leadership two different approaches are Arthur J. Jones,
The Education of Youth for Leadership
(McGraw-Hill, 1938), and Karl Mannheim,
Freedom, Power, and Democratic Planning
(Oxford University Press, 1950). I am indebted to La Rue Brown of Boston, a classmate of Roosevelt’s, for information and counsel on the Harvard of Roosevelt’s day; and to Eleanor Roosevelt (interview, Hyde Park, N. Y., July 28, 1955) for her views on Roosevelt’s early development.

On the reformist turmoil of the early 1900’s the literature is voluminous and fascinating; only a few items can be listed here. Louis Filler,
Crusaders for American Liberalism
(Harcourt, Brace, 1939) is a richly detailed study of the muckrakers, their exposés, and their editors. The muckrakers’ own writings are important if read critically; most notable, of course, is Lincoln Steffens’
Autobiography
(Harcourt, Brace, 1931), but the books of Brand Whitlock, Ray Stannard Baker, Ida Tarbell, Upton Sinclair, and their colleagues are also significant. More general works are John Chamberlain,
Farewell to Reform
(Liveright, 1932); Richard Hofstadter,
The American Political Tradition
(Knopf, 1948); Russel B. Nye,
Midwestern Progressive Politics
(Lansing: Michigan State College Press, 1951); Mark Sullivan,
Our Times
(6 vols., Scribner, 1926-35); Frederick Lewis Allen,
The Big Change
(Harper, 1952); Eric Goldman (B), to whom I am indebted for the quotation about Theodore Roosevelt on page 25.

Uncle Ted and Cousin Eleanor.
Henry F. Pringle,
Theodore Roosevelt
(New York: Harcourt, Brace, revised ed., 1956) remains the best biography, at least on the period up to 1910. The volumes of
Letters of Theodore Roosevelt
, edited by Elting E. Morison (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1951
et seq.),
were of more general usefulness than Roosevelt’s autobiography (Macmillan, 1913), although neither has important direct reference to FDR. As for Eleanor Roosevelt, her own wonderfully frank and poignant
This Is My Story
(B) is indispensable, although discursive and sometimes trivial. The
Personal Letters
, while of course episodic, throw some light on the three-way relationship among FDR, his wife, and his mother. My source for Roosevelt’s description of his political ambitions on page 25 is Grenville Clark, a fellow law clerk, writing in the Roosevelt
memorial issue of the
Harvard Alumni Bulletin
, Vol. XLVII, No. 14, April 28, 1945. The material at FDRL on the 1904-1909 period is relatively sparse; there are some papers and letters from FDR’s law practice (Group 14, FDRL). A well-preserved set of FDR’s notes on Burgess’s lectures on constitutional development (Group 14, FDRL) is of some interest, for they show that Burgess neglected—or Roosevelt failed to take notes on—some of the major
political
aspects of constitutional development, such as John Marshall’s brilliant establishment of the precedent for judicial review in
Marbury
v.
Madison.
In general, however, Roosevelt’s years between Harvard and the senatorship are the most difficult to document of any of his major phases. On his Saturday afternoon poker playing, see Charles C. Auchincloss to Roosevelt, August 1, 1933, PPF 707, FDRL.

The Race for the Senate.
FDRL has published a most useful
Calendar of the Speeches and Other Published Statements of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1910-1920
(1952), compiled by Robert L. Jacoby, hereafter referred to as
Calendar of Speeches.
This document not only lists speeches, statements to the press, occasional letters quoted in the press, etc., but in almost all cases provides a brief summary. Group 9, FDRL, contains newspaper clippings on the 1910 election campaign, correspondence, campaign material, some of FDR’s own notes and drafts for his speeches, accounts of campaign expenses, and a number of letters to FDR and occasionally his replies. Group 21, FDRL, includes interviews by George A. Palmer, former superintendent of National Park Service at Hyde Park, of old political associates of FDR, most notably John E. Mack, Mr. and Mrs. Grant Dickinson, and Thomas F. Leonard. See also Eleanor Roosevelt
¹
(B), Morgan H. Hoyt, “Roosevelt Enters Politics,”
The Franklin D. Roosevelt Collector
(May 1949), a reminiscent piece by a man who accompanied FDR in some of his 1910 campaigning;
The New York Red Book
, Albany, 1911, for the official voting record; and Gosnell
²
. The most important secondary sources on the senatorial years are Freidel (B), and Alfred B. Rollins, “The Political Education of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1909-1928” (Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1953), a phenomenally thorough and carefully researched study of these years, based not only on FDRL material but also on the papers of contemporary New York State politicians.

The College Kid and the Tammany Beast.
Warren Moscow,
Politics in the Empire State
(Knopf, 1948), a journalistic but judicious treatment of parties, politicians, and voters in New York, is a helpful book for understanding the general context in which FDR operated, although it focuses on the 1930’s and 1940’s. For New York machine politics see Gosnell
¹
, M. R. Werner,
Tammany Hall
(Garden City: Doubleday, Doran, 1928), a lively and detailed historical account; Roy V. Peel,
The Political Clubs of New York City
(Putnam, 1935), an important study of the group relations within Tammany; and William L. Riordan,
Plunkitt of Tammany Hall
(Knopf, 1948). On the Sheehan fight, Lindley
¹
(B), Freidel (B), and Rollins have exceptionally full treatments; see also Langdon P. Marvin, OHP. FDRL (Group 9) contains hundreds of letters to FDR from constituents, and many of FDR’s replies, and several nuggets, including a copy of Boss Barnes’s letter to his legislative leaders outlining strategy, and the
pro-Sheehan petition from Poughkeepsie with 265 names—“many in the same writing,” Senator Roosevelt said on receiving it.

Farmer-Labor Representative.
On Roosevelt’s senatorship in general, the most disappointing source is his own diary, in FDRL, which he kept brilliantly for the first three days of January 1911 and then abandoned. A sympathetic and balanced account of the Howe-Roosevelt relationship, by one of Howe’s assistants, can be found in Stiles (B). FDRL has (Group 9) hundreds of files of state senatorial papers; this luxuriant mass of material has been well indexed in a “Descriptive Inventory,” a typed document compiled by Carl L. Spicer and Kathryn C. Fell, FDRL, 1948. FDR’s correspondence files relating to bills and other legislative matters are arranged under about thirty-five subject classes of legislation; other matter is organized in “general subject files” and “name files.” Some of the most useful files (all in Group 9) are Nos. 15, “Postmaster Endorsements”; 35, “Labor Bills”; 16 (patronage), 309 (Sheehan), and 323 (Stetson). See also F. Perkins (B), although Miss Perkins underestimates, I believe, the extent to which FDR moved toward socio-economic progressivism during his senatorial days.