The Plots Against the President (10 page)

Zangara consistently denied that he was part of any organization or that he was accompanied to Bayfront Park by anyone. “I do not belong to any society. I am not an anarchist. Sometime I get big pain in my stomach too, then I want to kill these presidents who oppress the working men.”

Even before a background investigation of Zangara had been conducted, government officials immediately assumed that he was an anarchist like President McKinley's assassin—the Polish immigrant Leon Czolgosz. In such a moment of incipient revolution throughout the world, the possibility of a conspiracy, from either the Right or the Left, was both real and alarming. “This is the United States, not Russia,” U.S. Senate Majority Leader Joseph Robinson remarked. “No fanatic, crank or revolutionist, or any number of them will be permitted to prevent the orderly transfer of power in the government of the United States.”

Moley played a crucial role in the containment of conspiracy theories; he was concerned that the violent act would incite further political instability at a moment of already heightened tension. With the economy struggling for survival, democracy under attack, a long and leaderless interregnum, and the very fabric of American society frayed, it was in the interest of Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, J. Edgar Hoover, and Congress to rapidly paint Zangara's act as an isolated eruption by a deranged man. Moley thought it imperative to downplay Zangara's political connections, telling the
New York Times
that Zangara was neither “socialistic” nor “anarchistic” but that he had a “fixed idea of opposition to all heads of government.” Privately, Moley admitted that he believed Zangara to be sane and a man of considerable intelligence and that he “felt it was desirable to avoid, so far as possible, any hysteria on the subject of radicalism.”

When police officers went to Zangara's austere Miami boardinghouse they found all of his belongings, including expensive clothing, packed in a cheap suitcase. Three books were placed carefully in the luggage:
Wehman Bros.' Easy Method for Learning Spanish Quickly
,
Italian Self-Taught
, and an Italian-English grammar. On top of those were newspaper clippings about Roosevelt's visit to Miami, about Roosevelt's half-million-dollar life insurance policy, which named the Warm Springs rehabilitation retreat in Georgia as the beneficiary, and about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

Zangara and his intended victim were polar opposites: Zangara was the clichéd immigrant and Roosevelt the blue-blooded American. Zangara impoverished and Roosevelt a millionaire several times over. Zangara tiny and insecure, Roosevelt larger-than-life and brimming with confidence. Zangara uneducated and barely articulate, Roosevelt a product of America's best academies and an eloquent speaker. Zangara a zealous anti-capitalist and Roosevelt an avid defender of capitalism. Above all, Zangara was one of life's losers, while Roosevelt had triumphed over polio and won the nation's highest office.

Whether he was part of a larger conspiracy or a crackpot loner, Giuseppe Zangara's brief appearance on the national stage revealed the country's fragility, the breadth of the Depression, and the perilous limbo of the long interregnum. He did not act in a vacuum, but rather in an atmosphere of class resentment, want, hatred, and fear. “For even if he had remained passive in his misery upon a park bench, utterly alone in the crowd,” historian Kenneth S. Davis wrote, “this unemployed little man with a bellyache would have been both symbolic and representative of the depression's human waste.”

Chapter Seventeen

The Bony Hand of Death

The events in Miami shook the nation and ushered in a groundswell of enthusiasm for the president-elect. Roosevelt had literally dodged a bullet and exhibited the kind of courage that Americans were desperately seeking. His own life had been spared, and he had valiantly saved a dying man. Maybe he could save the country itself from its terminal illness. The press reported his every utterance to an engrossed audience, and when he attributed his good fortune to “Divine Providence,” Americans believed their prayers for a leader had been answered. In those dark days of the Depression, as banks were teetering and people were terrified of what the future might hold, Roosevelt had become the embodiment of hope and courage.

Paralyzed and immobile, Roosevelt had sat fixed atop his car, more defenseless than any other president had ever been. Yet, through a series of chance occurrences—a shaky chair, a cheap gun, an alert witness, a rude reporter, a stunted assailant—destiny took a sharp turn. “To a man, his country rose to applaud his cool courage in the face of death,” wrote
Time
magazine. “He is a martyr president at the start of his term.”

The attack on Roosevelt was a stark reminder of the violence of American society, and though few journalists or observers noted it, the statistics were shocking. Since Abraham Lincoln's assassination in 1865, one out of every ten presidents had been shot and killed, and one out of every five had been fired upon. In fact, from 1865 to 1901, the United States was the world front-runner in “killing its elected leaders,” according to the Secret Service. “The average was one killing every twelve years and all three of the targets died from bullets fired at point-blank range.” Given the indicators and the recent episode, the federal bodyguards were on high alert. Roosevelt's paralysis, coupled with his gregariousness, made the task of protecting him all the more challenging. “Guarding any President is difficult,” wrote his chief Secret Service agent, Michael F. Reilly. “Guarding Franklin D. Roosevelt, a crippled man who refused to allow his infirmities or their pain to keep him from traveling whenever and wherever he felt he should, was considerably more difficult.”

Roosevelt's train left Miami at ten fifteen A.M. on Thursday, February 16, and arrived in Jersey City at four ten P.M. the following day. There, he was met by what the
New York Times
called “one of the most elaborate police guards ever accorded an individual.” More than a thousand police officers and Secret Service agents surrounded him at the train station and accompanied his motorcade to his East Sixty-fifth Street residence. It was the first and last time that he allowed such an ostentatious security detail. But on the heels of the Miami crisis, the show of force underscored Roosevelt's—and the government's—need to appear inviolable.

On Saturday, February 19, Roosevelt was the guest of honor at the Inner Circle Club dinner at Manhattan's Hotel Astor. Hosted by political reporters, the event attracted several hundred guests and included numerous sharp-edged skits comparable to the roasts of Washington's famous Gridiron Club. Roosevelt was greatly enjoying the levity when, shortly before midnight, he was approached by a Secret Service agent bearing an envelope with the presidential seal. Inside it he found another envelope, addressed to “President-elect Roosvelt.” Roosevelt thought the misspelling, penned by Hoover himself, an intentional affront. He skimmed the ten-page handwritten letter as inconspicuously as possible and then handed it under the table to Moley. “Circumstances made it impossible for me to read carefully,” Moley recalled, “but a glance was enough to tell me the news it brought. The bank crisis was getting out of hand.” Once again Roosevelt's cool demeanor under pressure enthralled Moley, for Hoover's missive about the nation's state of emergency was both alarming and insulting and would have agitated a less self-possessed man.

“A most critical situation has arisen in the country of which I feel it is my duty to advise you confidentially,” the letter began. It then set forth Hoover's hackneyed appeal to Roosevelt to cooperate with him and abandon the New Deal for the sake of the country. Hoover contended that the economy was so dire that the only thing that could save the nation from collapse was Roosevelt's endorsement of the policies of the Hoover administration.

When Roosevelt and his entourage returned to his East Sixty-fifth Street home after midnight, “the letter from Hoover was passed around and then discussed,” Moley said. Hoover announced, “That the breaking point had come somehow made the awful picture take on life for the first time … Capital was fleeing the country. Hoarding was reaching unbearably high levels. The dollar was wobbling on the foreign exchanges as gold poured out. The bony hand of death was stretched out over the banks and insurance companies.”

Indeed, the run on the banks was unprecedented. Nearly every bank in the country was closed, and it was impossible for the existing banking structure to survive the onslaught. “It would have been inconceivable—if one had not seen it happening right under one's eyes—that one hundred and twenty million odd of people should, apparently, at one and the same time fall into terror, and rush to withdraw their deposits from the banks,” a J. P. Morgan partner wrote to a friend. What had begun with withdrawals by millions of depositors who had hit hard times, causing the depletion of the banks' resources, mushroomed into a full-blown mistrust of the nation's banks and an overall disgust with government. The more severe the crisis became, the more Hoover blamed Roosevelt and his refusal to cooperate with the outgoing administration. “Fundamentally, the millions of small depositors were not worried about the credit of the federal government or the gold standard, which seemed far-off abstractions, but about the soundness of their banks,” historian Frank Freidel wrote.

Although Hoover's sense of urgency was genuine and well founded, Moley thought the timing of the letter—three days after Roosevelt's narrow brush with death and two weeks before his inauguration—was disgracefully inappropriate. Not only had Roosevelt's life been threatened, but now Hoover was telling him the nation's banking system was “mortally stricken” and that it was Roosevelt's fault. Beyond that, Moley was especially outraged by the antagonistic and condescending tone of the letter, which blamed the “steadily degenerating confidence” of Americans on their “fear of Roosevelt's policies” and “assumed that Roosevelt would succeed—where Hoover had failed—in hornswoggling the country with optimistic statements which everyone knew weren't justified.” A few days later, Hoover confided in a private memorandum to Republican senator David A. Reed of Pennsylvania that he realized he was asking the incoming president to abandon “90 percent of the so-called new deal.” But Hoover grandiosely believed that only his policies could save the republic. Roosevelt agreed with Hoover that fear was driving the run on the banks, but he thought it was a fear of the insolvency of the banks and the inadequacy of Hoover's strategies, not of the incoming administration.

If Hoover truly believed that such an overture would sway Roosevelt, he had deeply misjudged his rival yet again. Roosevelt had successfully ignored Hoover's demands since the previous November's election, his advisers considering them offensive and self-serving, and he now dismissed this last-ditch effort as “cheeky.” Roosevelt decided not to answer the letter immediately, which had the predictable result of further upsetting Hoover. When Hoover had not received an answer after five days, he told his secretary of state that Roosevelt's refusal to follow Hoover's designs was the act of a “madman.” Roosevelt finally responded to Hoover, but only after he had received yet another urgent letter, delivered by a Secret Service agent to Hyde Park on March 1—just three days before the inauguration. “It is my duty to inform you that the financial situation has become even more grave and the lack of confidence extended further than when I wrote to you on February 17,” Hoover wrote, once again placing the blame on Roosevelt. Roosevelt responded immediately, this time disingenuously apologizing that an earlier letter he had dictated had been misplaced—a ruse the Hoover camp never believed, convinced that Roosevelt had been biding his time so that the economy would collapse and he could rush in as its savior.

“I am equally concerned with you in regard to the gravity of the present banking situation,” Roosevelt wrote, perhaps as much for posterity as for Hoover. “But my thought is that it is so very deep-seated that the fire is bound to spread in spite of anything that is done by way of mere statements. The real trouble is that … very few financial institutions anywhere in the country are actually able to pay off their deposits … and the knowledge of this fact is widely held.”

Hoover was livid. Roosevelt had outmaneuvered him, consigning Hoover's legacy to the wreckage of the economy while elevating himself as its rescuer. Hoover would take the hatred to his grave, convinced that Roosevelt was attempting “revolution and not reform.” While Hoover wallowed in powerlessness, Roosevelt worked tirelessly to build his team of advisers, write his inauguration speech, and prepare the recovery legislation that he intended to implement as soon as he took office.

By Thursday, March 2, more than half the states had closed their banks. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the most important financial institution in the country, was, according to author Liaquat Ahamed, the “center of the storm,” having fallen below its minimum gold reserve ratio. The New York Stock Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade were shuttered. Panicked bankers and governors beseeched Hoover to declare a national banking holiday, but the outgoing president refused, stating that he “did not want his last official act in office to be the closing of the banks.” At the same time, powerful businessmen and legislators were imploring Roosevelt to seize power and declare a bank holiday. Late that afternoon, Roosevelt's cavalcade proceeded down Fifth Avenue in New York toward the Hudson River ferry, his car surrounded by motorcycles with earsplitting sirens. The French Line steamer
Paris
was docked in the river awaiting the president-elect, her cargo space reserved for “nine million dollars in fleeing gold,” though no one in his party knew that at the time. Once across the icy Hudson, he boarded the special Baltimore & Ohio train waiting to carry him to Washington. A freezing rain enveloped the nation's capital, yet tens of thousands of supporters greeted him at Union Station. By the time he checked into the presidential suite of the Mayflower Hotel later that evening, a cluster of telegrams were waiting to inform him of more bank closures and of Federal Reserve figures showing the week's gold withdrawals to be a staggering $226 million.

By noon on March 3, New Yorkers were forming long lines in front of Bowery Savings Bank—the largest private savings bank in the world—demanding cash withdrawals. At three P.M. the bank closed with hundreds of angry customers still waiting. In just two days, more than $500 million had been emptied from the nation's banking system. Once again Hoover begged Roosevelt to join him in bipartisan action, asking that he approve a proclamation for a temporary banking holiday until Monday, March 6, at which time Roosevelt would commit to calling Congress into a special session. Once again, Roosevelt declined. The next day, he would become president, and he intended to take action then—without Hoover.

An incensed Hoover refused to host the inauguration eve dinner with the president-elect, a long-standing social ceremony that symbolized continuity and civility. He reluctantly sent word to the Mayflower inviting Roosevelt to tea at four o'clock in lieu of the dinner. Roosevelt accepted and, accompanied by Eleanor and their son Jimmy, went to the White House. Hoover kept the Roosevelt family waiting for more than thirty minutes, and although Roosevelt was “imperturbable and betrayed no irritation,” Jimmy knew that his father was seething inside. But Roosevelt instantly stiffened when he saw that Hoover was using the occasion to blindside him at the eleventh hour with more demands and arguments, in what Jonathan Alter described as “another game of chicken between two proud men.”

“I decided to cut it short,” Roosevelt later recalled. He made a gesture to leave and said to Hoover, “Mr. President, as you know it is rather difficult for me to move in a hurry. It takes me a little while to get up and I know how busy you must be.”

For the first time that day, Hoover looked Roosevelt squarely in the eye. “Mr. Roosevelt,” Hoover said, “after you have been President for a while, you will learn that the President of the United States waits for no one.” With that, Hoover left the room. “That was that,” Roosevelt recalled. “I hustled my family out of the room. I was sure Jimmy wanted to punch him in the eye.” Indeed, Jimmy was furious at the treatment his father received. “It would be putting it mildly to state that Mr. Hoover was not happy with Father,” he wrote of the occasion. “It was obvious that he had taken his defeat as even more of a personal humiliation than it should have been.” Roosevelt thought the occasion would be politely social and was unprepared to be “treated like a schoolboy or to have his own integrity thrown into question by Hoover,” his secretary said. After they left the White House, Roosevelt told his son that the meeting “was one of the damndest bits of presumption he ever had witnessed in politics.” Decades later, Jimmy said that it was one of his “earliest lessons in how to avoid political booby traps” and that he thought his father had been more appalled than angry.

Back at the Mayflower, Eleanor told a group of women reporters of a heated exchange between Hoover and Roosevelt that she had overheard. Only years later was it revealed that the reporters had all pledged to keep the details secret, reasoning that in the midst of a national emergency, it would be unbecoming to portray the two men “squabbling like children.”