Abstract
The years 1910–1917 were a time of great change for FDR, as he left the private world of a Hudson Valley patrician and businessman for the public life of a politician. Initial success as a Democrat in New York led to service in the Wilson administration and relocation to Washington. Although his wife Eleanor brooded about the amount she and the children saw of FDR, the excitement of a political career and ambitions of public power increasingly drew him away from family contentment and responsibilities. FDR’s move into the public and political sphere also brought new experiences and challenges that had the potential to transform his views on international relations.
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Notes
John M. Blum, The Republican Roosevelt (Cambridge, MA, 1954), 6.
See also Geoffrey C. Ward, Before the Trumpet—Young Franklin Roosevelt (New York, 1985), 19.
Rita Halle Kleeman, Gracious Lady: The Life of Sara Delano Roosevelt (New York, 1935), 253.
Geoffrey C. Ward, A First Class Temperament—The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt (New York, 1989), 88–89.
Julie M. Fenster, FDR’s Shadow—Louis Howe, The Force That Shaped Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt (New York, 2009), 184. Frances Perkins also described graduation from Harvard as “a political handicap.” Frances Perkins, The Roosevelt I Knew (New York, 1946), 14.
FDR to Josephus Daniels February 16, 1916, in Carroll Kilpatrick (ed.), Roosevelt and Daniels—A Friendship in Politics (Chapel Hill, NC, 1952), 25.
Ronald H. Spector “Josephus Daniels, Franklin Roosevelt, and the Reinvention of the Naval Enlisted Man,” in Edward J. Marolda (ed.), FDR and the United States Navy (New York, 1998), 19–33.
Frank Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt—The Apprenticeship (Boston, MA, 1952), 94. FDR had both Federalist and Whigs in his ancestry on the Roosevelt side. See Ward. Before the Trumpet, 17–19.
James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox (New York, 1956), 25.
David Sarasohn, The Party of Reform: Democrats in the Progressive Era (Jackson, MS, 1989).
John Milton Cooper Jr., The Warrior and the Priest: Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt (Cambridge, MA, 1983), 161;
and Daniel D. Stid, The President as Statesman—Woodrow Wilson and the Constitution (Lawrence, KS, 1998), 52.
For Daniels’ account see his diary entry for March 6, 1913, E. David Cronin (ed), The Cabinet Diaries of Josephus Daniels 1913–1921 (Lincoln, 1963), 4.
John Lamberton Harper, American Visions of Europe: Franklin D. Roosevelt, George F. Kennan, and Dean G. Acheson (Cambridge, 1994), 33–34 quoting Jonathan Daniels.
FDR Speech “The Future of Our Navy,” January 30, 1915, MSF, Box 1, Fl 42, FDRL. See also his 1914 article quoted in Ernest K. Lindley, Franklin D. Roosevelt—A Career in Progressive Democracy (New York, 1931), 120; and FDR’s “Proposed article on the United States Navy/Possible speech before Order of Washington,” February 22, 1917, Publications File (hereafter PF) Box 40, Fl 135, FDRL.
Theodore Roosevelt, America and the World War (London, 1915), 159f.
Masuda Hajima, “Rumors of War: Immigration Disputes and the Social Construction ofAmerican-Japanese Relations, 1905–1913,” Diplomatic History 33, No. 1 (2009), 23.
TR to FDR May 10, 1913, in Elting E. Morrison, John M. Blum, and John J. Buckley (eds.), Letters of Theodore Roosevelt Vol VII (Cambridge, MA, 1954), 729. See also the FDR correspondence with Mahan in ASNP Box 53 and with TR in ASNP Box 58, FDRL.
David Healy, Gunboat Diplomacy in the Wilson Era—The U.S. Navy in Haiti, 1915–1916 (Madison, WI, 1976), 134–135 and 117 on Daniels as “King.”
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© 2012 Graham Cross
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Cross, G. (2012). The Challenges of Public Office, 1910–1917. In: The Diplomatic Education of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1882–1933. The World of the Roosevelts. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137014542_3
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