Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt by H. W. Brands

alternative to Sheehan, Edward M. Shepard, a reformer from Brooklyn. Partly on account of his famous name, but equally by virtue of his wealth, Roosevelt emerged as the leader of the rebels. Few of the legislators could afford to rent houses in Albany; most took rooms in hotels. Roosevelt was one of the rare renters, and the large house he and Eleanor leased on State Street near the Capitol became a third home for the insurgents. “The men arrived sometime during the morning,” Eleanor recalled. “They went up to the Senate, cast their votes, ate their lunch, and during the afternoon were back at our house for smoking and talk in the library. They went out again for supper, and returned and spent the entire evening.” Their presence ultimately created problems for Eleanor and the children. “One morning the nurse came to me and announced that the children were slowly choking to death in their room because the fumes of the cigars which had been smoked downstairs for months had permeated the bedroom above.” Yet rather than evict the smokers, Eleanor moved the children.
    Roosevelt initially ducked the label of leader of the insurgency. “Leader?” he responded to a question. “I should not claim that title. There really is no leader.” He similarly denied any attempt to split or otherwise weaken the Democratic party. “This is not a split in the party, or even a fight in the party. We are merely a group of men who are taking a rational view of a situation that is not very difficult to size up, and acting in accordance with that view…. I am a Democrat first, last, and all the time.”
    But he didn’t deny opposing bossism and fighting for honest democracy. “The control by Tammany Hall of the state Democracy will stand under present conditions as an insurmountable obstacle in the way of party success,” he said. “This fight involves a much bigger question than whether Shepard or Sheehan shall go to the United States Senate.” Taking a deep breath, till he became quite full of himself, Roosevelt asserted, “The election of Mr. Sheehan would mean disaster to the Democratic party not only in the state but in the nation.”
    Whether or not it affected the nation, the Roosevelt insurgency did draw the attention of the national press. Since the Tweed scandals of the 1870s, everyone in America knew of Tammany Hall; to those many outsiders who looked on Gotham as Gomorrah, Tammany equaled bossism at its most corrupt. The efforts of a new Roosevelt—and one rather more photogenic than Theodore—to tame the Tammany tiger made the best copy since the colonel had assaulted San Juan Hill in the Spanish-American War. Paper after paper across the country carried pictures of Roosevelt and reports of his rebellion against Boss Murphy; editor after editor endorsed his struggle. The Cleveland Plain Dealer reminded readers of Theodore Roosevelt’s valiant campaigns against corruption and declared, “Franklin D. Roosevelt is beginning his public career fully as auspiciously…. If none of the colonel’s sons turn out to befit objects for popular admiration, may it not be possible that this rising star may continue the Roosevelt dynasty?”
     

     
    Y ET T AMMANY WAS wily and determined. New York legislators, like nearly all state legislators then and after, required incomes beyond what they received for their lawmaking service. A handful, like Roosevelt, were financially independent; the others operated farms or businesses or pursued professions. Several of the insurgents had contracts with the state or with businesses dependent to a greater or lesser degree on the goodwill of Tammany Hall. As the boycott of Sheehan proceeded, these vulnerable ones found themselves pinched where it hurt. Contracts were canceled, loans called, mortgages foreclosed. Roosevelt bravely promised to make the victims whole. “Some of us have means, and we intend to stand by the men who are voting for principle,” he declared. “We shall see to