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

two women sat and talked about the weather and anything else inconsequential that we could think of, while both of us knew quite well that behind the door of my husband’s study a really important fight was going on.”
    The issue wasn’t settled that day. Sheehan left as determined as ever; Roosevelt stood equally firm. “Mr. Sheehan is delightful personally,” he told reporters. “But that is one thing; the senatorship fight is another.”
    Yet as the impasse continued, it obstructed the work of the legislature, and Tammany and the Democratic regulars feared that after years of Republican control of the state, they were frittering away an opportunity that might not recur soon. Murphy quietly decided to cut his losses. His support of Sheehan grew less and less conspicuous, until the candidate got the message and decided at the end of February to withdraw. Albany watchers anticipated a quick compromise, that the real work of the legislature might begin.
    But Roosevelt wasn’t through. He and his fellow insurgents rejected the substitutes Murphy suggested, one after another until more than a dozen had been vetoed. Roosevelt, publicly reconsidering his earlier promise of loyalty to the Democrats, hinted that if he couldn’t work with Tammany and Murphy he might strike a bargain with Republican boss William Barnes. Murphy responded with his own overtures to Barnes.
    Meanwhile Tammany’s sapping operations against the insurgency began to tell. One by one Roosevelt’s allies weakened and sought an end to the battle. A stroke of misfortune improved the chances for compromise when the Capitol caught fire in late March and burned badly. Already weary and now displaced, the legislators as a body grew anxious for a solution. Murphy proposed a new candidate, Judge James Aloysius O’Gorman. Before ascending the bench O’Gorman had been a Tammany leader, or sachem, but since then he had earned a reputation for independence of mind and integrity of decision. The choice saved face for both sides in the long struggle: Murphy could point to O’Gorman’s early political career, Roosevelt to his recent judicial service.
    All that remained was to negotiate the details of the settlement. Roosevelt insisted on amnesty for himself and the insurgents: no reprisals from the Democratic leadership for their display of conscience. Al Smith and another Tammanyite, Robert Wagner, conveyed Murphy’s assurances on this issue. While Roosevelt and a hard core of the insurgents made a final point by refusing to attend the caucus that nominated O’Gorman, they sent word that they would vote for the judge in the legislature.
    Roosevelt proclaimed a victory for principle. “We have followed the dictates of our consciences and have done our duty as we saw it,” he declared. But he was also happy to claim a personal triumph, one suggesting that the pressmen’s parallels to combative Uncle Ted weren’t without basis. “I have just come from Albany and the close of a long fight which lasted sixty-four rounds,” he told an audience at the annual dinner of the Young Men’s Christian Association in New York City the next day. “At the end of it was a free-for-all. Some got battered, but you can see by me that there were few scratches on the insurgents.”

 
    5.
     
    R OOSEVELT’S RIVALS OFTEN LAMENTED THE LUCK THAT BLESSED HIS career at crucial moments. He wouldn’t have denied that fortune smiled on him, and he knew from no less an authority than Uncle Ted that luck could make all the difference between success and failure at the apex of public life. “As regards the extraordinary prizes, the element of luck is the determining factor,” Theodore wrote his eldest son, Ted, who was Franklin’s near contemporary. Franklin didn’t read this letter, but he certainly heard the sentiment from Theodore, who often acknowledged that his brilliant success owed to two remarkable strokes of luck: his own good luck in surviving his heroics at San Juan