On January 1, 1911, Roosevelt arrived in Albany and, literally within days, established his reputation as “an awfully mean cuss.” It was an amazing performance that caught everyone’s attention. He came into town as an obscure new state senator representing three equally obscure upstate New York counties, and three months later he would emerge as a nationally recognized leader of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, recognized across the country for his dedication to honest politics and good government. How he managed this remarkable evolution says a great deal about lessons he had already learned from Uncle Ted, as well as his ability to think on his feet.
One of the first orders of business for the new Legislature that January was the election of a new U.S. senator to represent New York in Washington. (The 17th Amendment, which would mandate public election of senators, would not be ratified until 1913.)
Chauncey M. Depew, a Republican, was up for reelection; but since the voters had returned Democratic majorities to both houses of the Legislature, it was recognized by all that Depew would not be sent back to Washington, and that he would be replaced by a Democrat. Boss Charles F. Murphy, leader of Tammany Hall, the powerful political club that ran the downstate Democratic Party, had decided that his crony William F. “Blue Eyed Billy” Sheehan was the right man for the job, but other names had been put up as well. Franklin D. Roosevelt decided that Edward M. Shepherd of Brooklyn, a counsel for the Pennsylvania Railroad, who had long been an advocate of clean government, was the man he favored. FDR wrote in his diary on January 1: “Shepherd is without question the most competent to fill the position, but the Tammany crowd seems unable to forgive him his occasional independence, and Sheehan looks like their choice at this stage of the game. May the result prove that I am wrong! There is no question in my mind that the Democratic Party is on trial, and having been given control of the government chiefly through up-State votes, cannot afford to surrender its control to the organization in New York City.”
As Franklin quickly learned, the process of electing a new U.S. senator had as much to do with arithmetic as it did with party loyalty. There were a total of 200 state legislators, of which 114 were Democrats, giving that party a clear majority. Each party met separately in a caucus to select a candidate. Roosevelt learned that the rules allowed him to vote for whoever he wanted to in the caucus, but once the party had selected a candidate, he was obliged to vote for that candidate when the vote came up before the Legislature if he had attended the caucus. On the other hand, if he had not attended the caucus, he was still free to vote for the candidate of his choice in the final legislative election.
FDR was not alone in his opposition to Sheehan. Several other Democratic legislators were against Murphy’s choice. One of them was an assemblyman named Edward R. Terry of Brooklyn, who had worked out some interesting mathematics. He calculated that if all 114 of the Democrats showed up at the caucus, Murphy would only have to arrange for 58 of them—a bare majority—to vote for Sheehan in order to guarantee that all 114 of them would have to vote for “Blue Eyed Billy” in the legislative election. Since Murphy controlled more than 58 Democratic votes, he had the power to personally appoint the next U.S. senator from New York. Sheehan’s election appeared a sure thing.
But Terry calculated that if only 18 Democratic legislators refused to attend their party caucus, and thereby retained their freedom to vote against Sheehan, they could deny Murphy the votes he needed. They could even threaten to combine with the Republicans to reelect Depew, which of course Murphy could not allow to happen. Given the right arithmetic, Terry pointed out, Tammany would be forced to withdraw Sheehan’s name. By January 12, he had persuaded 18 other disaffected Democrats to join him in boycotting the caucus. Four days later, on the day of the caucus, Franklin Roosevelt joined the insurgents and signed a manifesto declaring that he would not be bound to vote for Sheehan. It may have been Terry and the other insurgents who put together the plan and worked out the details, but their newest recruit was the one with the famous name, and they all recognized it was that simple fact that made Roosevelt their de facto leader.
That evening, when the caucus convened, so many insurgents failed to show up that Tammany was only able to put together 91 Democratic votes for Sheehan, ten shy of the number they would need to elect him in the Legislature. Murphy was stymied, and the New York Times took immediate notice:
“It is marvelous how quickly interest in the Senate contest here has shifted from Charles F. Murphy and his lieutenants and William F. Sheehan, who up to the time of the Democratic joint caucus last night were the central figures in the game of politics which is now being played at the Capitol,” the paper reported the following morning in its dispatch from Albany. “Tonight the little group of insurgents who, under the leadership of Senator Franklin D. Roosevelt of Dutchess, have dared to resist the domination of the Tammany boss, are the center of attention. They are the talk of the capital to-night, and the politicians crowding the hotel lobbies are craning their necks to catch a glimpse of them as they are pointed out.… The action they have taken, to the wonder of men who are older than they in political life, is evidence of their independence. And yet they are not radicals. They speak with moderation, and have made it clear that while they will resist to the last any attempt at coercion, they are amenable to real leadership and keenly alive to the necessary processes of government by parties.”
Two days later, on January 18, the embattled Sheehan met privately with Roosevelt in the Ten Eyck Hotel in an effort to find some means of rescuing his cause. Sheehan was determined to badger the young aristocrat from the Hudson Valley into submission, as FDR’s note to himself on the meeting suggests: “He said in substance: ‘Having a majority of the Democratic Caucus which according to all precedence should elect me, this action against me is assassination[.] I will give up my law practice and will devote my time to the vindication of my character, and I will go into the counties where these men live and show up their characters—the character in which they have accomplished this thing.’”
As newspaper accounts of the insurgency spread, Franklin Roosevelt was rapidly turning into a folk hero, battling for good government. “I am delighted with your action,” wrote William Grosvenor, a prominent clergyman, “& told Woodrow Wilson today of how he & you are serving your country.”
A stringer from the New York Herald named Louis Howe put his own spin on the story. “Never in the history of Albany,” he wrote, “have 21 men threatened such ruin of machine plans. It is the most humanly interesting political fight in many years.”
When a New York Times reporter asked Roosevelt what pressure had been brought on him and the other insurgents in order to get them to change their vote, FDR told him, “Every conceivable form of pressure, that’s all I can say—now.”
State senators were paid only $1,500 a year, and had to commute home between legislative sessions in order to earn a living. Very few could afford to stay in Albany for extended periods, and even fewer maintained a residence there. In contrast, Franklin and Eleanor had rented, at $400 a month, a commodious three-story house at 248 State Street, large enough for their growing family and their servants. This spacious dwelling quickly became headquarters for the insurgents, giving further support to the idea that FDR was their leader.
The battle over Sheehan continued to make headlines, and toward the end of the month Franklin received the one communication that he would have most cherished. It was from Oyster Bay:
Dear Franklin,
Just a line to say that we are all really proud of the way you have handled yourself. Good luck to you! Give my love to dear Eleanor.
Always yours,
Theodore Roosevelt
W. Axel Warn, writing in the New York Times under the headline SENATOR F. D. ROOSEVELT, CHIEF INSURGENT AT ALBANY, burnished FDR’s image, describing his subject as “a young man with a finely chiseled face of a Roman patrician, only with a ruddier glow of health on it,” and then went on to rhapsodize: “Senator Roosevelt is … tall and lithe. With his handsome face and his form of supple strength he could make a fortune on the stage and set the matinée girl’s heart throbbing with subtle and happy emotion. But no one would suspect behind that highly polished exterior the quiet force and determination that now are sending cold shivers down the spine of Tammany’s striped mascot.” (Tammany’s symbol was a tiger.)
Virginia Tyler Hudson, writing in the New York Globe, went even further than W. Axel Warn in her gushing account of the young Lochinvar: “He is 30 years old [actually, FDR had just celebrated his 29th birthday on January 30, 1911], but only when you are close enough to see the lines about his mouth that a strenuous fight may have made can one believe him even that age. Tall, with a well set up figure[,] he is physically fit to command. His face is a bit long but the features are well modeled, the nose is Grecian in its contour, and there is the glow of country health in his cheeks. His light brown hair, closely cut and crisply curling at the top, is parted on the side over a high forehead. His eyes are deep set and gray, and he wears glasses. It is the chin, though, aggressive and somewhat prominent, that shows what a task the leaders in Albany have if they have thought of making this particular young man change his mind. His lips are firm and part often in a smile over even teeth—the Roosevelt teeth.”
At the end of January, with no resolution to the impasse in sight, Murphy sent word that he wanted to see Roosevelt. The two met at the Ten Eyck, and years later FDR described the scene: “We talked about the weather for five or 10 minutes. Then, with a delightful smile, Murphy said, ‘I know I can’t make you change your mind unless you want to change it. Is there any chance of you and the other 20 men coming around to vote for Sheehan?’ ‘No, Mr. Murphy,’ I replied, ‘the opposition is not one against Sheehan personally. In the first place, we believe a great many of our Democratic constituents don’t want him to be the United States senator, and in the second place, he is altogether too closely connected with the traction trust in New York City.’ Murphy said, ‘Yes, I am entirely convinced your opposition is a perfectly honest one. If at any time you change your minds, let me know.’”
After the meeting, Murphy was ready to move on. He instructed his people to try to persuade “Blue Eyed Billy” to step down, but Sheehan refused to go quietly. He was determined to claim the Senate seat he had paid for. Eventually, after weeks of repeated votes proved to everybody’s satisfaction that the Legislature was deadlocked, Boss Murphy ignored Sheehan’s objections and selected a new candidate—New York Supreme Court Justice James A. O’Gorman, another Tammany stalwart. By any objective measure, O’Gorman was little different than Sheehan and therefore no more deserving of the insurgents’ votes. But Roosevelt realized that it would be dangerous to defy Tammany so soon again and bowed to the inevitable. After O’Gorman won the caucus vote, FDR rose in the Senate chamber and announced: “Two months ago, a number of Democrats felt that it was our duty to dissent from certain of our party associates in the matter of selecting a United States Senator.… We have followed the dictates of our consciences and have done our duty as we saw it. I believe that as a result, the Democratic Party has taken an upward step. We are Democrats— not irregulars, but regulars. I take pleasure in casting my vote for the Honorable James A. O’Gorman.”
Nothing much had really changed in Albany. Roosevelt and his fellow insurgents had won no great political victory. Tammany still ruled the party. But a legend of steadfast idealism had been born, and word of it was beginning to spread. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was now nationally recognized as a crusader for good government, and beyond New York State, other likeminded advocates of Democratic Party reform took note. One of them was the recently elected governor of New Jersey, Woodrow Wilson.