When Roosevelt returned to Albany in January 1912, he did not bring his family with him or rent a commodious residence, as he had two years previously. It was clear to those who bothered to take notice that the young senator representing the 26th District did not expect to be spending much more time in Albany. His ambitions now lay elsewhere, and even though he immediately threw himself into the business of fulfilling the promises that Louis Howe had made on his behalf, what he was looking forward to was some indication of interest from the president-elect, who was still in his office in New Jersey.
It was not until halfway through January that a telegram finally came from Joseph Tumulty, Woodrow Wilson’s private secretary, inviting him to come down to Trenton to discuss the future.
There is no historical record of the meeting between Roosevelt and Wilson, other than a couple of mentions by FDR in personal letters that it had been a “very satisfactory talk,” but it is easy enough to reconstruct the main thrust of their discussion. Wilson clearly wanted Roosevelt on his team. He would have remembered FDR’s prominent role in the Sheehan fight, and the effect upon the convention of his casual and well-timed quote from Cousin Kermit that “Pop is praying for Clark.” In addition, Senator O’Gorman, Sheehan’s Tammanydirected replacement, had been singularly helpful to Wilson in Baltimore; and although O’Gorman and Roosevelt were hardly friendly, Wilson and Tumulty kept in mind that O’Gorman’s seat in the U.S. Senate was largely due to Roosevelt’s leadership in the battle over Sheehan. And then there had been his impressive showing in the recent legislative election. Clearly, the young Roosevelt was someone to have on your side.
Roosevelt, with his career plan in mind, undoubtedly expressed his keen interest in the office of assistant secretary of the Navy, and would have supported his claim for the job by describing his life-long interest in the Navy, his close study of Admiral Mahan’s strategic theories, and his sophisticated understanding of the new technologies that were radically changing the navies of the world. Wilson would of course have been aware of Theodore’s history as assistant secretary, but it is likely that Franklin made no mention of it, knowing Wilson’s visceral dislike of TR.
We know that Franklin petitioned for the job that day, and that Wilson appeared favorably inclined to grant his wish. But almost certainly the president-elect would have made no promises and would have pointed out that it would be up to whoever he selected to be secretary of the Navy to name his own assistant secretary.
We know the subject was discussed because not long after the November election, a young Philadelphia lawyer named Michael Francis Doyle, who had been a longtime supporter of William Jennings Bryan and had moved to the Wilson camp with Bryan, had expressed interest in the assistant secretaryship and had been told by Bryan that Wilson was favorably disposed to appoint him. Then a few weeks before the inauguration in March, Doyle and Bryan had met again, and Bryan had told him that Franklin Roosevelt had asked for the job, and while Wilson was ready to stand by his promise, Bryan suggested to Doyle that he should withdraw his bid, which he did.
Meanwhile Roosevelt, unsure of where he stood, but encouraged by Wilson’s reaction at their meeting in Trenton, returned to Albany and once again immersed himself in the parochial issues of the Legislature, keeping a close watch on the news emerging from the office of the president-elect. He would have noted—and probably been a little puzzled by—the announcement of some of Wilson’s choices for his cabinet, which included the nomination of two avowed pacifists to positions where pacifism might not have been thought to be a particularly useful attribute—William Jennings Bryan to be secretary of state, and Josephus Daniels to be secretary of the Navy. Here indeed was something to ponder. Just how would a pacifist secretary of the Navy look upon having a Roosevelt as assistant secretary?
Three days before the inauguration, Roosevelt took the train down to Washington on the assumption that whether his bid for the assistant secretaryship proved successful or not, Washington was the place for any office-seeker to be at that moment. Also on the train was William Gibbs McAdoo, the designated new secretary of the treasury and a member of Wilson’s inner circle. McAdoo offered Roosevelt two very tempting appointments, one as assistant secretary of the treasury, and the other as collector of the Port of New York. The first would put him in almost daily contact with the White House, in one of the most sensitive positions in the new administration. The second would put him in control of one of the most lucrative patronage bankrolls in the country and provide him with an unparalleled opportunity to build an anti-Tammany machine in New York. Roosevelt recognized that these were both political plums of the highest grade, and the fact that they had been offered to him gave proof of McAdoo’s (and therefore Wilson’s) high opinion of him; but he turned down both positions with thanks.
On the morning of the inauguration, Roosevelt ran into Josephus Daniels in the lobby of the Willard Hotel. In Daniels’s account of the meeting, Roosevelt “was bubbling over with enthusiasm at the incoming of a Democratic administration, and keen as a boy to take in the inauguration ceremonies. He greeted me cordially and said, ‘Your appointment as Secretary of the Navy made me happy. I congratulate you and the president and the country.’ I responded by asking him, ‘How would you like to come to Washington as assistant secretary of the Navy?’ His face beamed with pleasure. He replied, ‘How would I like it? I’d like it bully well. It would please me better than anything in the world. I’d be glad to be connected with the new administration. All my life I have loved ships and have been a student of the Navy, and the assistant secretaryship is the one place, above all others, I would love to hold.’”
Daniels always insisted that his offer was no sudden impulse. “It was in fulfillment of what I had told my wife on the day I received a letter from President Wilson asking me to be a member of his cabinet. As I finished reading the letter … I said, ‘I will ask the president to appoint Franklin Roosevelt as assistant secretary.’”
Daniels went on to describe a conversation he had with Wilson two days after his encounter with FDR at the Willard Hotel. “I asked him if he had anyone in view for the position [of assistant secretary of the Navy]. He said he had not given it consideration. I then said, ‘If you have no one for the position, I would like to make a recommendation.’ ‘You are quick on the trigger,’ he said. ‘Whom have you in mind?’ I told him I would like him to appoint Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the reason I was quick on the trigger was I knew that there would be a number of applicants and that by filling the position at once, we would not be under the necessity of rejecting any applicant. Moreover, I felt that the sooner the new organization was effected, the better. I added, ‘As I am from the South, I think the assistant secretary should come from another section, preferably from New York or New England.’
“‘How well do you know Mr. Roosevelt?’ he asked, ‘and how well is he equipped?’ ‘I never met him until the Baltimore convention,’ I replied, ‘but I was strongly drawn to him then and more so as I met him during the campaign when I was in New York. I have admired him since the courageous fight he made in the New York State Senate, which resulted in the election of a liberal who had favored your nomination in Baltimore. Besides, I know he has been a naval enthusiast from his boyhood.’ I expressed the convention that he was one of our kind of liberal. ‘Very well,’ he said, ‘send the nomination over.’”
As a courtesy, since Roosevelt’s appointment would have to be confirmed by the Senate, Daniels sounded out the two New York senators on the proposed nomination. “Senator O’Gorman... said the appointment was agreeable to him, and the Senate would confirm it promptly. I expected him to show enthusiasm for the appointment of the young man chiefly responsible for his election to the Senate. The most I gathered was that it was agreeable.”
When Daniels told Elihu Root, a Republican, that the president had in mind naming Franklin Roosevelt as assistant secretary, “a queer look came over his face. ‘You know the Roosevelts, don’t you?’ he asked. ‘Whenever a Roosevelt rides, he wishes to ride in front.’” Then he added, “I know the young man very slightly … but all I know about him is credible, and his appointment will be satisfactory so far as I’m concerned, though, of course, being a Republican, I have no right to make any suggestions. I appreciate your courtesy in consulting me.”
Such is the generally accepted account of how Franklin Delano Roosevelt came to be named Woodrow Wilson’s assistant secretary of the Navy, his first important step toward national and eventually international power. Virtually identical versions of the story are found in almost all of FDR’s biographies. But there is something suspiciously pat about Daniels’s account.
In an effort to claim full credit for the selection of FDR to be assistant secretary, Daniels builds up an unlikely “chance meeting” at the Willard Hotel, and a president who seems to have given no thought to the appointment, neither of which quite rings true. It is likely that Daniels was not aware of Roosevelt’s discussion with Wilson in January, and of course he had never heard of Roosevelt’s citing the assistant secretaryship as a key step in his career plan in the offices of Carter, Ledyard & Milburn all those years ago, both of which incidents speak volumes about Roosevelt’s ambition, his vision, and his cunning.
There is no harm in accepting Daniels’s account at face value. It does not materially distort the essential truth, which is that FDR wanted very much to become assistant secretary of the Navy, and got the job in March 1913. But it obscures an understanding of just how focused, just how determined, just how skillful this young politician had already become at making things happen in accordance with his own game plan.
When the news of Franklin Roosevelt’s appointment was announced, a Syracuse newspaper, recalling his pitched battles in Albany, headlined the story WATCH OUT JOSEPHUS.