All language subtitles for S01E03 The Fire of Life (1910-1919) IMDB 8.5

Previously on "The Roosevelts"...

I have always been fond of
the Old West African proverb

"speak softly and carry a big stick,
and you will go far."

America's youngest
president charged ahead.

The Panama canal is one of the great
achievements of the human race.

And after a secret courtship,

the celebrated marriage
of Eleanor and Franklin.

My one great wish is always
to prove worthy of him.

And now part 3 of "The Roosevelts,
An Intimate History."

S01E03 "The Fire Of Life"

In the early autumn of 1910,

voters living along the back roads

of upstate dutchess county, New York,

were startled by something
altogether new...

A bright red two-cylinder
Maxwell touring car,

draped with bunting.

The car's owner,
a poughkeepsie piano-tuner,

was behind the wheel.

Next to him was an eager young
candidate for the State Senate,

Franklin Delano Roosevelt of Hyde Park.

When he entered politics,
everything was new to him.

And especially new was,
was dealing on a more or less

equal basis with ordinary people.

And he loved it.

I don't think he ever lost the sense

that he was a bit apart
from everyone else,

but he loved seeing how much like

an ordinary person he could be.

And I think he really
did that all his life.

He was a 28-year old lawyer who
had never run for anything before.

And he was a Democrat running in a
traditionally Republican district.

But he was also the fifth cousin

of the most popular man in America,

the ex-president of the United
States, Theodore Roosevelt.

Young Roosevelt had promised
"a strenuous campaign."

It proved so strenuous that
he spent one afternoon

across the state line in Connecticut,

pumping the hands of baffled farmers

who couldn't vote for him
even if they'd wanted to.

He professed to be
"dee-lighted" by everything,

just as his cousin always was.

"I'm not Teddy,
" he liked to tell the crowds.

"A little shaver said
to me the other day

"That he knew I wasn't Teddy...
I asked him why, and he replied,

because you don't show
your teeth. '" but he did.

He was already a top-notch salesman

because he wouldn't immediately
enter into a topic of politics

when he met a party.

He would approach them as a friend

and would lead up to that
with that smile of his.

Tom Leonard.

The mid-term elections proved a disaster

for the Republicans nationally.

Democrats captured the house
for the first time in 16 years.

And, as Franklin's proud mother

kept a tally of her boy's triumph,

the Democratic tide helped sweep him

into the New York State Senate.

He was on his way.

Two weeks after his party's
spectacular defeat at the polls,

Theodore Roosevelt traveled to
Washington to make a speech.

He stopped by the White
House for the first time

since leaving it 11/2 years earlier.

President William Howard Taft
and his wife were out of town.

Roosevelt remembered every
servant and gardener by name,

asked about their families,
and exclaimed over

a piece of the corn bread
he'd especially loved

while living at the White House,

brought to him hot from the kitchen.

When he was shown into the
handsome new oval office

that had been built over
the old tennis court,

he strode across the room and sat
down in the president's chair.

It seemed very "natural" to
be sitting there, he said.

Roosevelt had a natural capacity
to lead in every Avenue of Life.

He could lead men up San Juan Hill.

He could lead men on a
posse in the badlands.

And the greatest mistake
that he ever made

was to relinquish power when he had it.

And leaving at the height of his powers

as the youngest former president

was a ruinously ludicrous
thing for him to do.

He never could live happily
on the periphery of anything.

He had to be in the arena.
He left power too soon.

During the next 10 years,
Franklin Roosevelt

would first follow the
political trail his hero,

Theodore Roosevelt, had pioneered.

Then he would deviate
dramatically from it

and finally find himself torn among

political and family
and personal loyalties

that threatened to destroy
what seemed at first

to be a charmed career.

Eleanor Roosevelt would struggle to find

a place for herself in
her own growing family,

suffer a betrayal that
threatened to shatter forever

her fragile sense of self,

and then begin to build a
fulfilling life of her own,

free of crippling fear.

Theodore Roosevelt had
once pledged not to try

to run for the presidency again,

but now he had begun to change his mind.

That decision would alter the
course of American politics.

And along the way,
the old intimate connection

between the Roosevelts of Hyde Park

and the Roosevelts of Oyster
Bay would begin to fray.

January 17, 1911.

Senator Franklin Roosevelt
is less than 30.

He 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 matinee
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 shivers down the spine
of Tammany's striped mascot.

"The New York Times."

Franklin Roosevelt's debut in Albany

was nearly as noisy as his
cousin's had been 29 years before.

Theodore Roosevelt had made
his reputation by embarrassing

the bosses of his own Republican party.

Franklin lost no time in taking on

the New York City Democratic
machine, Tammany Hall.

FDR did everything he could think of

to make himself seem like TR, in Albany.

He, he really was a sort of
caricature of a caricature

of, of TR for quite a while.

And just like the boys
at Groton and Harvard,

the professional politicians
in Albany couldn't stand him.

When the political boss of the bowery

saw Franklin's name on the
list of Democratic newcomers,

he said, "well,
if we've caught a Roosevelt",

"we'd better take him down
and drop him off the docks.

The Roosevelts run true to form."

Meanwhile, a seat in the United States
senate for New York had opened up.

In those days, U.S.
Senators were still chosen

by their state legislatures.

The Democrats were in
control in New York

and their boss, Charles Murphy,
had already made his choice:

A Buffalo Millionaire
named Billy Sheehan,

personally charming, privately corrupt.

And the outnumbered Republicans
had agreed not to put up a fight.

But a band of 21 reform-minded Democrats

had resolved to block Sheehan
with a nominee of their own.

Franklin joined their ranks,

and because he alone was wealthy enough

to rent a house in Albany...

The rebels met in its
library each morning,

producing so much blue cigar smoke

that Eleanor had to move the
children to the top floor.

The press found the
idea of a new Roosevelt

repeating his celebrated cousin's
Albany battles irresistible.

"It's the most humanly
interesting political fight

for many years,
" wrote the Albany Stringer

for the "New York Herald, " Louis Howe.

Franklin thought so, too.

He denounced Tammany Hall
as a "noxious weed, "

its members as "hopelessly
stupid" and "beasts of prey."

Tammany spokesmen responded
that Franklin was a snob,

a secret Republican, anti-Catholic.

"There's nothing the
matter with Sheehan, "

Manhattan assemblyman
Alfred E. Smith said,

"except he's an Irishman."

The stalemate dragged
on for 21/2 months...

And might have gone on even longer

if a fire hadn't gutted the
state Capitol building,

requiring the weary and
impatient Democrats

to caucus in cramped
quarters across the street.

Finally, the Tammany boss
named a new candidate,

an Irish-American judge every
bit as pliant as Sheehan.

Roosevelt and the remaining
insurgents gave in...

And then worked hard to make
a defeat seem like a victory.

I have just returned from a big fight,

a fight that went 64 rounds,

and there was fighting every
second of those 64 rounds.

This fight was a free-for-all,

and many on the other side
got good and battered.

The battle ended in harmony,
and we have chosen

a man for the people who will
be dictated to by no one.

"We are all really proud of the way"

you have handled yourself, "

Theodore Roosevelt told Franklin.

"Good luck to you."

Here in Albany began a
dual existence for me

which was to last all
the rest of my life.

Public service, whether my
husband was in or out of office,

was to be part of our
daily life from now on.

Eleanor was fascinated
by the Sheehan battle

and pleased at her own
ability to function

apart from her mother-in-law
in a wholly new world.

She organized a reception
for 250 constituents,

supplied food and drink every evening

for Franklin and his fellow insurgents,

and got to know all kinds of
people... including a number of

politicians who were
unable to resist her

but couldn't stand her husband,
because he seemed so unreliable.

Franklin Roosevelt battled
hard for a direct primary

that would have allowed
voters, not bosses,

to choose their senators,
but then backed away

at the last minute from a reform
charter for New York City.

After a fire at the triangle
shirtwaist company killed 146 women,

a special commission produced
a flood of 32 reform bills.

Roosevelt voted for all of them,

but when the most hotly
contested vote came...

On a bill setting a
50-hour-per-week work limit

for women and children...

He didn't bother to
show up for the debate.

"He was a very uncertain factor, "

one reformer remembered.

"No one could ever tell
how he was going to vote."

And throughout, he maintained
an earnest, pious air,

compounded by what one
observer remembered as

"the unfortunate habit...
so natural that

he was unaware of it...
of throwing his head up, which,

"combined with his great height,

"gave him the appearance of looking
down his nose at most people."

And that famous image we
have of him with his,

his chin up, you know,
that great pose of confidence,

chin up, at that time it
was his nose in the air.

"Awful arrogant fellow,
that Roosevelt, "

big Tim Sullivan, a ward boss, said.

Looking back many years later,
Franklin himself agreed.

"You know, " he told an old friend,

"I was an awfully mean cuss when
I first went into politics."

If they treated Theodore
as they deal with

certain composite
substances in chemistry

and melted him down to
his ultimate, central,

indestructible stuff,
it's not a statesman they'd find,

or a hunter, or a historian,
or a naturalist...

They'd find a preacher militant.

Owen Wister.

On February 24, 1912,
Theodore Roosevelt announced

that he was once again a candidate

for president of the United States.

"My hat is in the ring, " he said,

"the fight is on and I am
stripped to the buff."

He had been restless ever since

his return from Africa
two years earlier.

He was still only 53 years old.

President Taft,
his handpicked successor,

had proved a disappointment
to many progressives...

And to Roosevelt.

Amiable, well-meaning, and enormous...

He weighed well over 330 pounds...

Taft backed away from
meaningful tariff reform,

retreated in the face of
timber and mining interests

eager to get at national forests,

refused to intervene
in legislative matters

on the grounds that it would
violate the Constitutional

doctrine of separation of powers.

But his critics... TR included...
Failed to acknowledge the many

progressive actions he had taken.

Taft had succeeded at everything
he had done up to that point.

He'd been Roosevelt's secretary of war.

He'd been a successful judge.

He'd been governor general
of the Philippines.

And he was a lovely
person to have around.

Everyone loved will Taft.

Roosevelt thought that he would
make a wonderful successor.

But I think he would have been
disappointed in anyone because

he wasn't president anymore.

Roosevelt now thought Taft

"utterly helpless as a leader."

He felt both personally
and politically betrayed.

In a celebrated speech
at Osawatomie, Kansas,

he called for a "new nationalism."

Social justice in America,
he said, could only be achieved

through a strong federal government

and a president who saw
it as his duty to act as

"the steward of the public interest."

But William Howard
Taft's Republican party

did not see things that way.

It was actually a collection
of strong state parties.

Those state parties controlled
their state legislatures,

which were, in turn,
controlled by the interests...

Banks in New York, timber in
Michigan, copper in Montana,

and rail roads everywhere.

The man who wrongly holds
that every human right

is second to his profit
must now give way

to the advocate of human welfare,

who rightly maintains that
every man holds his property

subject to the general
right of the community

to regulate its use to whatever degree

the public welfare may require it.

His wife Edith saw what was coming.

She was against her husband's
return to presidential politics.

She was sure the old
guard would deny him

the Republican nomination, she said,

and could see no "possible
result which could"

give me aught but keen regret."

Roosevelt's old friend,
Massachusetts senator

Henry Cabot Lodge, also
begged him to stay out of it.

But Roosevelt was determined to run.

7 out of 19 Republican governors
promised their support.

Ohio Congressman Nick long worth,

who had married TR's
rebellious daughter Alice,

said that at the prospect
of a return to action,

he suddenly seemed 10 years younger,

"in such wonderful spirits,
that he behaved like a boy."

State party machines still
picked most delegates

to the Republican convention,

but a dozen states would hold
direct primaries that year.

If Roosevelt could demonstrate in those

that voters overwhelmingly
wanted him, he reasoned,

the bosses would be unable to resist.

The fight went on for almost 4 months...

Bitter, damaging, personal.

Roosevelt called Taft a
"puzzlewit, " "a fathead, "

"disloyal to every canon
of decency and fair play."

"Once Roosevelt gets into a fight,
" one friend explained,

"he is completely dominated by the
desire to destroy his adversary."

Taft is desolate.

He can't believe that this
friendship has been destroyed.

It's inexpressibly sad.

It means more to him
to lose the friendship

than to lose the presidency.

"I don't want to fight, " Taft said.

"But when I do fight,
I want to hit hard.

Even a rat in a corner will fight."

He denounced Roosevelt as
a "freak", a "demagogue, "

"the most dangerous man we have had
in this country since its origin."

But his heart wasn't in it.

One evening, a reporter came upon

an exhausted Taft aboard his train.

"Roosevelt was my closest friend,
" the president said,

and began to weep.

When the primary season ended,

Roosevelt had captured 9 states...

Including Taft's own home state of Ohio.

It was clear that most
Republican Voters wanted change.

But just as Edith had predicted,

when the party met in the
Chicago coliseum in June,

the old guard regulars in
charge were immovable.

They awarded all but 19 of the
254 contested delegates to Taft.

Roosevelt declared he was being
robbed and told his followers

not to bother sitting
through the roll call.

They walked out.

"The parting of the ways
has come, " Roosevelt said.

The Republican party must stand
"for the rights of humanity

or else it must stand
for special privilege."

The next day, he appeared
before his supporters.

The victory shall be ours,

and it shall be won

as we have already won
so many victories,

by clean and honest fighting
for the loftiest of causes.

We fight in honorable fashion
for the good of mankind;

fearless of the future;

unheeding of our individual fates;

with unflinching hearts
and undimmed eyes.

We stand at Armageddon,
and we battle for the lord!

They cheered him for 45 minutes.

If they wished to form a third party

and have him make the fight,
he told them,

"I will make it, even if only
one state should support me."

Officially, his followers
would call themselves

the progressives,
after the social policies

they and he had championed.

But because their candidate
had told a reporter he felt

"as strong as a bull moose, "

they would be remembered
as the bull moose party.

Many of his closest friends thought
he was making a terrible mistake.

I don't think you can
say it was a mistake

because he would have exploded from
unspent energy if he hadn't done it.

And there's nothing wrong with
every once in a while saying

that two parties aren't responsive

to a rising sentiment in the country.

The two-party system
is an excellent thing

but it is not graven on the heart of man

by the finger of God.

There are occasions when a
serious politician will say

there are serious forces in the country

that are not being
responded to by a kind of

political market failure,
and a third party is required.

And for all the personal
demons that drove him,

I think it's fair to say that
Teddy Roosevelt also had

a public spirit that caused him to move.

TR as a student of
Lincoln's career knows that

the Republican party was just invented

as this strange third party in 1854.

And if you could do that to
meet the needs of the 1850s,

why couldn't you do it in 1912,

because he said, "the two
main parties are husks."

Neither party was really
addressing modern industrial life.

Both parties were, were stalling
and they are stuck with,

you know, party bosses and the
issues of a past generation.

A third party was needed to bring

the crucial issues to the forefront.

Roosevelt's blood was up.

He championed positions far more radical

than any he had espoused before,

positions that had been
put forward for decades

by Americans who felt left out.

The progressive platform recognized

a woman's right to vote and
labor's right to organize;

promised to curtail campaign spending

and defend natural resources;

limit the work day to 8 hours
and the work week to 6 days;

and to provide federal insurance

for the elderly,
the jobless, and the sick.

If judges dared interfere
with the new laws,

he said, they should be
recalled by the voters.

"When a judge decides a
Constitutional question,

When he decides what the people
as a whole can and cannot do,

the people should have the right
to recall that decision...

if they think that it is wrong."

He truly had come to believe that

the progressive agenda
would save this country

from a bloody social
revolution of the kind that

would occur in Russia.
This is not political opportunism.

He believed that the only way
to save capitalist America

was to have a social Democratic
gradualist revolution here,

which we call progressivism.

This was genuine, mature ideology.

But of course he also wanted back in.

Roosevelt was confident
he could beat Taft,

but his hope of defeating the
Democrats rested on their

picking what he called "a reactionary."

And two of the 3 leading
candidates were just the kind of

opponents he'd hoped for.

But after 46 exhausting ballots

at their convention in Baltimore,

the Democrats settled on Woodrow Wilson,

the former president of
Princeton University

and governor of New Jersey.

He'd only been in politics two years,

but he appealed to reformers
because he'd beaten

his own party machine to
pass progressive legislation

in his state.

From Roosevelt's point of view,

Wilson was the worst possible opponent.

Nothing new is happening in politics

except Mr. Roosevelt, who is always new,

being bound by nothing in the
heavens above or in the earth below.

He is now rampant and
very diligently employed

in splitting his party wide open...

So that we Democrats may get in.

Woodrow Wilson.

Dear Franklin,
I hope you will be re-elected

because I know how honest
and fearless you are

and that nothing will change
when you are honest and right.

I hope the "Bull Moose"
party will endorse you.

Of course it ought to,
to be true to its principles.

Mama.

For the first time,
the 1912 election would divide

the Hyde Park Roosevelts from
their Oyster Bay cousins.

Franklin Roosevelt could not
help but admire the battle

Theodore Roosevelt was waging.

"It is indeed a marvelous thing,
" he told an old friend.

But he was already enlisted
in the opposing army.

Long before the bull
moose party was created,

he had been a vocal
supporter of Woodrow Wilson.

Eleanor remained of two minds.

Franklin is well satisfied

with Mr. Wilson's nomination.

But I wish Franklin could be
fighting now for Uncle Ted,

for I feel he is in the
party of the future.

Franklin would be unable
to fight for himself

or anyone else that fall.

He was up for re-election
to the State Senate

but he and Eleanor had both
come down with typhoid fever

and were confined to their
house on East 65th Street.

Luck brought him an able stand-in.

That fall, the same Red Maxwell

that had introduced Franklin Roosevelt

to his constituents two years earlier

prowled dutchess county
again in search of votes...

But this time it was carrying

a very different kind of passenger.

Louis McHenry Howe was a
veteran Albany newspaperman,

gruff and diminutive,

chain-smoking and so famously homely

he sometimes called himself
a "medieval gnome."

Louis Howe is a marvelous character.

He was a little, tiny, hideous man.

He sort of gloried in being ugly.

He smoked like a chimney
and was covered with ashes.

He never stopped talking.

And the Roosevelt children hated him.

Howe loved politics and
political maneuvering,

was drawn to power but knew he
could never win it for himself,

and saw that the closest
he could ever get

was to make himself indispensable

to young Franklin Roosevelt.

He latched on to Franklin
Roosevelt and he was

able to tell Roosevelt
when he was wrong.

He was really the only person

who ever could do that consistently.

"You're a damn fool, Franklin.
Don't think of doing that."

When he met him in 1911,

he actually put aside a bottle of Sherry

and said that he would open it

after Roosevelt became president.

And he decided when no one else

in his right mind would have thought so,

except possibly Roosevelt, that

he should be president
of the United States

He had already begun to
address his employer,

only partly joking, as "beloved
and revered future president."

Howe crisscrossed Roosevelt's district.

He shook hundreds of hands,

promised jobs on behalf of the
candidate wherever he could,

and introduced a shrewd innovation...

Mimeographed "personalized"
letters to farmers, fishermen,

and apple growers, promising
each group special legislation.

And he placed newspaper ads
denouncing Republican bosses

and promising support
for woman suffrage.

Dear Mr. Roosevelt,
here is your first ad.

As I have pledged you in it

I thought you might
like to know casually

what kind of a mess I
was getting you into.

Please wire ok, if it's all right.

Your slave and servant, Howe.

What a miserable showing
some of the so-called

progressive leaders have made.

They represent nothing
but sound and fury.

The minute they were up against
deeds instead of words,

they quit forthwith.

From the first, Theodore Roosevelt's

third party campaign was crippled.

Many of those who had urged
him to challenge Taft...

Including 5 of the 7
Republican governors...

Backed off when he became a Bull Moose.

Those who did rally to him
were devoted but disorganized

and often amateurish.

Taft mostly stayed off
the campaign trail,

convinced his cause was hopeless,

but he issued statements
denouncing what he saw as

Roosevelt's dangerous radicalism.

"One who so lightly regards
Constitutional principles,

and especially the
independence of the judiciary"

was unfit for the presidency,
he said, adding,

"I say this sorrowfully, but I say it

with the conviction of the truth."

Roosevelt and Wilson each
traveled the country by train...

And TR sometimes delivered 30
whistle-stop speeches a day,

shadow-boxing through the
caboose to maintain his energy

before stepping out onto the platform.

Again and again, he denounced
his Democratic opponent

as a secret advocate of state's rights,

a false progressive
masquerading as a friend of

strong federal government.

Both candidates actually
agreed with Wilson's view that

"the president is at liberty
in both law and conscience

to be as big as he can, "

and both men lashed out at the
giant trusts and monopolies

at every stop.

But Roosevelt's "new nationalism"

called only for their regulation,

while Wilson's "new freedom"
seemed to suggest that

he would actually break them up.

In my dream, I saw President McKinley

sit up in his coffin

pointing at a man in monk's attire

in whom I recognized Theodore Roosevelt.

The dead president said,
"this is my murderer,

avenge my death."

On the evening of October 14,

Theodore Roosevelt was in Milwaukee

standing in his open automobile

in front of the gilpatric hotel,

waving his hat to the crowd.

A delusional German immigrant
named John Schrank,

standing just 7 feet away,
aimed a pistol at his chest.

He had been stalking
Roosevelt for a month,

convinced the ghost of William
McKinley was directing his hand.

The bullet passed through the
ex-president's spectacles case

and the folded 50-page speech behind it,

smashed through his chest wall,
and lodged in a splintered rib

less than a quarter of
an inch from his heart.

Roosevelt dabbed at his mouth,
found no blood,

and concluded his lungs were undamaged.

He insisted on delivering his
speech despite his wound.

"I did not care a rap for being shot,
" he later told a friend.

"It is a trade risk which every prominent
man should accept as a matter of course."

Friends, I shall ask you to be

as quiet as possible.

I don't know whether
you fully understand

that I have just been shot.

There is where the bullet went through.

He showed the crowd his
mangled glasses case,

unbuttoned his jacket so that
they could see his bloody shirt.

The bullet is in me now,

so that I cannot make
a very long speech,

but I will try my best.

And now, friends,
this effort to assassinate me

emphasizes to a peculiar degree the
need of the progressive movement.

Every good citizen...

His whole heart and soul
was in this struggle,

he said.

"What we progressives e trying to do

"is to enroll rich and poor,

to stand together for the
most elementary rights

of good citizenship."

"Mr. Wilson has distinctly
committed himself

"to the old flintlock,
muzzle-loaded doctrine

"of states' rights.

We are for the people's rights."

Pale and sometimes
swaying at the podium,

he went on for more than an hour

before his aides could get him to stop

and agree to go to the hospital.

The news spread fast.

Edith Roosevelt heard it while
attending the theater in New York.

He sent her a telegram
urging her to stay home.

He'd been far more seriously
injured falling off horses,

he said.

But she hurried west, anyway;

assurances like that had been made

about William McKinley, too.

Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt,
still recovering from typhoid,

anxiously telephoned "the
New York Times" that evening

to get the latest bulletins
on his condition.

The ex-president's sons
hurried to his side.

Woodrow Wilson suspended his campaign.

Even Roosevelt's enemies were
impressed by his courage.

No one should vote for him
simply because he'd been shot,

the editor of "Collier's" wrote,

"but no amount of argument,
no amount of reflection

"concentrated in many months,

"could have influenced as many
Americans as were stirred

by the shot of a madman."

He was out of action and
under his wife's strict care

for almost two weeks.

"This thing about ours being
a campaign against boss rule

"is a fake, " Roosevelt
joked to a reporter.

"I was never so boss-ruled in my life."

The former president made one more
campaign appearance in Manhattan.

At the sight of him, moving slowly

and still unable to raise his right arm,

the crowd cheered for 43 minutes.

He believed he would win, he told them.

But win or lose,
I am glad beyond measure

that I am one of the
many who in this fight

have stood ready to spend and be spent,

pledged to fight while
life lasts the great fight

for righteousness and for brotherhood

and for the welfare of mankind.

On election day, Roosevelt cast his vote

at the Oyster Bay firehouse,

then stood aside as first his
chauffeur and then his valet

stepped into the same voting booth.

He waited for the returns that
evening at Sagamore Hill.

Roosevelt easily beat Taft.

But his entry into the race had
ensured a Democratic victory.

Woodrow Wilson won the presidency

with only 42% of the vote,

and his party gained control of
both the senate and the house

for the first time in
almost two decades.

There is no use disguising the fact that

the defeat at the polls is overwhelming.

I had expected defeat,
but I had expected

that we would make a better showing.

I try not to think of the
damage to myself personally.

He was so used to being
popular and loved

and then he's suddenly a pariah.

Alice used to say that
there is a melancholy

that ran through the Roosevelt family.

And he had it throughout his whole life

but he had always had
a way to fight it off.

But he fell into a depression.

He just sort of closed himself in

and they had to call a family doctor.

They were very concerned about him.

He was surprised by the defeat

but also by the enormity of the defeat.

I mean, he had, he had lost by quite
a bit and just hadn't expected it.

I mean, he's, Theodore
Roosevelt doesn't lose.

"I cannot bear to have father beaten, "

Edith confided to her
diary at Sagamore Hill.

"It makes me so choke
when I think of father

almost being assassinated

and the people being such cold fishes."

He was brave about it in public

and quite sad about it in private.

Mrs. Roosevelt wrote one of
the children who was away

that "father spends
more time on horseback"

than I have ever known him to do."

On the same day Theodore
Roosevelt was defeated,

Franklin Roosevelt was easily
re-elected to the State Senate,

thanks largely to the
political skill of Louis Howe.

Recovered from their illness,

Franklin and Eleanor went to Washington

for Woodrow Wilson's inauguration,

where Josephus Daniels,
the new secretary of the Navy,

sought Franklin out.

Roosevelt had been an early supporter

of the new Democratic president.

He had a reputation as a reformer.

He had a life-long interest
in sailing and the sea.

And, most important, he bore
the country's most famous name.

"How would you like
to come to Washington

as assistant secretary?" Daniels asked.

He was offering him Theodore
Roosevelt's old job.

"I'd like it bully well!" Franklin said.

Oyster Bay, March 18, 1913.

I was very much pleased
that you were appointed

as assistant secretary of the Navy.

It is interesting to see that
you are at another place

which I myself once held.

I am sure you will enjoy
yourself to the full

as assistant secretary and that

you will do capital work.

New York Democratic bosses
were as glad to see

Franklin leave the State
Senate for Washington

as Republican bosses had been
to see Theodore Roosevelt

run for vice president 14 years before.

Franklin Roosevelt was just 31,

the youngest assistant secretary
of the Navy in history,

7 years younger than
Theodore Roosevelt had been

when he first sat at the same desk,

so young and so young-looking

that a dinner companion
who didn't catch his name

thought him a "naughty little boy,
just out of college."

He and his new boss seemed
hopelessly mismatched.

The new assistant secretary had
attended Groton and Harvard,

learned to sail aboard
his father's yacht,

and, like his cousin Theodore,

believed in a strong
defense and a big Navy.

Josephus Daniels was a newspaper
editor from North Carolina

who called battleships "boats, "

seemed most concerned with banning wine

from officers' messes
throughout the fleet,

and was a close ally of
Wilson's secretary of state

William Jennings Bryan,

who believed strong
defenses were a provocation

and promised that the United States

would never go to war on his watch.

Not long after Franklin
took up his new duties,

his boss went off on an inspection tour,

leaving him in charge.

"There's a Roosevelt on the job today, "

Franklin told a reporter.

"You remember what
happened the last time

a Roosevelt occupied
a similar position?"

What had happened was the
Spanish-American war.

Eleanor, sensitive to any feeling

among her Oyster Bay relatives

that she and Franklin might
unfairly be exploiting

their link with Theodore
Roosevelt, was appalled.

It was a "horrid little remark,
" she told her husband.

Franklin did not apologize.

Secretary Daniels had
already noted in his diary

that Franklin's "distinguished
cousin TR went from

the Navy department to the presidency.

May history repeat itself,
" Daniels said.

Franklin could not have agreed more.

He and Eleanor rented Theodore Roosevelt's
sister Bamie's home at 1733 N Street.

TR had spent the first few
nights of his presidency there

and afterwards had walked there so often

to talk things over
with his shrewd sister

that the press called it
the "Little White House."

It would be Franklin Roosevelt's
headquarters for the next

several crowded, frenetic years.

Eleanor brought to it all the organizational
skills she'd learned in Albany,

seeing to the needs of
her growing household,

entertaining her uncle's old friends,

getting to know new people
from all over the country,

who might be helpful to
her husband's ambitions.

My calls began in the autumn of 1914

under poor auspices,
for I was feeling miserable again,

as another baby was coming along.

Somehow or other I made my
rounds every afternoon,

and from 10 to 30 calls were checked
off on my list day after day.

Mondays, the wives of the
justices of the supreme court;

Tuesdays, the members of Congress.

Franklin's official
duties at the department

included procurement,
budgets, and overseeing

the 65,000 civilians who
worked in the Navy yards.

But he was not content with that.

"I get my fingers into about
everything, " he said,

"and there's no law against it."

Louis Howe guarded the
home-like outer office,

seeing to details, screening
admirals and ordinary visitors

with the same brusque air,
and always making sure the press

heard what his boss was doing.

When Franklin is assistant
secretary of the Navy,

as Theodore was, he first is

associating with his prep school chums

and various people from his social
class who he, he meets with.

And as time goes on he,
he ends up spending more time

with labor leaders,
ship-builders, ordinary people

who made something of themselves.

He started to realize the folks
who actually got things done,

made things happen.

Franklin reveled in the
trappings of his new job.

17 guns greeted him whenever
he stepped aboard a ship.

He affected a Navy cape
and designed an official

assistant secretary's flag for himself.

And whenever he could get away

to his summer home on Campobello Island,

he liked to come and go by destroyer,

guiding the big warship
through the narrows

with his own sure hand at the wheel.

When it came time for the 10th
reunion of his Harvard class,

he arranged to have it held on
the deck of the USS "Palmer."

At lunch on the second day,

Franklin made his grand entrance.

He had that characteristic
way of throwing his head back

and saying, "how are you, Jack?"

"How are you, waiter?"

I know I had the feeling, "hell, Frank",

"you can't put on all
that stuff with us.

We knew you from the old days!"

Walter Sachs, Harvard, class of 1904.

On February 27, 1914,
shortly after midday,

we started down the river
of doubt into the unknown.

The lofty and matted forest

rose like a green wall on either hand.

The trees were stately and beautiful,

the looped and twisted vines
hung from them like great ropes.

After Theodore Roosevelt's defeat

as the progressive party's
candidate for president in 1912,

he undertook another great adventure...

An expedition into the Amazon
rainforest to chart the course

of a newly discovered jungle waterway.

The expedition's leader
was Candido Rodon,

the Brazilian explorer who
had discovered its headwaters

and given it its name... "Rio de
Duvida"... the "River of Doubt."

No one knew where it led.

Roosevelt's 24-year-old son
Kermit, a trained engineer,

went with him.

The depression he'd first
experienced as a child had deepened,

and like his late uncle Elliott,

he had begun drinking to obliterate it.

His mother wanted him to
take care of his father;

his father hoped this dangerous
mission would provide his son

with the kind of action
that had always eased

his own bouts of melancholy.

The expedition was the
55-year-old Theodore Roosevelt's

"last chance to be a boy, " he said.

Instead it would nearly kill him...

And turn him into an old man.

The Roosevelt party...
22 men and 7 dugout canoes...

Would not see another
human being for 48 days.

Flesh-eating piranhas prowled the river;

so did 15-foot crocodiles.

Insects swarmed so thickly
Roosevelt had to wear

protective gear to write
articles for "Scribner's."

Termites ate part of his pith helmet.

Rain fell in sheets.

Roosevelt noted that everything
that didn't rot, rusted.

The expedition soon ran out of food...

And found it hard to
replenish its supply.

The animals they expected to live
off were furtive, invisible.

Unseen Indians of the Cinta Larga Tribe,

who sometimes killed and ate strangers

who dared intrude into their forest,

stalked the party... and shot one of
the expedition's dogs full of arrows.

These Cinta Larga watched

Roosevelt and his men
throughout this trip.

They would sometimes
hear them next to them;

they never saw them.

They would sometimes come
across their villages

even with smoke still
rising out of fires

that they had just put out.

They would sometimes see footprints.

Their dogs sensed them all the time.

They were always barking at the woods.

And they lived in terror.

5 out of 7 dugout canoes were lost

in the fast-moving water.

New ones had to be carved
from hollowed trees

and hauled by land around
rapids and waterfalls.

One man was swept away by a torrent.

Roosevelt and Kermit
both contracted malaria.

Things got steadily worse.

Two of their canoes were
trapped in the water.

And Roosevelt, being Roosevelt,

even though he's already
ill with malaria,

he charges right into the river

to try to free some of
these trapped canoes.

And he slips and gashes his leg.

He immediately knows
that he's in trouble.

He very quickly develops an infection.

And he gets to a point where he
can't lift his head off a cot.

The expedition struggled on.

They came to a set of rapids.

It was a series of 6 falls,
the final of which was 30 feet.

And Colonel Rondon, who had spent

half of his life in
the rainforest, said,

"there's no way we can
get through these.

We're going to have to leave our canoes

and strike out into the rainforest.

Every man for himself."

And Roosevelt couldn't even
sit up, much less walk,

much less fight his way
through this rainforest.

And so he calls for his son
and he says, "get out."

I will stay here."

The ex-president of the
United States of America

intended to swallow a
lethal dose of the morphine

he always carried with
him into the wilderness.

He did not want to be a burden.

It wasn't a decision built of fear,

and it wasn't a dramatic thing.

It was simply "this is
the right thing to do"

and I'm going to do it."

But Kermit would not hear of it.

He was, after all, a Roosevelt, too.

He would sooner have died himself

than leave his father behind,
alive or dead.

I saw that if I did end my life,

that would only make it more sure

that Kermit would not get out.

For I knew he would not abandon me,

but would insist on
bringing my body out, too.

That, of course,
would have been impossible.

So there was only one
thing for me to do,

and that was to come out myself.

Kermit was terrified.

He kept a diary and every day it's,
"I'm worried about father."

"I'm worried about father.

We have to get father out."

Kermit's weeks of working alongside

the expedition's porters
and paddlers paid off.

He used his engineering
skill to lower the dugouts

down the steep canyon walls,

and kept his men moving forward.

But there was still more trouble.

A Porter shot and killed a
companion and fled into the forest.

A deep gorge and an apparently
impassable series of new rapids

stretched on ahead.

Theodore was helpless now,
forced to be paddled along

beneath a makeshift tent.

His fever rose to 104.

He grew delirious, reciting
the same few lines of poetry

"In Xanadu did Kublai Khan

a stately pleasure-dome decree..."

The expedition's doctor cut
open his leg to save his life.

Roosevelt endured the
surgery without anesthetic.

Under Kermit's command,
the party staggered on.

Finally, on April 26,

after a month and a
half in the wilderness,

they came upon a 6-man relief party

that had been sent to help
them out of the rainforest.

Here's Roosevelt so ill,

and he looks up and he sees on
this bank the Brazilian flag

and the flag of the
United States of America.

And he knows that they're gonna
be ok, that they're saved.

The River of Doubt,
which turned out to be almost

half as long as the Rhine,
was renamed "Rio Roosevelt."

New Yorkers gave Roosevelt another
big welcome when he returned home,

but friends were shocked
by his appearance.

He had lost 55 pounds...
roughly a quarter of his weight...

Could barely make himself
heard when speaking,

and leaned on a cane he
bravely called "my big stick."

As he limped down the companionway,

the impression was strong
that the colonel had endured

the greatest hardships of his life.

"New York Sun."

It now seemed likely
that his public life

really had come to an end.

August 1, 1914.

As I am writing, a great black tornado

trembles on the edge of Europe

and the whole question of peace and war

trembles in the balance.

It is not a good thing
for a country to have

a professional yodeler, a human trombone

like Mr. Bryan as secretary of state,

nor a college president like Mr.
Wilson as head of the nation,

with a hypocritical ability
to deceive plain people

and no real knowledge or wisdom

concerning internal and
international affairs.

In early August of 1914,

5 weeks after the assassination

of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo,

Germany declared war
on Russia and France

and sent troops across
the Belgian border.

Britain then declared war on Germany.

Russia then went to war against
the Austro-Hungarian empire.

By the end of the year,
almost all of Europe and part of Asia

were engulfed in what the world
would call the Great War.

Eleanor was at Campobello
with the children.

A complete smash-up is inevitable.

Mr. Daniels totally fails
to grasp the situation.

I'm alive and well and
keen about everything,

running the real work,
though Josephus is here!

He is bewildered by it all,
very sweet but very sad.

I am not surprised at what you say

about Mr. Daniels

for one could expect little else.

To understand the present
gigantic conflict,

one must have at least a
glimmering of understanding

of foreign nations and their histories.

I can see you managing
everything while J.D.

Wrings his hands in horror.

President Wilson called for

"strict and impartial neutrality,
" and insisted that

strengthening American armed
forces would only serve

to provoke the belligerents.

The British fleet blockaded
Germany to choke off armaments.

The Germane... in retaliation...
Unleashed submarines and warned

they would sink enemy vessels on sight.

All of the Roosevelts sided
with england and her allies

from the moment the first gun was fired.

"Even I long to go over
into the thick of it

and right the wrong, " Franklin
told an old British friend.

"England's course has
been magnificent...

If that German fleet would
only come out and fight!"

But as an official in the
Wilson administration,

Franklin had to keep such
thoughts to himself.

Theodore Roosevelt did not.

More and more I come to the view

that in a really
tremendous world struggle,

with a great moral issue involved,

neutrality does not serve righteousness;

for to be neutral between right
and wrong is to serve wrong.

In the spring of 1915,
as the war intensified,

Theodore Roosevelt found himself
in a Syracuse courtroom...

On trial for libel.

In a recent speech, he'd said
that when it came down to

a struggle between "popular rights

and corrupt and
machine-ruled government"

the interests of the
Republican and Democratic

bosses of New York were
"fundamentally identical."

The Republican boss,
William Barnes, immediately sued.

Roosevelt cast about among
old friends and allies

for those willing to testify
to the truth of his charge.

Most backed away,
unwilling to risk the wrath

of one boss or the other.

Franklin was different.

During the 1911 senate
battle over Billy Sheehan,

he'd seen collusion between the
bosses of both parties firsthand

and was more than willing
to say so in court

on behalf of the man who
continued to be his hero.

When a lawyer asked Franklin
what relation he was

to the former president, he grinned.

"Fifth cousin by blood, " he said
proudly, "and nephew by law!"

"I shall never forget the capital way

in which you gave your testimony, "

the ex-president told
Franklin afterwards.

Theodore Roosevelt himself
was such a voluble,

intimidating witness in his own defense

that the plaintiff's
lawyer begged the judge

to make the ex-president
"confine himself to words

and not answer with his whole body."

Theodore Roosevelt was asleep
in his Syracuse hotel room

on the night of may 7
when the telephone rang.

A newspaperman was calling.

A German submarine had sunk

the British passenger ship
"lusitania" off the coast of Ireland.

More than 1,100 men, women,
and children had drowned,

including 128 American citizens.

Did Roosevelt have a comment?

The trial was still on.

Two German-Americans sat on the
jury that would decide his fate.

But Roosevelt could not
keep from speaking out.

This represents not merely piracy,

but piracy on a vaster scale of murder

than the old-time
pirates ever practiced.

It seems inconceivable
that we can refrain

from taking action in this matter,

for we owe it not only to humanity

but to our own national self-respect.

It took the jurors two days,
but in the end,

all 12 of them exonerated Roosevelt,

who went right back on the attack.

There is a chance of our going to war,

but I don't think it is
very much of a chance.

Wilson and Bryan are cordially supported

by all the hyphenated Americans,

by the solid flub-dub and pacifist vote.

Every soft creature,
every coward and weakling,

every man who can't look
more than 6 inches ahead,

every man whose God is money,
or pleasure, or ease

is enthusiastically in favor of Wilson;

and at present the good
citizens, as a whole,

are puzzled and don't
understand the situation.

It was excessive.

But it also was visceral
in the sense that

he didn't like the
presbyterian moralist,

just struck Teddy Roosevelt as,
I think, part of the effeminacy

that he associated with
a commercial Republic.

Wilson declared, "there is such a thing

as being too proud to fight"

He complained again and again
about Secretary Daniels being

that further infuriated
Theodore Roosevelt.

But the president also agreed
to double the defense budget

in the interest of what Wilson
now called "preparedness."

Theodore Roosevelt called
it "half-preparedness."

Meanwhile, Franklin organized
a 50,000-man naval reserve,

relentlessly drove shipyards
to greater efforts,

and laid the keels of new battleships,

including one being built
in the Brooklyn Navy yard,

the USS "Arizona."

He complained again and again
about secretary Daniels being

"too damned slow for words"...

And surreptitiously slipped
damaging information

about his boss and the
administration's defense efforts

to the ranking Republican

on the house military affairs committee.

If the public ever turned on the
administration for having been

too slow in preparing for war,

he was determined he
would not be blamed.

And he shared his cousin
Theodore's conviction

that the United States not
only would... but should...

Hyde Park was very definitely

my most favorite place in life.

Hyde Park was home and the
only place I ever thought

was completely home.

Anna Roosevelt.

Franklin and Eleanor
Roosevelt had houses

in New York City and Washington, D.C.

And on Campobello Island.

But for their 4 children...
Anna, James, Elliott,

and the second Franklin Jr...

It was their grandmother's home
at Hyde Park that represented

a sanctuary from their parents'
increasingly turbulent world.

In 1915, Sara Delano Roosevelt
greatly expanded Springwood

to accommodate them and
the nurses and maids

that traveled with them.

The house now included so many bedrooms

she sometimes called it "our hotel."

The renovated first floor, modeled after

the country houses of the Roosevelts'

aristocratic friends in england,

was meant to be a showcase for
her son and his collections...

His stuffed birds;
His naval prints and books;

and albums filled with stamps.

When he was there, Franklin acted
just as his own father had:

He rode with his children,
swam and sledded,

and took them ice boating on the Hudson.

But his visits with the
family were always brief.

I do so wish

the holiday had been longer
and less interrupted

while it lasted.

I felt Tuesday as if
I was really getting

back to earth again...
and I know it is hard for us both

to lead this kind of life...

But it is a little like a drug habit...

Almost impossible to stop.

Eleanor liked the new
Springwood at first.

It was "very home-like and for
the chicks, " she told a friend,

"ideal."

But it remained her
mother-in-law's home,

she remembered many years later,
and, "I was only a visitor."

Sara Delano Roosevelt

was a very great mother and
a very tough mother-in-law.

And part of the reason we
remember her as a dragon,

she's often portrayed as a dragon,

is that her daughter-in-law, in the end,

came to think of her as a dragon.

Sara ran everything.

She called her grandchildren
"our children."

She weighed them, dressed them,

saw to their manners,
showered them with gifts...

And offered what Anna remembered as

"consistent, warm, spontaneous love"...

The kind of love Eleanor had
never known when she was a girl

and now found hard to
provide to her own children.

Up to a point it is good
for us to know that

there are people in the
world who will give us love

and unquestioned loyalty.

I doubt, However, if it is good for us

to feel assured of this devotion

without the accompanying
obligation of having to justify

this devotion by our behavior.

Sara had firm views

about her daughter-in-law, as well.

"If you'd just run your comb
through your hair, dear, "

she once told Eleanor in
front of dinner guests,

"you'd look so much nicer."

On March 11, 1916, Eleanor gave birth

to John Aspinwall Roosevelt.

She had now borne 6 children,
5 of whom had lived.

There would be no more.
She was 31 years old.

The decade during which, she said,

"I was always just getting over a baby
or about to have another" was over.

She was ready to resume
a life of her own,

to find a new kind of
fulfillment, on her own terms.

On June 14, 1916,
with the nominating conventions

just weeks away, President
Wilson led a preparedness parade

up Pennsylvania Avenue from the
Capitol to the White House...

And made sure that Theodore Roosevelt's

young Democratic cousin

was marching with him.

The Navy department made
an excellent showing

in the parade, and when I
passed the reviewing stand

I was sent for to join the
president in the stand

and spend the next 4 hours there!

It would be a mistake

to re-nominate me in 1916

unless the country has in its mood

something of the heroic...
Unless it feels not only

devotion to ideals but
the purpose to realize

those ideals in action.

Theodore Roosevelt
hoped somehow to obtain

both the progressive and the Republican

presidential nominations that year.

But the old guard of his old party

had not forgiven him for 1912.

And while most Americans

sympathized with Britain and France

and now supported preparedness,

they still remained reluctant to
get involved in a far-away war.

The Republicans chose instead
the austere, mildly progressive

supreme court justice
Charles Evans Hughes.

Roosevelt privately called
him "the bearded lady."

But when Roosevelt's name
was placed in nomination

at the progressive party
convention in June,

he sent a telegram from Sagamore
Hill declining the honor

and urging his followers
to abandon their new party

and vote Republican.

The delegates were stunned.

When the telegram was read,
for a moment,

there was silence.

Then there was a roar of rage.

It was the cry of a broken heart

such as no convention ever had
uttered in this land before.

I had tears in my eyes.

I saw hundreds of men tear

the Roosevelt picture
or the Roosevelt badge

from their coats,
and throw it on the floor.

William Allen White.

In November, Wilson won a narrow victory

on the slogan, "he kept us out of war."

"We are passing through a streak
of yellow in our national life, "

Roosevelt told his sister.

The progressive party
disintegrated without its hero.

Some members returned
to the Republicans;

some became Democrats.

A number of the social
and economic reforms

Roosevelt and the
progressives had championed

had already become law
thanks to Woodrow Wilson's

shrewd political skills...

A new antitrust statute,
workmen's compensation,

a ban on most child labor,
a federal reserve board

and federal trade commission.

But making a reality of other planks

in the old progressive platform

would have to wait for another
time... and another Roosevelt.

Let us dare to look
the truth in the face.

There is no question
about "going to war."

Germany is already at war with us.

The only question for us to decide

is whether we shall make
war nobly or ignobly.

In Europe, the war on the
Western front dragged on.

New machines of war made
old tactics obsolete.

Millions died.

The battle lines had been
frozen for nearly 3 years now,

along a line that stretched 450 Miles

from Belgium to Switzerland.

In early 1917, in an attempt to
strangle British supply lines

and break the deadlock,

Germany began waging
unrestricted submarine warfare

on all vessels... including
American merchant ships.

Wilson severed relations with Germany.

Then, an intercepted German telegram

to the Mexican president promised that

in exchange for help in the event of war

with the United States,

Texas, Arizona, and new Mexico
would be returned to Mexico.

Wilson still seemed reluctant
to take further action.

"My God, why doesn't he do something?"

Theodore Roosevelt said.

"If he does not go to
war with Germany now,

I shall skin him alive."

And I think he felt that

Woodrow Wilson flinching from
the great test of our time,

world war I, was unworthy
of our energetic country.

War is good for us.

This is a side of Mr. Roosevelt

that's not attractive but really there.

On the evening of March 9, 1917...

Just 4 days after Wilson's
second inauguration...

Franklin met secretly in a private room

at the metropolitan club in Manhattan

with 9 of the president's most important

interventionist opponents...
Including his lifelong hero,

Theodore Roosevelt.

Some wanted to praise Wilson's
recent actions in the hope that

it would stiffen his spine,

but the ex-president
called for keeping up

a relentless all-out attack.

In his diary, Franklin noted,
"I backed TR's theory."

In the ongoing struggle between

the president he was supposed to serve

and the ex-president he venerated,

Franklin seemed to have made his choice.

9 days later, the germane
made that choice irrelevant.

On March 18, they torpedoed
3 American merchant ships.

Wilson polled his cabinet
as to what he should do.

All 10 members voted for war.

Josephus Daniels cast his
vote with tears in his eyes.

On the evening of April 2, 1917,

Woodrow Wilson finally asked Congress

for a declaration of war.

It is a fearful thing to lead

this most peaceful people

into the most terrible and
disastrous of all wars.

But the right is more
precious than peace,

and we shall fight for the things we
have always carried nearest our hearts.

Franklin sat next to secretary Daniels

on the house floor.

Eleanor was in the gallery,
listening "breathlessly, "

she remembered, and then
"returned home still half-dazed

by the sense of impending change."

Franklin, eager to do his part

and mindful always of
Theodore Roosevelt's example,

volunteered to serve overseas.

President Wilson told him
to stay where he was.

"Neither you nor I nor
Franklin Roosevelt, "

Wilson told Josephus Daniels,

"has the right to select
the place of service

to which our country has assigned us."

Just as the United
States entered the war,

Franklin and Eleanor were living
in a house in Washington.

And their two youngest boys were asleep

on the fourth floor of the house

when suddenly the door burst
open and Theodore Roosevelt,

whom they had barely met,

appeared, grabbed one under each arm,

said, "it's far too early
for you to be in bed, "

it was about midnight,

and thundered down 4 flights of stairs

with these terrified children
under his arms and then,

plunked them on the floor
and then spent an hour or so

orating about hi..., the role

that he hoped to play in the war

while they stood and watched him

and tried to figure
out who this man was.

The former president was in town

to see the current one and
to try... like Franklin...

To get into the war.

He called at the White
House the next day.

All his previous criticism was
now "dust in a windy street, "

he assured Wilson.

All he wanted to do was help.

The allies were desperate.

It would take time to build
and train an American army.

He was sure he could raise
a division of volunteers

virtually overnight,
lead it into battle,

and inspire the allies to hold on.

"He is a great big boy,
" Wilson told an aide

after Roosevelt had left.

"There is a sweetness about him.

You can't resist the man."

But the president still had the
secretary of war turn him down.

Theodore Roosevelt was
half-blind, in bad health,

out of touch with military
developments, and an amateur.

"The business now at hand,
" Wilson said later,

"is undramatic, practical,
and of scientific

definitiveness and precision."

Roosevelt was deeply wounded.

"This is a very exclusive war,
" he told a friend,

"and I have been blackballed by
the committee on admissions."

I think that's when
it all ended for him.

First of all, the first World War

was not a heroic war anymore.

The old idea of we're all
crusaders, cavaliers,

this is romantic and we're
charging in on our horses,

all over.

Tanks, machine guns, airplanes,
poison gas, it's not his world.

His world has ended.

And he gets very old very rapidly.

You look at the photographs
of him or the old film clips,

he's old, old man as if he's
a high intensity light bulb

that burned out quickly.

But if he could not fight,
his 4 sons could,

and one by one,
he secured places for them

that would nudge them as
close as possible to danger.

"I should be ashamed of my sons
if they shirked war, " he wrote,

"just as I should be
ashamed of my daughters

if they shirked motherhood."

I have always explained
to my 4 sons that if

there is a war during their lifetime,

I wish them to be in a position
to explain to their children

why they did go to it,
and not why they did not go to it.

The war was my emancipation
and education.

Instead of making social calls,
I found myself spending

3 days a week in a canteen
down at the rail road yards,

one afternoon a week

distributing free work
for the Navy league,

two days a week visiting
the naval hospital,

and contributing
whatever time I had left

to the Navy red cross and
the Navy relief society.

I loved it. I simply ate it up.

The war liberated all
of what Eleanor called

her "executive ability."

In order to undertake the
war work which consumed her,

she had to organize her busy household

to function without her.

She rose often at 5 in the morning,

and spent 12 hours without a break

at the union station red cross canteen

making coffee and jam sandwiches

for the dough boys passing through.

Sometimes, I wondered if I could

live that way another day.

Strength came, However,

with the thought of Europe
and a little sleep,

you could always begin a new day.

One day, the red cross asked Eleanor

to inspect St. Elizabeth's
hospital, a mental facility

filled with sailors and marines

suffering in the aftermath of battle.

The prospect terrified her.

Her experiences with her
alcoholic father and uncles

made her frightened of anyone
without what she called

"the power of self-control."

She never forgot the sound of
the door locking behind her

or the sight of the dark ward
filled with shattered men,

some chained to their beds,
muttering, staring.

They continued to frighten her
but she came back to see them,

week after week,
and lobbied the government

and raised private funds
to improve the conditions

under which they lived.

"You must do what you think
you cannot do, " she wrote.

She would keep doing that all her life.

Dear Rosy was in town yesterday

and says they all feel quite upset

at your appearance at the Tammany club

as your speaking strengthens Tammany.

Uncle Warren says one of the papers

has pictures of you and
Murphy side by side.

All this rather upsets me, I confess.

Mama.

On July 4, 1917,

Franklin addressed the annual Tammany
Hall celebration in New York.

He assured his mother afterwards

it had been a "purely patriotic" event,

part of the larger war effort.

In fact, it was a signal to Boss Murphy

and the big-city Democrats
that once the fighting ended,

he would no longer be their enemy.

To succeed in post-war politics,

he would need the bosses he
had once fought so hard.

Meanwhile, he did all he could

to strengthen and speed up the Navy.

Daniels over-ruled his plan

to build hundreds of small craft
to patrol American harbors

that were not under any real threat...

"I fear buying a lot
of junk, " he wrote...

But when the secretary also
opposed a far grander scheme

to eliminate the submarine menace

by laying half a million nets and mines

between Scotland and Norway,

he went over his head to
the president himself

to win approval.

71,000 mines would be put in
place before the war ended.

"Chicago Post."

Mr. Daniels has one, only one,

virile-minded, hard-fisted,
civilian assistant.

Uncuriously enough,
his name is Roosevelt.

Privately, Franklin continued to be

scornful of his slow-moving boss

and never abandoned hope of
supplanting him as secretary,

but he also learned lessons from Daniels

that would prove
essential to him later...

How to work his will with Congress

and how to keep control out of the hands

of ambitious military men who assumed

they knew better than civilians.

FDR took from the first World War

a great sense of the bureaucratic con.

He always understood where people were

hiding money in budgets or why
certain things wouldn't happen

because he had once hidden money
in budgets and not done things,

that, that his superiors wanted.

We forget sometimes how
important Woodrow Wilson

and the legacy of Wilson was
to Roosevelt's generation.

He spent 7 years next door
to Wilson's White House.

Wilson was hugely important to him

and he learned from Wilson's mistakes,

but also in serving that administration,

he came to understand politics
in a very practical level.

In the summer of 1918,

Roosevelt finally persuaded his chief

to let him sail for Europe
on an inspection tour.

If Franklin Roosevelt could not fight,

at least he could see the
fighting for himself.

The good, old ocean is
so absolutely normal...

Just as it has always been...
Sometimes tumbling about

and throwing spray like this morning...

Sometimes gently lolling about
with occasional points of light

like tonight...
but always something known...

An old friend of moods and power.

But now, though the
ocean looks unchanged,

the doubled number on
lookout shows that even here

the hand of the hun false God
is reaching out to defy nature,

that 10 Miles ahead of this
floating city of souls

a torpedo may be waiting
to start on its quick run;

that we can never get our good,
old ocean back again

until that God and the
people who have set him up

are utterly cut down and purged.

The enemy torpedo he
feared never materialized.

But an enemy submarine was
spotted several miles away...

And over the years,
in Roosevelt's retelling,

the American destroyer
and the German submarine

grew closer and closer
until he was claiming

it had come up first on one side
of his ship and then the other.

Dearest Ted, you and your brothers

are playing your parts
in the greatest of

the world's great days,

and what man of gallant
spirit does not envy you?

You are having your crowded
hours of glorious life;

you have seized the great chance,

as it was seized by those who fought

at Gettysburg and Waterloo,

and Agincourt and Arbela and Marathon.

He was at Sagamore Hill
doing routine correspondence

when Phil Thompson of
the Associated Press

came to see him on July 16, 1918.

And Thompson was a friend of
Roosevelt's, and he said,

"The New York Sun" has
just received a telegram.

Part of it's been censored but it says,

"watch Oyster Bay for"
and then it's blank.

When Roosevelt saw
that telegram he said,

"one of my boys is in trouble."

Two of them had already been in trouble.

First, Archie's knee and elbow

had been shattered by German shells,

and he had been awarded the
French Croix de Guerre.

Ted had been gassed leading his men

on the front lines in one battle

and been awarded the silver star

for his gallantry in another.

Kermit was unhurt, but he had
survived several close calls

fighting with the British
army in Mesopotamia.

He, too, had been
decorated for his bravery.

"I wish to heaven that it
was my worthless, old body

that was exposed to the danger
in the place of my sons, "

their father had told a friend.

"But I would not have them elsewhere

for anything in the world."

Quentin, the youngest and perhaps

the best-loved of the
Roosevelt children,

had joined the army's
fledgling air service.

He was engaged to Miss
Flora Payne Whitney,

but forbidden by her parents to
marry until the war was over.

When a visitor told Quentin
how proud the country was

to see all the Roosevelt sons
in uniform, he just grinned.

"Well, " he said,
"you know it's rather up to us

to practice what father preaches."

His fellow flyers in the 95th
"kicking mule" aero squadron

called Quentin the "go and get 'em man"

because of his eagerness for combat.

On July 5, 1918, he'd
survived his first dogfight.

"You get so excited that
you forget everything

except getting the other fellow,
" he wrote to his mother.

On the 10th, he'd shot
down a German plane.

"The last of the lion's
brood has been blooded!"

His proud father said
when he heard the news.

On the 14th, Quentin had gone
up again with his comrades.

A stiff wind blew them
dangerously deep into Germany.

An enemy formation rose to meet them.

14 planes mixed in a "general melee, "

one American pilot remembered,

"rolling and circling and diving

with the continuous tat, tat,
tat, tat of the machine guns."

The Americans flew separately
back to their base.

Bullets had riddled his cockpit.

His plane plunged into a rutted field.

The next morning at dawn,

Phil Thompson, his friend
from the associated press,

is back with the confirming telegram.

And Roosevelt looked at it and
he walked in towards the house

and he said, "how am I
going to tell Edith?"

"How will I, how will I
break this news to Edith?"

And so he did and they
issued a statement

about how proud they were that their son

had gotten to the front
and had seen action

and had done his national service.

When the Roosevelts lived
in the White House,

those children were in
the news all the time,

and Quentin was, I think, about 4

when his father became president.

And he was really in a large
sense the country's little boy.

So when he died,
this was front-page news

across the country.

There was a town in Pennsylvania,

which had been named Bismarck,

that changed its name to Quentin.

To feel that one has
inspired a boy to conduct

that has resulted in his death

has a pretty serious
side for a father...

And at the same time I would
not have cared for my boys

and they would not have cared for me

if our relations had not
been just along that line.

Roosevelt remained stoical in public,

but his coachman came
upon him in the stable,

his face buried in the mane
of his son's pony, murmuring,

"poor quentyquee, poor quentyquee."

A German soldier photographed
Quentin's corpse.

Copies of the picture made their
way to all the Roosevelts.

"Two bullet holes in the head,
" Eleanor Roosevelt told a friend,

"so he did not suffer and it
is a glorious way to die."

A few weeks later, she saw her
uncle at a family gathering.

He took her aside.

She was still his favorite niece

and he had no wish ever to wound her.

But, he said, it was her duty to
persuade her husband to enlist

and get to the front in
uniform before this war ended.

Eleanor was annoyed; Only Franklin

could make such a decision
and President Wilson himself

had told him to stay at his post.

Meanwhile, overseas on
his inspection tour,

her husband had been having
the time of his life.

In London, Roosevelt bought himself

3 pairs of silk pajamas,

praised the heroism of the
men he called "my" marines

at the Battle of Belleau Wood,

chatted with king George V, who told him

he'd "never seen a German gentleman"...

And had a brief encounter
with the man with whom

he would one day direct
a far bigger war.

It was Monday, July 29, 1918

at Gray's Inn in London.

There's a great dinner
of the war ministers.

Fdr was assistant secretary of the Navy.

Winston Churchill was there

and Churchill was quite
grumpy about being there.

And to FDR's everlasting chagrin,

Churchill didn't remember him at all.

Which is possibly for a politician

the single worst thing
that can happen to you.

He made no impression whatever.

In France, Franklin visited
his wounded cousins

Ted and Archie,

accompanied a drunken
Congressional delegation

to the folies-bergere,

and tirelessly toured the battlefields

in a special costume he'd
designed for himself.

At one battered village, he was allowed

to fire an artillery shell into
the German lines, 7 Miles away.

And at a crossroads called
"the angle of death, "

he stood in the open snapping
photographs long enough

for the germane to call in artillery.

He and his party had
to drive off so fast

he left his suitcase behind.

"The more I think of it,
" he wrote Eleanor, "the more I feel

that being only 36 my place
is not at a Washington desk,

even a Navy desk.

I know you will understand."

He now hoped to get
himself a Navy commission

and join a naval battery
on the Western front.

But first he traveled to Scotland

to inspect the north sea mines

and spent a couple of days
salmon-fishing in a cold rain

before sailing home.

Once aboard the USS "Leviathan, "

he collapsed in his cabin
with double pneumonia.

When the ship docked in New York,

orderlies had to carry him ashore.

An ambulance brought him
to his mother's house.

He was carried to a guest room upstairs.

Eleanor unpacked her husband's luggage

and came upon a bundle of
letters tied with a string.

They were addressed
to him and written by

her own one-time Social
Secretary Lucy Mercer.

At that moment, she remembered later,

"the bottom fell out of my
own particular world, "

and she was forced, she said,

to "face myself, my surroundings",

my world, honestly for the first time."

Lucy was beautiful,
cultured, soft-spoken,

6 years younger than Eleanor.

She came from an old Catholic
family from Maryland

that had fallen on hard times.

Bamie Roosevelt had recommended her

not long after the young
Roosevelts arrived in Washington

5 years before,

and Eleanor had been pleased
with the way she had helped

steer her through the shoals of
society in the nation's capital.

Lucy Mercer had been part of the
Roosevelt household for 3 years.

The children liked her. So did Sara.

"She is so sweet and
attractive, " she wrote,

"and she loves you, Eleanor."

But she also came to love Franklin...

"His ringing laugh, " Lucy remembered,

"all the ridiculous
things he used to say...

His extraordinarily beautiful head."

Lucy Mercer was a beautiful,
sweet-natured,

nice woman who adored the
husband of her employer.

She adored Franklin.

And he had a deep need
to find substitutes

for the kind of unquestioning adoration

that his mother had given him.

And Lucy Mercer was that person.

She was younger than he.

She thought everything
he did was marvelous.

He was sweet to her.

And, she fell in love with him

and he fell in love with her.

When Eleanor and the children

were away at Campobello,

Lucy and Franklin had
spent time together,

dining at the homes of discreet friends,

sailing and picnicking
along the potomac.

Alice Roosevelt long worth,

Theodore Roosevelt's oldest daughter,

had seen them driving
around Washington together

and teased Franklin about miss Mercer.

Rumors may have reached Eleanor.

She had let her secretary
go in June of 1917,

but within two weeks Lucy
had enlisted in the Navy,

and was conveniently assigned
to Franklin's office

at the Navy department.

At Campobello that summer,
Eleanor worried about

where her husband was
and what he was up to.

In October, Franklin's
boss Josephus Daniels

dismissed Miss Mercer from the service.

The threat to the Roosevelt marriage

seemed to have been lifted.

But now, more than a year later,

it was clear that Lucy Mercer

was still an important part
of her husband's life.

I'm sure he regretted hurting his wife.

But I think Franklin Roosevelt
didn't dwell very much

on the impact he had on people.

He, he was in many ways

a very selfish,
a very self-centered person.

Lucy's relationship with Franklin

confirmed every fear Eleanor Roosevelt

had ever harbored about herself:

No one would ever love her for long.

She offered her husband his "freedom."

His mother was said to have told her son

she would not stand in his way

if he wanted to leave his
wife and 5 children...

But she also would not provide
him with another penny,

would make sure he did not
inherit his beloved Springwood.

Louis Howe weighed in, too:

A divorce, he said, would end
Franklin's political career.

Franklin promised never
to see Lucy Mercer again.

Eleanor agreed to remain with him.

But the experience taught her,

she would write many years later,

"that practically no one is
entirely bad or entirely good,

that a man must be what he is."

Eleanor Roosevelt never forgave

or forgot what he had done.

She resented it really all her life.

She told all of her
intimate friends about it.

It was the sort of almost the brand of

your intimacy with Mrs. Roosevelt

that she would tell you
the story of his betrayal

and how she had dealt with it.

I think she was extremely
bitter about it.

Now, having said that,
their marriage went on.

And it would be one of
the great partnerships

in the history of the world,
let alone the United States.

At 11:00 in the morning
on November 11, 1918,

the great war ended
in an allied victory.

"The feeling of relief and thankfulness

was beyond description, " Eleanor wrote.

New York. November 19, 1918.

Well, we have seen the mighty days...

Have lived through the
most tremendous tragedy

in the history of civilization.

In spite of our pacifists
and sentimentalists

and tricky politicians,

America did finally play
a real part in the war

and played it manfully.

Ted and Kermit have taken
part in the last fighting,

and I believe they are now
walking toward the rhine.

Archie, pretty badly crippled,
is back with us.

This is Quentin's birthday.

I think that Theodore Roosevelt

was in a lot of pain
through much of his life,

physical pain, emotional loss,
suffering from emotional loss.

And yes, he wanted to be
courageous in the face of pain,

but he also didn't want to
inflict that pain on us,

on his audience.

That was for him to have to deal with.

And he'd known it since
childhood, all his life.

And he'd known loss all his life.

And this brevity of life is
painful for him to face.

Dear Ted, father was in your old nursery

and loved the view, and as it got dusk

he watched the dancing of waves

and spoke of the
happiness of being home,

and made little plans for me.

I think he had made up his mind

that he would have to suffer
for some time to come

and with high courage had
adjusted himself to bear it.

He was very sweet all day.

Since Quentin was
killed he has been sad.

Only Ethel's little girl had
the power to make him merry.

On the evening of January 5, 1919,

Theodore Roosevelt sat
reading by the fire

in his children's empty nursery.

He'd recently been hospitalized
for inflammatory rheumatism;

was still weak, weary,
oddly short of breath.

But he'd long since made his
peace with the Republican party

and was certain that 1920 would
bring him back to power at last.

Meanwhile, he needed rest.

As he closed his book and got
ready for bed that evening,

he said to Edith,
"I wonder if you will ever know"

how I love Sagamore Hill."

He never woke up.

He was just 60 years old.

"The old lion is dead."

"I have never known
another person so vital, "

the editor William Allen White wrote,

"nor another man so dear."

"Death had to take him sleeping, "

Vice President Thomas
Marshall told the press,

"for if Roosevelt had been awake,

there would have been a fight."

Two days later, as pallbearers
prepared to carry his coffin

to a hilltop grave at Oyster Bay,

a New York police captain said
to Roosevelt's sister Corinne,

"do you remember the fun of him?

It was not only that he was a great man,

but, there was such fun
in being led by him."

My sorrow is so keen
for the young who die

that the edge of my grief is blunted

when death comes to the old,
of my own generation;

for in the nature of things
we must soon die anyhow...

And we have warmed both hands
before the fire of life.

Franklin and Eleanor
Roosevelt had been unable

to attend the funeral.

They were at sea,
on their way to Europe.

He was going back to dismantle
naval installations.

She insisted she go along, too,
to look after him, she said.

His health was still fragile.

So was their marriage.

Theodore Roosevelt's
death stunned them both.

He had been Franklin's
hero all his life...

"The greatest man I
ever knew, " he said.

He had been a hero to Eleanor, too...

And a vivid link to her beloved father.

But Theodore Roosevelt's death

was about to provide Franklin Roosevelt

with a great opportunity.