Strange Death of Franklin Roosevelt - Emanuel Josephson |
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the pathetic puppet of the conspirators scheming the destruction of democracy and the establishment of an American monarchy. For the role for which he was picked, he had every qualification.
F.D.R. was a direct scion of both the Roosevelt and Delano clans. On the Roosevelt side, he was descended from Claas Martenszen van Rosenvelt (or Rosenfeld) descendants of proselytized Sephardic Jews who had settled in Holland and later migrated to New Amsterdam in 1649. Claas, his son, was father of Johannes, the direct ancestor of Theodore Roosevelt, and of Jacobus, the direct ancestor of F.D.R.
Jacobus Roosevelt married one of the most affluent and picturesque woman of the time, Catherina Hardenbroeck. According to tradition, she was the hardest drinking, hardest cussing, hardest fighting woman who ever sailed before her own mast as skipper in the rum, molasses, slave and smuggling trade. Isaac, her son, was the man whose invitation to attend a wife's funeral, was rejected by George Washington because of a question of propriety.
The intervening ancestors were German, Swedish, and principally English, so that the original Dutch strain is thoroughly diluted. Col. Theodore Roosevelt, 26th president was a fifth cousin. F.D.R.'s half-niece. Helen Rebecca Roosevelt married Theodore Douglas Robinson, son of Theodore Roosevelt's sister Corinne, the grandmother of Joseph and Stewart Alsop, the columnists.
By direct line of descent from Thomas Shepard and Anne Tyng, John Adams, second president, and John Quincy Adams, sixth, were sixth and seventh cousins. But the relationship of the two branches of the family have ben maintained in closer degree by intermarriage. The marriage of Fred B. Adams to Ellen W. Delano, a first cousin of F.D.R. has been mentioned.
Less directly, through intermarriage of the Van Deursens and the Van Burens, F.D.R.'s great grandfather was a third cousin of Martin Van Buren, eighth president.
On the Delano side F.D.R. was more or less remotely related to George Washington, James Madison, 4th president. General William Henry Harrison, 9th president. General Zachary Taylor, 12th president, Andrew Johnson, 17th president. General Ulysses S. Grant, 18th president. General Benjamin Harrison, 23rd president and William Howard Taft, 27th president. As has been stated. President Grant was F.D.R.'s closest relative among the presidents. It has been noted also that on the Delano side, F.D.R. proudly traces his ancestry to the King of England, Henry II, and through the Astors, by marriage, to George VI. The numerous intermarriages with European nobility have been mentioned.
The royal background and ancestry were calculated to engender ambitions and fire the aspirations of a Pretender to an American throne; and the Dynasty's influence has made it a possibility.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the son of fifty-two year old James Roosevelt, vice-president of the Delaware and Hudson Railroad, director of several other corporations and retired country squire, and Sara Delano, twenty-six year old daughter of Warren Delano, merchant and clipper ship operator in the China trade, who made a sizeable fortune in opium smuggling. The Kean gang also entered the picture.
By the first marriage F.D.R. had a half-brother, James Roosevelt Roosevelt, a banker and appointee to the diplomatic corps by Grover Cleveland, a kinsman of his father. It is amusing to note that this brother has been kept a dark secret by the New Dealers because it would not be compatible with the picture of F.D.R. "throwing the money lenders out of the temple". James Roosevelt Roosevelt's first wife was Helen Schermerhorn Astor, daughter of the society leader, Mrs. William B. Astor and aunt of Vincent Astor.
Sara Delano Roosevelt, dominating mother, did not send her boy to school to mix with schoolmates but kept him home under the tutelage first of French and German governesses, and then of tutors until he was fourteen. Almost every year he was taken to Europe for several months. He attended public school at Nauheim two years, studying map reading and military topography. At an early age he conceived a great admiration for things German and became thoroughly imbued with Prussian militarism, and their lust for war on land, and especially, on sea. Summers were spent at Campobello.
Under the influence of his mother, who was derived from a sea-faring family and whose cousin, according to Daniel W. Delano (Pic, July 8, 1941), had designed and built the first armor-clad, screw-driven warship, F.D.R.'s keenest interest, at the age of twelve, was warships and navies.
At fourteen he was sent to school at Groton, which tries to be ever so British and mimics Eton. At eighteen lie entered Harvard. He did little studying but managed to get by. His social life was more successful and he attained an editorship on the Crimson. His guiding star was his distant cousin, Theodore Roosevelt. In his conversation he talked so much about his birth, social position and aspirations that he was twitted by his classmates about his "Royal Family". In 1904 he left Harvard and went to Columbia Law School.
Shortly after he had entered Harvard, F.D.R.'s father died. In his will he intimated that he did not trust Franklin's competence and left him nothing outright but merely $100,000 in trust. His mother inherited the estate, held the purse strings and "managed" him. She took up residence near Harvard to superintend his education.
Against his mother's will, F.D.R. proposed to Eleanor Roosevelt, niece of President Theodore Roosevelt. It is apparent that F.D.R. was dazzled by his distant cousin in the White House and that Eleanor's close relationship to him gave added lure. When the point for opposition had passed, Sara Delano acquiesced.
Teddy gave his niece, and godchild, away on March 17, 1905 at the homes of Eleanor's cousin, Mrs. Henry Parish, Jr. and of her mother, Mrs. E. Livingston Ludlow, 6 and 8 East Seventy-sixth Street, New York City.
F.D.R. had no resources of his own. He was completely dependent on his mother's gifts, and she bossed the newlyweds thoroughly. She provided them a house at Hyde Park, a summer home at Campobello, and built for him a house adjoining her own on East Sixty-fifth Street. The bride reports she had no voice in the furnishing of her own homes. But marriage to Eleanor had its rewards for F.D.R. He was now especially welcome and became a frequent guest at the White House or at the home of Theodore Roosevelt's brother-in-law, Rear Admiral William Sheffield Cowles and he came in closer contact with his hero, the ruling Dynast. He had an opportunity to become thoroughly imbued with tradition and methods, and was able to make contacts which served him well later. He learned at first hand from the Master the use of showmanship and opportunism as political tools.
Mrs. Henry Parrish, on her death, left $250,000 to "my beloved niece Eleanor Roosevelt", and an equal amount "to my nephew, Sumner Welles". It is in the person of Sumner Welles, former Assistant Secretary of State during the Roosevelt regime, that certain family failings of the clan have come to light most notoriously. "CONFIDENTIAL" magazine, in its issue of May, 1956 (vol. 4, No. 2) openly accused Sumner Welles of homosexuality, quoting from public records. No mention is made of a predilection for colored minors.
In this connection, it might be noted that FDR's cousin, Ellen Roosevelt, reported that Eleanor Roosevelt's mother was a woman of some degree of color, who was indiscreetly attached to Theodore Roosevelt. Teddy's ne'er-do-well, dissolute brother, Elliott, appears on the family tree as Eleanor's father. But her mother is curiously glossed over in it
F.D.R. was uninterested in his law studies and was never able to graduate in law. He had no patience with rules or laws. As a spoiled brat he had always changed the rules of games to suit his whims. As a Dynastic heir, he planned to make his own laws, in the fashion of a Pasha. He gloried in the idea of laying down the law. Whenever he signed a new bill, even on his dying day, he would say to his secretary: "Here is where I make a new law." (Time, April 23, 1945, p. 18). But the influence of the Dynasty was great. The Bar Association made a rare exception in his case and admitted him to the Bar without a law degree; and, it is reported, without a rigid examination. He was given a job by his cousin's (Sara Delano, daughter of Warren Delano III) husband Roland L. Redmond, senior partner of Carter, Ledyard and Milburn.
His chief interest during this period, as previously, was military and naval history. He spent a large part of his time at Hyde Park in the role of country squire, and in summer at Campobello. His mother was still his main source of income for the support of his family. Indicative of his breadth of mind was the clause that appeared regularly in his advertisements for help for Hyde Park: "No Catholic need apply." This anti-Catholicism in later political activities was thinly disguised, but repeatedly emerged, and James Farley need not have been surprised at the treatment he received.
F.D.R.'s start in politics he owed to the power of the Dynasty and the popularity of the Roosevelt name. The members of the Dynasty then in control of the local political machine provided the opportunity. Chief Theodore Roosevelt was then engaged in vengefully wrecking the Republican Party and defeating Taft in the interest of Morgan. F.D.R. was dilly-dallying with law and other avocations at the time but was not making a living and had to be provided for. And he could not be provided for better than to place him on the public payroll where he could serve the Dynasty. They gave him the nomination for State Senator for Dutchess County and Putnam County, the old stamping ground of Martin Van Buren who had built up the political machine in that district almost a century earlier. His running mate for the Assembly was a distant relative, Louis Stuyvesant Chanler, great-great grandson of John Jacob Astor. The Senate district had always been Republican and it was not expected that there was any chance that the Democratic candidate would win. The Poughkeepsie Eagle commented on the situation:
"Presumably his (F.D.R.'s) contribution to the campaign funds goes well above four figures but the Republican nominee will not be disturbed by Mr. Roosevelt's candidacy."
But Theodore Roosevelt had disrupted the Republican Party in New York, characteristically following the pattern of disgruntled ex-officeholders of the ever treacherous and disloyal Dynasty, and had assured a victory to the opposition, the Democratic Party. F.D.R. was carried in by the landslide.
In the campaign he showed that he had learned from his paragon, Theodore Roosevelt, the device of catch-penny demagoguery which later proved a favorite device throughout his career. In the campaign there were elements of Ku Klux Klanism; and F.D.R. shone in the light of champion of the Protestant White Americans. Though his nomination had been given him by the local Dynastic bosses who controlled both parties, he made a sham fight on "Bossism" and a pretense of deserting his social class, for demagogic appeal. F.D.R. proved an apt pawn.
In the New York State Senate, the upstate Dynasty political machine once again made good use of the Roosevelt name and built up the repute of their man, F.D.R. The occasion was the unpopular plan for nomination of William Sheehan, candidate of Tammany's boss, Charley Murphy, to succeed United States Senator Chauncey Depew. Six district leaders, as well as J. Sergeant Cram, chairman of the New York Democratic County Committee, worked actively for his defeat.
The "fight" took the form of "passive resistance", refusal to attend the Democratic caucus, so that the majority would not be present. In all, seventeen Democrats under the leadership of the Osbornes led the "fight". Most of the upstate Democratic leaders who traditionally opposed Tammany, sought Sheehan's defeat. The influence of the Dynasty plus the news value of the Roosevelt name combined to credit the "fight" on Sheehan to F.D.R. and rob the Osbornes of credit for their leadership. The New York Times was particularly helpful in thus building up F.D.R. Inasmuch as the Times, belying its early-day virility and the public spirit that marked its fight on Tweed, has made obsequiousness to the powers that be its consistent policy, there can be seen the hand of Theodore Roosevelt and the Dynasty in the "build-up" of cousin F.D.R.
Word got around that there was an important element of anti-Catholicism in Roosevelt's opposition to Sheehan. In view of his previous exhibitions of anti-Catholicism and the Klu Klux Klanism, this was not surprising. With the objective of allaying resentment thus aroused, the "insurgents", after a prolonged holdout, voted for a Tammany candidate of Murphy's, Justice James A. O'Gorman.
Once he had gained the limelight, F.D.R. had no difficulty in holding it. In whatever he did he had the backing of the Dynasty and he played to the gallery with all the studied effort that he had learned from his cousin "Teddy". The Dynasty had prepared some new raw material for the White House to carry on its line of succession.
Roosevelt's campaign for reelection to the State Senate brought on the scene Louis McHenry Howe. He largely accounts for any element of political talent that Roosevelt is supposed to have possessed. Howe took over at the point that the Dynastic bosses left off. He was a one man "brain trust" who cooperated with a full time staff of reliable workers, including Margaret LeHand, in creating the Roosevelt known to the public, about whom there centered the Roosevelt myth. Before F.D.R. had reached the point where Rockefeller subsidized professional staffs did his thinking for him, Louis Howe did the job single-handed. Much of what the public has been led to believe is the personality of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, is merely a reflection of his ghost personality, his ghost thinker and ghost writer, Louis Howe.
Howe, who was the Albany correspondent of the New York Herald and Telegram, took complete control of Roosevelt's 1912 renomination campaign. Roosevelt was stricken with typhoid fever at the time. An uncannily shrewd politician who had studied the game from a point of vantage in Albany for many years, Howe drew up a platform for cooperative distributing and shipping societies and farmer's banks, with licensing of commission merchants by the State Department of Agriculture, which he knew the farmers had sought and would acclaim. On this platform of which Roosevelt had never conceived and had not the slightest knowledge, Howe secured his boss's reelection. From then until his death, Louis Howe was F.D.R.'s alter and wiser ego.