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BAKER ON THE FIFTH BALLOT? THE DEMOCRATIC ALTERNATIVE: 1932
by ELLIOT A. ROSEN
A study of history's might-have-beens is often more interesting and infor- mative than one would suspect from the bare recital of what happened. For in addition to the zest of narrative it has the delight of speculation. Very often the threads which lead to a great decision are intertwined with other strands which, if they had prevailed, might have brought about an entirely different aftermath. What would have been the consequences for this nation if Lincoln had not met his death at the hands of an assassin early in 1865? What if Wellington's thin red line at Waterloo had collapsed before Bl??cher brought support? What prompted decisions to be made in one way and not in another?
NOTES ARE ON PAGES 273-277 |
BAKER ON THE FIFTH BALLOT? 227
If the powers and personalities at the
Democratic convention at Chicago
in 1932 finally had not reached a
decision on the fourth ballot to nominate
Franklin D. Roosevelt, it is certain
that the Roosevelt strength would
have crumbled soon and someone else
would have won the prize. It is
the thesis of this article that Newton
D. Baker would have been the man
chosen and Ohio would very probably have
added another to her long list
of presidents.1
If the electorate had chosen Baker in
1932, the course of our nation's
history would have been radically
different. There would have been no
New Deal. The personnel of the new
administration would have been of
another sort. The attack on the
depression would have taken another course.
The Democratic party for years to come
would have been oriented to a
quite different philosophy.2 Clearly the
Jeffersonian-internationalist wing,
represented by figures such as Cordell
Hull, would have been more content
under Baker's leadership. Also, the
Democratic party would have been
more conservative in its domestic
policies and more internationalist-minded
in its foreign relations.
Newton D. Baker of Ohio was nationally
known in 1932 principally
because of his former association with
two of the luminaries of the Progres-
sive era, Tom L. Johnson, reform mayor
of Cleveland, and President Woodrow
Wilson. As Cleveland's city solicitor,
from 1902 to 1912, he was one of
Johnson's key aides in the famous street
railway controversy, which had
as its goals municipal control and lower
fares. He aided also in the effort
to derive additional revenue for the
city by reassessment of railroads and
utilities. As mayor of Cleveland
(1912-1916), after the defeat and death of
Johnson, Baker won the admiration of
Progressives for his personal integrity
and the maintenance of Cleveland's
reputation as the nation's best governed
city. Particularly appealing to radical
progressives was Baker's establish-
ment of a municipally owned power plant.
When Woodrow Wilson's Secretary of War,
Lindley M. Garrison, resigned
early in 1916, as a consequence of the
President's concessions to the
Congress in the famous preparedness
controversy, Wilson tapped his former
Johns Hopkins student for the post. In
the course of five years' service,
until 1921, Baker, who came to his post
with a reputation as a progressive
pacifist, made the same national
reputation as Secretary of War for
efficiency and integrity that he had
enjoyed in Cleveland. In the process
he also became one of Wilson's most
trusted advisers.
Baker returned to Cleveland in 1921 to
head the distinguished law firm
of Baker, Hostetler and Sidlo.
Throughout the 'twenties he crusaded for
American commitment to the League of
Nations as the best hope to
forestall another war. Particularly well
known was his moving speech
before the Democratic National
Convention of 1924 in which he attempted
without success to secure endorsement by the party of
Wilson's advocacy
of United States membership in the
League. Though he lost the battle,
his emotional address in behalf of
those, including Wilson, who had died
for a principle enhanced his stature and
cemented his image as heir apparent
to the mantle of the former president.
228 OHIO HISTORY
In the 1920's, however, it was contended
by some people that the once-
progressive disciple of Tom Johnson and
Woodrow Wilson was growing
more conservative. They observed that
his Cleveland law firm was asso-
ciated with a large corporate law
practice, sometimes as a representative
for utilities. And when he served a term
as president of Cleveland's Chamber
of Commerce, as we shall see, he was an
exponent of the open shop. But
those who knew him well assert that
fundamentally he had not changed.
Raymond Moley, Roosevelt's principal
adviser in 1932, coincidentally had
also made his early reputation in
Cleveland and knew Baker intimately,
particularly through association in
several civic enterprises in the lake city
after the first World War. Moley
recalled that the "progressive crowd that
criticized him in Cleveland" had
failed to observe that Baker not only
knew and feared the consequences of war
but feared also excessive centraliza-
tion of government. "I heard him
speak more than once in Cleveland,"
Moley remembered, "and he was
always portraying the terrible circumstances
that would attend the next war." At
the same time "I heard him say once
that it is better to permit a country .
. . to make mistakes and rue them,
then to restrict and control them by any
arbitrary power."3
Newton D. Baker's strength within the
Democratic party, gathered at
Chicago in 1932, was pervasive rather
than intensive. Baker had the support
of the intellectuals, among them Walter
Lippmann, William E. Dodd,
Douglas Southall Freeman, George Fort
Milton, Allan Nevins, and Adolf
A. Berle. Lippmann's famous declamation
on Roosevelt's lack of conviction
and his lack of qualification for the
presidency is well known.4 But less often
discussed is the fact that the columnist
was an avid partisan of Baker's
candidacy5 and that intellectuals, old
Wilsonians, businessmen and others
who knew Franklin Roosevelt in the Navy
Department days generally
regarded the then New York governor in
the same unfavorable light as
did Lippmann.6 "Lippmann,"
Raymond Moley remembers, "was putting into
words and publishing what was said in
every private club in New York."7
Roosevelt himself, though angered by
Lippmann's Herald Tribune article,
held Baker in great esteem. "....
Newton," he wrote Josephus Daniels,
"would make a better President than
I would."8 Daniels agreed that Baker
was the party's ablest man.9
Adolf A. Berle, a Baker supporter,
typified Democratic sentiment at
Columbia University, the principal
source of Franklin D. Roosevelt's Brains
Trust. Berle, a member of the Columbia
University Law School faculty,
an attorney and a specialist in
corporate organization and finance, in com-
pany with the noted Columbia University
historian, James T. Shotwell,
persuaded a group of attorneys, early in
1932, to write an open letter to
Baker urging him to declare his
candidacy.10 Nevertheless, Berle's recruit-
ment to membership in the Brains Trust
occurred in April 1932 and was the
work of Raymond Moley, Professor of
Public Law at Columbia and head
of the Brains Trust, an unofficial group
organized to advise Roosevelt on
the formulation of campaign issues and
ideology. Moley, in fact, recalls
that the general task of recruitment of
scholars to advise Roosevelt was
not an easy one, since the essential
division among Democratic members
BAKER ON THE FIFTH BALLOT? 229
of the Columbia University faculty,
including Berle, was between Baker,
favored by the conservatives, and Norman
Thomas, the Socialist, favored
by the liberals. "When I went to
Berle's office at the Columbia Law School,"
Moley recalls, "to recruit him for
our group, he said, 'I have another candi-
date.' Then I said that doesn't matter.
We need your specialized knowledge.
He then accepted."11
Baker was also the choice of eastern
conservatives in the business and
banking community who, because of their
economic interest, were inter-
nationalist in their foreign outlook and
conservative in their domestic
philosophy. These included A. Lincoln
Filene of Boston; Owen Young,
president of General Electric; John W.
Davis, Frank Polk, Thomas Lamont
of J. P. Morgan & Company; Lee
Olwell, vice-president of the National
City Bank of New York; Melvin Traylor, a
Chicago banker; Robert Wood-
ruff, president of Coca Cola; Nathan
Straus and B. Howell Griswold of
Alex Brown & Sons, Baltimore
bankers; Eugene Untermeyer of Guggenheim,
Untermeyer & Marshall; and Norman
Davis, also a member of the inter-
national banking community. The
philosophy of this group was perhaps
best typified by David F. Houston,
Woodrow Wilson's Secretary of Agri-
culture and in 1932 president of the
Mutual Life Insurance Company.
Houston decried increasing dependence of
the people on the federal treasury.
Nor did he sympathize with efforts in
Washington aimed at the relief of
the farmer.12 Thus, Baker, in
a campaign, would have been stronger than
Roosevelt not only with conservative
Democrats but with conservative
eastern Republicans as well.13
As has been mentioned, Baker was heir
apparent to the mantle of
Wilsonian internationalism especially
because his brilliant and impassioned,
if unsuccessful, speech in favor of
League endorsement at the 1924 Demo-
cratic convention had cemented the
image.14 Byron R. Newton's feeling
for Baker was typical of many of the old
Wilson crowd:
Few men are born nine feet tall, and few
men are born with the
breadth and strength to sacrifice
themselves to the advantages of the
great cause or the betterment of their fellow
men. Usually these chaps
died in childbirth or were burned at the
stake quite early in their
career, but when they do survive the
burning and the childbirth they
leave history and milestones behind
them, because, like yourself, they
have no illusions, no vanities, no fears
-- just a steadfast gaze at the
road ahead.
That was the one quality in Woodrow
Wilson that in my eyes lifted
him above all other men. In my life I
had seen much of other men whom
the world called great, but Wilson was
the only one of them all, who
if he thought necessary to the
achievement of some great end, would
sacrifice himself and his political
future to the betterment of mankind.
Such men are nine feet tall, very
scarce, but in the great plan of human
life it seems to be necessary for one to
appear now and again to wallop
the floundering mob into shape.15
For Byron R. Newton and many of the
other Wilsonians, Baker also
possessed these qualities and would have
made an excellent candidate for
the presidency. Indeed, this was the
opinion of the former President's
widow herself.16 In the words
of another supporter, "I cannot abandon the
230 OHIO HISTORY
conviction," Norman Davis wrote
Baker, "that our only hope is through
you, and that it is not too late even
now for you to do it."17 And after
several rebuffs in primary elections in
early 1932, even the venerable Colonel
House, an ardent Roosevelt supporter,
told Robert Jackson, "I think we
had better be thinking of a second
choice." House indicated to Jackson,
who was not receptive, that Baker was
his alternative to the New York
governor.18
In the field of news media an imposing
array of writers and editors, in
addition to Lippmann, supported Baker's
candidacy. These included John
Stewart Bryan, editor of the Richmond News
Leader; Mark Watson, Mark
Sullivan, and Fred I. Kent of the
Baltimore Sun; Roy Howard of the Scripps-
Howard chain; Julian Mason, editor of
the conservative New York Evening
Post; the Cleveland Plain Dealer; the Cincinnati Enquirer;
the Des Moines
Register-Tribune; H. V. Kaltenborn and George Creel. If some did not
openly endorse Baker, as was the case
with the editors of both the Baltimore
Sun and the Scripps-Howard papers, endorsement of Alfred E.
Smith
instead was regarded as a
"cover" until the propitious moment.19
But Baker's greatest political strength
lay with those conservative ele-
ments in the Democratic party who
controlled its machinery and who
wanted to forestall the nomination of
Franklin D. Roosevelt. Whereas
Roosevelt and his principal adviser,
Raymond Moley, saw in the 1932
campaign an opportunity to present a
liberal economic program as an
alternative to that of the Republican
party, Alfred E. Smith, John Raskob,
chairman of the Democratic National
Committee, and Jouett Shouse, chair-
man of the party's National Executive
Committee, feared a takeover by
the Progressives and liberals of the
party they controlled. With Roosevelt
as nominee, Moley wrote an old Cleveland
friend, "we can have a real align-
ment between liberals and
conservatives."
The thing that is hardest to me is the
persistent propaganda against
him [Roosevelt] by interested people,
particularly the power interests
who have not been friendly to his ideas
of governmental power control
in New York. In the near future we may
expect these elements of the
Democratic Party who want to be as near
like Hoover as possible to
concur on some candidate like Baker or
[Owen D.] Young. This, I
believe, will be the final outcome of
the Smith opposition.20
Cordell Hull was equally concerned that
the "Smith-Raskob-Du Pont
group, which according to my belief
favors a virtual merger of the two
old parties except as to
prohibition," would attempt to kill off Roosevelt
and in the process destroy the
Democratic party after 1932.21
John J. Raskob, an intimate of Pierre S.
Du Pont and vice-president of
General Motors, summarized the views of
the Smith group in a radio
broadcast in the Lucky Strike series in
May, 1932. Paraphrasing Jefferson's
first inaugural, Raskob advocated
frugality in government, states' rights,
the taking of government out of
business, relief of business, relief of business
from unreasonable governmental
restrictions, voluntary cooperation, elimina-
tion of governmental attempts at price
fixing, presumably in agriculture--
in general a return of authority to the
states. Fundamentally, the Raskob-
Smith-Shouse program, aside from its
much-vaunted emphasis on prohibi-
BAKER ON THE FIFTH BALLOT? 231
tion repeal, advocated a central
government even more conservative in
economic philosophy and policies than
that of the Hoover administration.22
One week after the Democratic
convention, in a letter to Jouett Shouse,
Raskob lamented that a "crowd of
radicals" -- Roosevelt, Huey Long,
Hearst, McAdoo, and Senators Wheeler and
Dill -- had taken over the
party, as opposed to the fine
conservative talent represented by Harry
Byrd, Smith, Carter Glass, John W. Davis, James Cox,
Pierre S. Du Pont,
and Governor Ely of Massachusetts.23 It
is significant to note that all of
the latter group would soon become
bitter opponents of the New Deal
and some the leaders of the American
Liberty League.
It is too simplistic to argue that the
failure of Franklin D. Roosevelt's
diverse opposition to coalesce
successfully around Baker as the nominee
was the result of a lack of interest on
Baker's part or Al Smith's reluctance
to part with his delegate strength at
the convention.24 Negotiations between
the Smith and Baker camps had been going
on for nearly a year and while
Baker was indeed hesitant, because of a
heart attack suffered during the 1928
campaign, he was nevertheless willing to
be drafted. Baker's reluctance,
however, was not the paramount
consideration in the failure of the stop-
Roosevelt movement. Rather, the failure
can be accounted for by Baker's
alleged conservatism in domestic affairs
and his internationalism in foreign
affairs in contrast to the image of
Roosevelt as a progressive and a nationalist.
In 1931 Alfred E. Smith and the two men
he had installed at the head
of the machinery of the Democratic
party, Raskob and Shouse, were in
search of a candidate who could head off
Roosevelt. Smith may have had
vague hopes at times that the party
would reward him with another nomina-
tion. But the record shows, contrary to
his public statements, that he was
too astute a politician to believe that
he could overcome in 1932 at Chicago
the opposition of the southern and
western Democrats who hungered for
victory after twelve years in the
wilderness. He was a Catholic, a New
Yorker, a Tammany product and a dripping
wet. For many Democrats,
including a host of Smith admirers, this
combination of liabilities represented
too great a gamble during a year of
otherwise certain victory. Smith and
his intimates knew it.25
In September 1931 Smith, Raskob, and
Shouse settled upon Newton
Baker as the man to stop Roosevelt's
march to the nomination. Shouse, in
fact, informed Ralph Hayes, Baker's
"Louis Howe,"26 that if Baker "would
consent to be supported, 'Z' [Smith]
will not only eliminate himself but
will throw to you every particle of
strength he can muster." Mrs. Belle
Moscowitz, Smith's most trusted adviser,
told Hayes candidly that her
choice was still Smith "but that if
she couldn't have her man -- and such
a choice did not appear to be in the
cards -- she much preferred ours."
And Raskob, in turn, offered to free
Baker of any obligation to him in the
event he was nominated and elected,
going so far as to offer his resignation
as head of the Democratic National
Committee.27
These early September conferences
between Hayes, Shouse, Raskob, and
Belle Moscowitz resulted in a meeting of
Shouse and Hayes with Baker at
the Willard Hotel in Washington late
that month.28 Baker convinced Shouse
232 OHIO HISTORY
that he would not actively seek the
nomination and would consent to run
only if drafted. Josephus Daniels and
John Stewart Bryan, prominent
southern newspaper editors, had the same
understanding.29 Baker was
unwilling to become an avowed candidate and never did.
But his supporters
never gave up and had no reason to.
Baker, after all, submitted to a
physical examination, as did Roosevelt,
was pronounced fit enough for a
limited campaign, and negotiated for
months with the Smith entourage
behind the scenes.30
Jouett Shouse came away from the
Washington meeting with Baker
"greatly heartened" and
determined to carry out a strategy conceived at
the conference that became the keystone
of the "stop-Roosevelt" move-
ment; encouragement of an "open
convention" -- subsequently advocated
by Baker, Shouse and others -- made up
of uninstructed and native-son
delegations and bound by the two-thirds
rule.31
It would seem that Baker's January 1932
declaration on the League of
Nations, generally regarded as a retreat
from his earlier position, and Al
Smith's announcement of his candidacy on
February 8, 1932 were a part
of this larger
"stop-Roosevelt" strategy. Belle Moscowitz had told Ralph
Hayes at a meeting at Smith's Empire
State office in mid-November 1931
that Smith's feeling toward Baker
"is one of complete cordiality; his only
inquiry is as to whether your militant
identification with the League might
act as a popular deterrent if pressed
too vigorously in the campaign."32
Mrs. Moscowitz was informed by Roy
Howard, of the Scripps-Howard
newspaper chain, of Baker's statement
before it was issued to the press
and she was quite pleased with it. Thus
from the time of Smith's formal an-
nouncement through the spring of 1932
there is ample evidence that every
known confidant of Smith was either an
avowed Baker enthusiast, such as
Jouett Shouse, Charles Michelson, and
Norman Hapgood, or was in constant
negotiation with Hayes and Baker, as
were Frank Hague, Raymond Ingersol,
and Belle Moscowitz.33 The
evidence of these negotiations is so overwhelming
as to lead to the following conclusions:
1. Baker and Smith were well aware that
open endorsement by Smith
of Baker would be tantamount to a kiss
of death for Baker. Smith shrewdly
decided, therefore, to take as much of
the delegate strength of the Northeast
for himself as he could muster in the
convention in the hope of eventually
entering into an agreement with other
stop-Roosevelt leaders and with
native sons on the selection of a third
person.
2. That this third person would be a
conservative and yet be capable
of binding up the wounds in the party.
3. That, while it is common knowledge
that the Smith forces considered
James Cox, Owen Young, and others in the
spring months, Baker was
finally setttled upon as the choice for
nominee. (Cox flatly refused to run
and Young, as president of General
Electric, stood no chance and withdrew
in May 1932.)
Walter Lippmann, who had access to
Smith, came to this same conclusion
shortly after Smith's announcement of
his candidacy. "It is impossible to
BAKER ON THE FIFTH BALLOT? 233
believe," Lippmann wrote,
"that Smith, who is a great realist . . . expects
to be nominated. He had no illusions
about his election in 1928 and he
can hardly have any now about the
party's willingness to go again through
an ordeal by fire. But that he does not
wish to be ignored, that he believes
he represents a political force, that he
intends to be consulted on the candi-
date and platform is now evident."
It was Lippmann's conclusion that
Smith's followers could do no more than
deadlock the convention and
nominate someone other than Smith and
Roosevelt. That candidate, he
predicted, would be Baker.34
Lippmann's analysis of the situation
seems to be borne out by the follow-
ing events. In mid-February, Mrs. Belle
Moscowitz visited Baker in Cleve-
land. Though what transpired is not a
matter of record, other than the
fact that Smith was highly gratified,
Judge Joseph Proskauer told Jonathan
Daniels at a dinner at Poskauer's home
at about the same time that either
Baker or Governor Albert C. Ritchie
[Maryland] would be an excellent
nominee.35
The last hurdle to a Smith-Baker
coalition, it seems, was Smith's campaign
manager. Frank Hague, boss of Jersey
City, and Ralph Hayes, Baker's
political manager, met at the Biltmore
Hotel in New York on March 31,
1932. Hague indicated that he was
unhappy with Smith's prospects, expressed
a strong dislike for Franklin Roosevelt,
and asserted that only Baker could
stem the Roosevelt tide. "What is
worrying him to distraction," Hayes wrote
Baker the next day, "is that he has
no place to throw the strength he
can command which he regards as being of
more than veto proportions.
You [Baker] are the only official who
can step into the breach, as he sees it."36
Hague and Baker met twice later at the
Willard Hotel in Washington.
"He was gracious," Baker wrote
Hayes, "but wholly impersonal, as was
Governor Smith." Subsequently, when
Hague met with Ralph Hayes and
Norman Hapgood (who, with Dr. Henry
Moscowitz, was Smith's campaign
biographer in 1928) in New York, Hague
agreed to do nothing that would
cause Baker embarrassment (presumably
open endorsement). In the mean-
time, prominent New York conservatives
such as Frank Polk, Nathan Straus,
Jr., and John W. Davis worked on Boss
Curry of Tammany Hall (Curry
was also reluctant to commit himself);
and at a luncheon with Walter Lipp-
mann, Bernard Baruch gave Baker his
blessings.37
On the eve of the Democratic convention
Jouett Shouse's admiration
for Baker became more open. At a mock
Democratic convention at Harvard
University and at other appearances in
Massachusetts late in May, Shouse
asserted that Owen Young and Baker were
the two individuals best qualified
to cope with the depression, a statement
picked up by Boston papers but
not reported in the New York press. It
is interesting to note that Young
had just withdrawn from consideration as
a nominee.38
There were some Baker supporters,
however, who were wary of the
growing identification of their
candidate with the Smith wing of the party.
William E. Dodd, Professor of History at
the University of Chicago and
influential in Chicago Democratic
circles, for instance, believed that Baker
234 OHIO HISTORY
was getting into "doubtful
relationships." And an intimate friend of Baker
and Hayes, retired Supreme Court Justice
John H. Clarke, cautioned that
the Roosevelt camp, in event of a
convention stalemate, would veto any
Smith candidate.39
The ultimate test of this hypothesis
regarding the intimacy of the Smith-
Baker camps can be verified by Smith's
behavior before and at the conven-
tion and will be discussed later.
Smith's tactics at Chicago were neither as
stubborn nor as inept as has generally
been contended. Nor did the con-
vention, on the fourth ballot, secure
Roosevelt's nomination primarily as a
result of Farley's political tactics.
Roosevelt's nomination was finally
secured by issues and by the fear that
Newton D. Baker would be the
nominee if Roosevelt was not chosen.
This observation calls for substantiation.
Newton D. Baker was conservative,
internationalist, and bore the stamp
of Woodrow Wilson. In many respects he
can be compared with another
admirer of Wilson, Herbert Hoover.
Roosevelt, on the other hand, had
already taken the first steps toward his
"New Deal." In the "Forgotten Man"
speech on April 17, 1932 he identified
himself with the downtrodden; at
St. Paul on April 18, 1932 he clearly
associated himself with those who
favored national regulation of public
power; and at Oglethorpe University
on May 22, 1932 he called for planning
of production and distribution. As
a consequence, Roosevelt became the
spokesman of the popular issues of
the day, those issues which appealed to
the lower and middle classes and
to the progressive reformers who sought
fundamental changes in the relation-
ship between government and our society.
Roosevelt was suggesting, even if
somewhat vaguely, alternatives to the
Hoover program; Baker was not, despite
his impressive intellectual endow-
ment. In fact, there is nothing to
suggest that the Ohioan was critical of
Hoover's domestic policies.40 Roosevelt
was the spokesman, too, of a nation-
alistic approach to the nation's
economic problems, later to be dubbed
"intranationalism" as it
crystallized in the 1932 campaign. Alone of all the
presidential aspirants in 1932, he, with
a small band of advisers, was
reexamining the economic, political and
social fabric of the 'twenties. In the
process Roosevelt did more than preempt
the Progressive heritage with its
middle-class support; he went beyond it.
Essentially it was the endorsement of
the "single-issue" Progressives which
brought Roosevelt into the convention
with a majority of the delegate
votes (but not the needed two-thirds).
Indeed, there were also the band-
wagon types -- those who were bigoted
and those who realistically feared
a debacle in the event of a second Smith
nomination and those who found
"magic in the name" as their
primary motive for backing the New York
governor. But an investigation of the
correspondence of the powerful
senatorial Progressives, Republican as
well as Democrat, reveals two facts:
their power ranged far beyond their
immediate states; and most had one
favored program for the relief of the
nation's ills. For Norris, it was public
power and regional development,
federally managed and regulated; for Hull,
reduction of tariff barriers; for
Pittman, remonetization of silver; for Wheeler,
free silver; for Walsh, the St. Lawrence
Seaway as a means of reducing the
BAKER ON THE FIFTH BALLOT? 235
cost of shipping agricultural products
from the plains area. These men were
wedded to the unfulfilled dreams of the
Progressive era; and while many
rationalized their ideas into depression
cures, none had a sophisticated or
integrated approach to the solution of
the nation's woes. Each was aware
of Roosevelt's limitations, but of the
various candidates available they
regarded him as most likely to support
programs they had offered up
unsuccessfully for a decade and more. It
is noteworthy that the New Deal
went far beyond the schemes of the
"single-issue" Progressives of the Senate.
Yet, in other respects, as the record of
the Hundred Days and after shows,
Roosevelt never went far enough to
satisfy most of these early supporters,
particularly when their pet projects
were involved.
As for Roosevelt's strongest political
contender for the nomination,
Baker's strengths in 1932 were at the
same time his very weaknesses. The
principal obstacles to his nomination
lay not in the realm of political tactics
but in his association with the open shop, the utility
interests, and the League
of Nations. At the same time, Baker's
approach to the Great Depression
was that of an internationalist, of the
school of Hoover, Hull, Stimson,
Norman Davis, and Russell Leffingwell.
As I see it [Baker wrote Byron R. Newton
during the 1932 campaign]
the policies of the Republican Party
from 1921 until now have aimed
at political and economic isolation in a
world in which such isolation is
almost impossible and full of peril
where possible. It does not seem
to me that any real progress forward can
be made until an entirely
different theory of our country's
relations to the rest of the world is
adopted. This theory I do not believe
the Republican Party can adopt.
Its commitments to the opposite
philosophy are so deep that any
departure from them would be incredibly
difficult. The Democratic
Party, on the other hand, has at least a
tradition of another kind,
and while it is true that a good many of
our so-called Democrats in
the House and Senate have not behaved
with any conscious adherence
to the great tradition, many of them
have.41
The internationalist point of view had
as its end the achievement of an
enduring world peace and general
economic resuscitation through inter-
national cooperation. Whether the stress
lay in Hoover's aspirations for a
World Economic Conference, or Baker's
identification with the League, or
Hull's advocacy of reciprocal tariff
agreements, the end nevertheless remained
the same, namely, solution of world-wide
economic questions through
international arrangements reached with
United States participation.
In an attempt to mollify those elements
in the Democratic party that
objected to League membership, Baker
made the statement early in 1932
that has been mentioned previously which
seemingly repudiated his earlier
stand on adherence to the League. In
retrospect, it seems to have been a
tactical blunder for it satisfied
neither those who followed his leadership,
which symbolized the Wilsonian dream of
a world order under the League,
nor those who feared that Baker would do
everything possible as President
to bring this nation into the world
organization.42
Baker made his statement on January 26,
1932, when he boarded ship
for a vacation in Mexico. When asked
whether the question of League
membership would come before the
Democratic convention again in 1932,
236 OHIO HISTORY
he replied: "I am not in favor of a
plank in the Democratic national platform
urging our joining the League. I think
it would be a great mistake to make
a partisan issue of the matter." He
did believe that entry of the United
States into this world organization
would come about eventually, but only
after the bulk of the American people
"have had a chance to see the League
in action, and to study its action
enough to be fully satisfied as to the wisdom
of such a course."43
Reactions to Baker's comments on the
League were mixed. Generally
the Wilsonians regarded them as a sad
retreat from his earlier positions,44
though Baker pointed out he had been
moving away from the international
organization since the Democratic defeat
in 1924. The country, he argued,
was not ready for the League in 1932,
not at least until both parties relegated
the issue to the realm of
non-partisanship. From a tactical view, he con-
cluded, the minority party could not
afford the luxury of League endorse-
ment.45 Newspapers, such as
the New York Herald Tribune, interpreted the
statement as an avowal of candidacy.46
Roosevelt evidently felt compelled to go
beyond the Baker statement; in
a speech before the New York State
Grange at Albany, on February 2, he
opposed American participation in the
League. He defended his change of
heart over the course of twelve years by
claiming that "the League of
Nations today is not the League
conceived by Woodrow Wilson." It was
no longer a structure dedicated
primarily to the maintenance of world
peace, but rather a "mere meeting
place" for the discussion of strictly
European national difficulties. "In
these the United States should have no
part."47
Subsequently, Ralph Hayes urged Baker to
make another public state-
ment on the League which would
differentiate his position from that of
Roosevelt. Baker refused: "If there
is any one thing which the course of my
life has taught me, it is that
explanations simply entail more explanations."48
On international debts, too, the two
potential candidates differed sharply.
Baker believed that the entire debts and
reparations system must be
scrapped or at least scaled down
sharply. Roosevelt, in his Albany speech,
took a firmly nationalistic stance.
"National debts," he claimed, "are 'debts
of honor'; . . . no honorable nations
may break a Treaty in spirit any more
than they can break it in letter; nor,
when it is a debtor, may repudiate
or cancel a national debt of
honor."49
It is difficult to determine which man
suffered more from the exchange,
particularly in regard to the League
statements. Whereas Baker supporters
were dismayed by his cautious retreat,
Roosevelt supporters, particularly
the powerful Washington "inner
circle" of old Wilsonian internationalists
who were identified in the 1920's with
the Democratic National Committee,
among them, Daniel Roper, Robert Woolley
and Cordell Hull, were equally
dismayed by the Albany speech which they
regarded as a sell-out to
William Randolph Hearst. Louis Brownlow,
an expert in municipal affairs
and Lecturer at the University of
Chicago, who knew many Democrats
because of past prominence as a
journalist, came away from a visit to
Washington in April with the distinct
impression that the Washington
BAKER ON THE FIFTH BALLOT? 237
group would be pleased if the convention
turned to Baker. Ralph Hayes
had reports from other sources as well
that Hull favored Baker's moderate
position on the League.50 What
he did not know, however, was that Hull
feared even more the possibility of
continued domination of the party
machinery by the "Smith-Raskob-Du
Pont crowd."
Baker's greatest handicap with
Progressives was his identification with
the private utility interests. Judson
King, director of the National Popular
Government League, spread the gospel
concerning Baker's association with
the private power interests in the form
of the New River Case. King, with
the aid of his wife Bertha, made the
organization a full-time occupation in
the years between Wilson and F. D.
Roosevelt, when he with other Pro-
gressives fought a bitter holding action
for the preservation of natural
resources for development in the public
(as opposed to private) interest.
Their chief concern was the promotion of
the public power question,
specifically, government as opposed to
private development of water power
resources, the bulk of which were to be
found in the public domain. And
as a corollary, they constantly
challenged the exorbitant rates and ques-
tionable practices of the private
utilities. In their work, the Kings drew
financial and moral support from
politically powerful Progressives, such
as Senator George W. Norris of Nebraska,
proponent of public ownership
and operation of Muscle Shoals (later T.V.A.); Senators
Smith W. Brookhart
of Iowa, Thomas J. Walsh of Montana,
Edward Costigan of Colorado, and
Bronson Cutting of New Mexico; and old
Bull Moosers, such as Harold
Ickes and Donald Richberg, later
identified with the New Deal. Others,
too, claimed, as did King, that Baker
had "changed his spots" since the
time of Tom Johnson's and his own
administration of Cleveland.51
It was Judson King's contention that the
attempt of the Appalachian
Power Company, a Virginia corporation,
to secure a "minor part" license
for construction of a power dam on the
New River in Virginia through a
suit in the federal courts, if
successful, would establish a precedent leading
to nullification of the Federal Water
Power Act of 1920. Appalachian
Power was a subsidiary of the Electric
Bond and Share Company, a major
utility holding company built up in the
form of a financial pyramid and
reported by the Federal Trade Commission
to have nearly $400,000,000
in watered stock. Essentially it was
contended by the Baker law firm in
the New River Case, on behalf of
Appalachian Power, that the Federal
Power Commission had no jurisdiction
over water power sites on navigable
streams located wholly within a state;
also that federal jurisdiction did not
include that part of a stream above the
point to which it was navigable.
"If the Power Trust, with Newton
Baker as its legal generalissimo, wins
the case," King argued, "it
means that federal jurisdiction as to the water
power over all the rivers of the United
States, navigable and non-navigable,
will be swept away and control of the
power sites thrown back to the states,
the most of which can easily be
controlled by the Power Trust."52
Franklin D. Roosevelt, on the other
hand, in King's judgment, particularly
after his speech at St. Paul on April
18, 1932, was "sound" on power and
"in line with progressive
principles," meaning that Roosevelt had come out
238 OHIO HISTORY
in support of effective regulation by
the federal government of the practices
and rates of the large utility
companies. King was pleased also by Roosevelt's
threat of federal intervention in the
power field unless corporations were
willing to accept a fair return on
capital, defined by the New York governor
as a "reasonable return on the
actual cash wisely and necessarily invested in
the property." This formula, known
as the prudent investment theory, as
opposed to the reproduction cost
formula, would eliminate profits based
on stock watering and inflation of
capital. Further, King reported ominously,
"Recent information from New York
and elsewhere makes it clear that
the banking and utility interests are
engineering a powerful movement to
control the next Democratic
Convention," presumably in behalf of Baker.53
Judson King's influence is not to be
minimized. Aside from his well known
association with George Norris, his
supporters in the fight against the
"Power Trust" included
Josephus Daniels, Felix Frankfurter, Morris Llewel-
lyn Cooke, and Edward Keating, editor of
Labor.54 At a meeting in Cooke's
home in Germantown, Pennsylvania, Cooke,
Frank Walsh (both members of
the New York State Power Commission),
and King decided to publish a
brochure comparing the power records of
the presidential candidates; the
intent of which was to convince the
public that the Power Trust was
seeking to dominate the nominees of both
parties. The pamphlet was
signed by fifteen Senators and some
ninety members of the House.55
If it was Judson King's conclusion that
"Baker has taken a long stray
to the right since I used to know him
back in 1906 to 1910 as the right
arm of Tom Johnson in Cleveland,"56
others, less radically progressive,
were more charitable. Thomas J. Walsh of
Montana came to the conclusion
that the Baker law firm's representation
of Appalachian Power "is to my
mind no legitimate basis for criticism
of Baker." Yet Walsh conceded that
in a political campaign this noted
lawyer would be charged "with being
attorney for the Power Trust. ... I am satisfied
that Roosevelt would be
the much stronger candidate, but not
because of any legitimate objection
to Baker on account of the power
[case]."57
Baker was well aware of the attacks
being made on him and his
vulnerability on the power issue. So as
not to appear to be an avowed
candidate, he confined his political
comments primarily to private correspond-
ence. In his letters he was candid in
his recognition of the distinction between
his own approach to power and that of
Roosevelt. For example, in a mem-
orandum to his law partner, Thomas
Sidlo, he pointed out that the record
would show that he had long ago, when
Secretary of War, recommended
government operation of Muscle Shoals
and "was always in sympathy with
the policy of the Federal Power Act
which makes possible short term leases
upon public power rights with a
recapture provision. Roosevelt is more
radical on this subject than I, as he
believes in public operation including
later distribution which is farther than
I would go unless it proved impos-
sible to secure fair and economical
distribution through private agencies."58
As for the New River situation, Baker
claimed that the Federal Power
Act was unconstitutional if an attempt
were made to apply it to non-navigable
BAKER ON THE FIFTH BALLOT? 239
streams located entirely within the
limits of a single state.59 And on the
Water Power Act itself, Baker claimed
that he had helped to secure its
passage. However, on what the public
power advocates considered the key
issue, distribution beyond the bus-bars,
"I do not think . . .," Baker wrote
Norman Hapgood, "that it would be
wise at the outset to carry Government's
operation beyond wholesale production,
leaving distribution in private hands,
under government regulation. This, I
think, is a less radical position than
Roosevelt has taken and doubtless is
less radical than Senator Norris'
position."60
Very nearly as important for his
candidacy as the question of public
power was Baker's stand on the
"open shop" issue. Professor Felix Frank-
furter of the Harvard Law School told
Stanley King, newly elected presi-
dent of Amherst College and a Baker
enthusiast, that it was not the
Clevelander's corporate relationship
with the power companies and the
Van Sweringen railroad empire but rather
his association with the open
shop policies of the Cleveland Chamber
of Commerce which prompted him
to prefer Roosevelt to Baker. And the
Roosevelt forces were determined,
if need be, to publicize the
Gompers-Baker correspondence on the subject.61
Samuel Gompers, president of the
American Federation of Labor, initiated
on August 19, 1922, what subsequently
became a published correspondence.
The labor leader expressed shock and
dismay that Baker in a pamphlet,
"The Human Side," as well as
in an advertisement in the Cleveland news-
papers, had been converted to the open
shop principle. This was not the
same Progressive, Gompers lectured, that
he had known during the war.
Baker, in reply, contended that a worker
should have the right to elect
not to join in a union and that the
Cleveland Chamber of Commerce, of
which he was then president, was not
anti-union. For Gompers this rejoinder
was merely a "pious cloak"
assumed by anti-union employers.62
Baker was bedeviled by other problems:
rumors of poor health (the heart
attack he had suffered in 1928 was now
common knowledge in political
circles); his membership on the
ill-starred Wickersham Commission;63 and
rumors of Hebraic ancestry, which he
deftly handled by claiming he was
not a Jew, but would be proud of his
ancestry if he were one.
It is legend that the Democratic
convention at Chicago was so confused
and confusing a scene that claims as to
responsibility for the nomination
of Franklin D. Roosevelt are not likely
to be definitively settled. Claims
are legion on behalf of Farley, Garner,
Hearst, McAdoo, Mullen, Pittman,
and even Colonel House, who did not
personally attend the convention. The
tendency in the past, in the process of
attempting to resolve the question,
has been to miss the forest for the
trees.
In the vast array of incidents, deals,
and maneuvers, one development
seems to stand out as the turning point
in the selection of the Democratic
nominee in 1932 -- one who favored a
program such as the New Deal with
its domestic emphasis. That development
was William Gibbs McAdoo's
decision on the fourth ballot, prompted
by John Nance Garner and William
Randolph Hearst, to abandon the
stop-Roosevelt combination and to throw
240 OHIO HISTORY
the nomination of the governor of New
York. When the chips were down,
the stop-Roosevelt combination, put
together by Al Smith, Bernard Baruch,
and McAdoo with no common purpose except
to block Roosevelt and then
find an alternative candidate, collapsed
when it faced up to the possibility
that Newton D. Baker, the Wilsonian
internationalist, might become the
party's candidate. Smith and Baruch were
perfectly willing to accept
Baker's candidacy. But McAdoo and his principal
backers, Garner (Speaker
of the House of Representatives) and
Hearst (who headed a powerful
newspaper empire), for reasons we shall
examine, found Roosevelt more
ideologically acceptable than Baker.
The strategy of Ralph Hayes and the
Smith camp, presumably, had
attained its objective of preventing
Roosevelt from obtaining the necessary
two-thirds majority on the first three
ballots. As early as November 1931,
Hayes had written to Rabbi Stephen Wise
that Baker had declined to
accept open support or activity on his
behalf by "powerful elements in
the party" -- obviously the Smith
forces -- and would accept the nomination
only if tendered to him. "That
attitude," Hayes wisely concluded, had
"some disabilities" but also
"some advantages."64 He felt that if the Roose-
velt opposition, native sons, and
uninstructed delegations could command
the veto power of slightly more than
one-third of the convention, the con-
vention would eventually turn to the
Ohioan. An open candidacy by Baker,
on the other hand, could, very probably,
serve only to cancel himself out
as well as Roosevelt and leave the
nomination open for a third person. On
the eve of the Chicago convention the
strategy worked out by Hayes,
Shouse and their reluctant candidate,
Baker, seems to have worked for,
even though Smith was the avowed
candidate, Baker was now willing to
accept the nomination if it befell that
he should accept it as a personal duty.65
The final step in this strategy required
that the Smith forces get the
native-son and uninstructed delegations
to hold the line until the con-
vention reached a stalemate. No one in
the party wanted a repetition of
the deadlocked 1924 Democratic National
Convention; therefore, the check-
mating of Roosevelt would not require
very many ballots.66 The largest
bloc of non-Roosevelt votes, other than
those controlled by Smith was
the California-Texas bloc which
supported Garner and was controlled by
the Texan, Hearst, and McAdoo (of
California).
Accordingly, Al Smith, Bernard Baruch,
and William Gibbs McAdoo met
at the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago on
June 26, 1932, one day before the
convention assembled. The seeming
incongruity of a Smith-McAdoo meet-
ing, in view of their bitter contest for
the 1924 Democratic nomination (when
it was charged by Smith's followers that
McAdoo, with Klan support,
blocked his nomination) is explained by
the presence of Bernard Baruch.
Baruch was friendly with Smith and his
advisers and at the same time was
on good terms with McAdoo, since both
had been associated in the Wilson
administration with mobilization of the
home front for the war effort.
McAdoo's presence is also explained, perhaps,
by his financial indebtedness
to Baruch. Baruch, it was commonly
known, regarded Roosevelt unqualified
|
for the presidency ("a boy scout," was his description) and favored the nomination of Albert Ritchie, Governor of Maryland, Smith, or Baker. What transpired at that meeting and whether promises made were broken is dependent on whose word is to be accepted. Perhaps some examination of McAdoo's motivations, also a subject open to conjecture, is germane. On many occasions in 1931 and 1932 McAdoo made it clear that he opposed Roosevelt's nomination on several grounds: he was a New Yorker; he had done nothing about the graft and corruption of Tammany Hall; and he showed no great personal force. McAdoo desired the restoration of the West and South as the power base of the party.67 Related to this was the fact that McAdoo, quite possibly, entertained his own ambitions. He was frank in writing Colonel House in January 1931 that he opposed any New Yorker, including Roosevelt, as nominee and that Baker's failure to |
242 OHIO HISTORY
run for the Senate and his membership on
the Wickersham Commission
presented a formidable obstacle to his
candidacy. Moreover, Baker had no
large popular following. On the other
hand he, McAdoo, had had a strong
hold on the masses in 1924 which could
be revitalized.68 Other correspond-
ence later in 1931 and early in 1932
shows the Californian to be somewhat
more discreet, nevertheless open to a
draft: a draft that would have to
overcome opposing political forces, such
as the wet, the machine, and the
Wall Street elements.69 Aware,
therefore, of the unlikelihood of his own
nomination, except possibly in a
hopelessly deadlocked situation, McAdoo,
with the covert support of William
Randolph Hearst, waged a bitter primary
fight in California, his adopted state,
to secure its convention delegation
for House Speaker John N. Garner, who
fit McAdoo's qualifications for the
presidency. He had, in fact, put his own
prestige on the line by agreeing
in the spring of 1932 to head the Garner
slate in that state's presidential
primary in opposition to the Smith and
Roosevelt slates. And he had won
handily. Thus, McAdoo was clearly a
likely prospect for membership in
the stop-Roosevelt coalition at Chicago
-- but not necessarily in order to
lend support to Baker's candidacy.
According to McAdoo's recollection of
the luncheon with Smith and
Baruch on the eve of the convention,
Smith suggested that: (1) Roosevelt
could be stopped in a few ballots if
California and Texas stayed with Garner;
and (2) that when this point had been
reached, the various candidates
could get together and decide on an
alternative to Roosevelt. McAdoo
claimed later that he had refused to
enter such an agreement. In answer
to a query by Baruch, McAdoo had said
that he would be willing to give
notice before California changed its
vote to a candidate other than Garner,
only if such action proved feasible.70
There is also other evidence indicating
that McAdoo had, in fact, been
responsive to overtures from the Smith
camp even before he reached Chicago.
Thus Belle Moscowitz wrote an intimate
friend at Berkeley in June 1932
after the election of the McAdoo delegation
in California: "We have every
hope that the California situation will
turn out favorable to us and [there is]
every indication that it will be so."71
Furthermore, subsequent to the con-
vention Mrs. Moscowitz, Jouett Shouse,
Norman Hapgood, and other
Smith intimates claimed that McAdoo had
broken his pledge to hold his
forces until Roosevelt was stopped.
"If McAdoo had not broken the pledges
he made, Roosevelt would not have been
nominated," Shouse wrote Baker
shortly after the convention. If the
sizeable California delegation had not
shifted to Roosevelt on the fourth
ballot, Shouse believed, there would have
been defections from the Roosevelt ranks
"with the result that some other
nominee would have been certain. That
nominee would have been you
[Baker] or Ritchie."72
In his private correspondence, McAdoo
vehemently denied the charge
of a broken pledge, particularly after
an article on the subject by Frank
Kent appeared in the Baltimore Sun. But
Brice Clagett, McAdoo's son-in-law,
in a memo written during February 1933,
in a sentence crossed out, clearly
BAKER ON THE FIFTH BALLOT? 245
concedes that his father-in-law told a
Smith delegation just before the fate-
ful fourth ballot that he had decided to
abandon the stop-Roosevelt com-
bination.73 One can only
surmise from this and other evidence that McAdoo
had indeed been a member of the
coalition until some time between the
third and fourth ballots.
Between the end of the third and the
beginning of the fourth ballots it
became clear to many of those at the
convention that Roosevelt's chances
for the candidacy could not survive more
than one or two ballots.74 This
was not only the opinion of Jouett
Shouse and Ralph Hayes, but also of
such prominent party men as Paul V.
McNutt, Raymond Moley, John W.
Davis, Breckinridge Long and a host of
others, including Franklin D. Roose-
velt himself. Apparently Roosevelt was
not informed of the critical decision
-- who reached that decision, when and
where it was made is still a matter
of conjecture -- to give the Garner vote
of the Texas and California dele-
gations to the Roosevelt cause. It is a
matter of record that at 5:20 P.M.,
one hour before the fateful caucus of
the Texas and California delegations,
Roosevelt called Newton Baker in
Cleveland. He offered his support in the
event of a deadlock. "'It now looks
as though the Chicago Convention is
in a jam and that they will turn to
you,'" Roosevelt told Baker. "' I will do
anything I can to bring that about if
you want it.'"75
Even if one assumes that Roosevelt's
call was calculated to strengthen the
immediate prospects of his own
candidacy, the fact remains that he knew
enough of Baker's chances in one of the
subsequent ballots to take them
seriously. If he could not be his
party's presidential standardbearer, Roose-
velt evidently wished at least to be its
kingmaker.
It was William Allen White's conclusion
that Smith's failure to withdraw
after the third ballot led to the
Roosevelt nomination. "He could have given
Richey [sic] enough votes to
deadlock the Convention for a ballot or two
and then the South and West would have
led the parade to Baker . . ."
Only fear of another Smith nomination,
White held, kept the Roosevelt
delegations in line and made the
Hearst-McAdoo-Garner combination inevi-
table. "Smith certainly displayed
the talents of a provincial politician. . . . ."
There is no need here to decide whether
the key figure in the move to
checkmate Baker was Hearst or Garner
(who was consulting with Senators
Key Pittman and Henry B. Hawes and
Representative Edgar Howard).
It is sufficient to know that Hearst,
Garner, McAdoo, and a host of others
at the convention were keenly aware of a
shift in sentiment to Baker that
could quite possibly culminate in
Baker's nomination on the fifth or sixth
ballot. These people were especially
concerned because they held differing
political-economic views from Baker.
Hearst, Garner, and McAdoo were
economic nationalists, opposed
membership in the League, favored payment
of the debts by the European nations,
opposed United States entry into the
World Court, and had a powerful bias
against "the Wall Street interests,"
who were assumed to be Baker supporters.
It was on these grounds that
they decided to break the deadlock lest
Baker, or even Smith, emerge
triumphant.76
246 OHIO HISTORY
During the course of the critical fourth
ballot the Democratic party was
offered at the 1932 convention a choice
between Newton Baker's views and
those expounded by Roosevelt. Baker's
thinking, as indicated by his later
opposition to the New Deal, was more
attuned to that of Herbert Hoover
than to that of Roosevelt. The Ohioan
was at heart an internationalist and
also opposed to those
"advanced" Progressive concepts that became the
foundation stone of the New Deal.
Roosevelt, whose intellectual heritage
was similar to that of Baker -- both
were originally Grover Cleveland
Democrats -- was willing to go beyond
the simple reformism of the Pro-
gressive era. With a group of advisers,
principally three Columbia University
professors, Raymond Moley, Rexford
Tugwell and Adolf Berle, an approach
had been worked out to resolve the
enormous economic dilemma represented
by the Great Depression. That approach,
taken by Roosevelt, is best
described as intranationalism,77 the
essence of his campaign for the presi-
dency. As has been pointed out, it
placed priority on domestic recovery
and sought to prevent outside forces
from affecting that recovery. The
assumption was made that international
cooperation in economic matters
could only be achieved after each nation
had put its own house in order.
Accordingly the first New Deal, which
lasted through much of Roosevelt's
first administration, stressed domestic
remedies and reforms to the exclusion
of international considerations.
Thus, it can be said that Franklin D.
Roosevelt's economic nationalism
and progressivism in the end attracted
more support than Baker's economic
conservatism and cosmopolitan view of the
responsibility of the United States
in world affairs and so won him the
Democratic nomination in 1932.
THE AUTHOR: Elliot A. Rosen is As-
sociate Professor of History at Rutgers,
The State University. He has
collaborated
with Raymond Moley in the writing of
The First New Deal, published by Har-
court, Brace & World in December,
1966.
|
BAKER ON THE FIFTH BALLOT? THE DEMOCRATIC ALTERNATIVE: 1932
by ELLIOT A. ROSEN
A study of history's might-have-beens is often more interesting and infor- mative than one would suspect from the bare recital of what happened. For in addition to the zest of narrative it has the delight of speculation. Very often the threads which lead to a great decision are intertwined with other strands which, if they had prevailed, might have brought about an entirely different aftermath. What would have been the consequences for this nation if Lincoln had not met his death at the hands of an assassin early in 1865? What if Wellington's thin red line at Waterloo had collapsed before Bl??cher brought support? What prompted decisions to be made in one way and not in another?
NOTES ARE ON PAGES 273-277 |