(The following article appeared in the The Georgia Historical Quarterly, Vol. XXIX, No. 4, December 1945 and is reprinted with permission.)
 
 

A Conference on Michigan Politics At the
Little White House, Warm Springs, Georgia

by Stellanova Osborn*

In a modest room at the Little White House at Warm Springs, Georgia, the post-Thanksgiving season of 1935, two men sat enjoying each other like old friends after a long separation.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, once Governor of New York and Assistant Secretary of the Navy, now President of the United States of America, and Chase Salmon Osborn, former Governor of Michigan, widely discussed as a compromise presidential candidate at the time of the Taft and T.R. deadlock, were, first of all, Georgia neighbors. To those who know Georgia, this connotes imponderable elements of generous understanding.

Both of these giant personalities had more than one striking characteristic in common. Each had genius for friendship to a commemorable degree. One had developed it, in part thanks to the radio, on a national, political scale. The other had carried his gift to the ends of the earth, all plateaus of society, and the peaks of the sublime, but always as an amateur.

A philosophy of life that emphasized giving rather than taking was peculiar to both. F.D.R. had applied his idea, without inhibition, using public monies. Chase Osborn had experimented with his own possessions - unstintedly, through a lifetime twenty years longer than that of the man beside him. Both had experienced the difficulty of giving wisely. Neither had yet found a cure for the tendency of the recipient to become a chronic taker. The Sage of Possum Poke in Possum Lane in Georgia, and of the Zheshebe Minis in the Lake Superior Country, had this among the proverbs to his credit: "There will never be peace until all the people of the world give more than they take and build more than they destroy."

In the light of pervasive congenialities, the minor difference of political affiliation was dimmed. Franklin Roosevelt had always been a Democrat. But he was a Roosevelt. Chase Osborn had first met him at Oyster Bay. That was when President Theodore Roosevelt was whipping the octopus interests with his big stick, and Republican Governor Osborn of Michigan was himself outstanding progressive timber.

The friendly visit at Warm Springs had its practical facets, on both sides, as is good in this non-static world.

"It is my custom," said Governor Osborn, "never to ask favors for myself. But there is one thing I would like to have from you for Michigan. During your press conference this morning at the Sanitarium, will you please tell the newspapermen that we talked about Michigan's need of a bridge across the Straits of Mackinac and say that you are interested?"

"Gladly," said F.D.R., then countered, "You know Michigan in all its phases better than anyone, they tell me. Who is the best man to head the Democratic ticket next November?"

"Bill Comstock," said the Governor, "has fathered the Democratic party in Michigan through more than seven lean years and has run for Governor off-year after off-year. He has been Governor and he still heads the party."

The movement of a shoulder and a hand, and another question, was the President's response to this suggestion. "How about running Couzens for Governor on the Democratic ticket?"

"Couzens," said the Governor tersely, "is a sick man. He will be dead in a year." In recounting this, it should be mentioned that Senator Couzens died ten months later, in October, 1936.

"What do you think of Frank Murphy?" the President asked.

"I am fond of him, and I respect him," said the Governor, "though I cannot distinctly recall having seen him more than once, about twenty years ago. There was a meeting in Detroit for World War purposes. Frank Murphy was among those who made the appeal for funds. He seemed like a boy in his uniform but when he handed the crowd over to me he had it by the ears and upside down. I got off to a good start in spite of the uproar by shouting out exactly what I thought - that that young man, with his eloquence, was going somewhere. However, my chief knowledge of him and my appraisal of him until quite recently have been largely based on the fact that he has had for his partner for years, in all his activities, a former secretary of mine. Edward Gearing Kemp has ability of a rare order. I have known no finer character in my lifetime. Frank Murphy's close association with Ed Kemp was his first recommendation to me. No man could have a better."

"Isn't Murphy too good a man to sacrifice?"

Instantaneously the Governor leaped into the breach: "You admit that the cause is already lost for the Democrats in Michigan?" Then, analyzing the situation clearly, in a flash, he said: "Even if both of you are defeated, Murphy stands to lose nothing; for if you lose, Murphy is through anyway as High Commissioner. If you are defeated and he wins, he will be Governor of Michigan. If he loses and you win, you can put him on the Supreme bench."

To evaluate this conversation it is only necessary to recall that Frank Murphy was brought back from his post as High Commissioner of the Philippines to make the race for Governor of Michigan, and that in the ensuing election both Roosevelt and Murphy carried the State. Two years later, when Murphy failed of re-election, President Roosevelt made him Attorney-General of the United States (with Edward Gearing Kemp as Assistant to the Attorney-General); and one year later place him on the Supreme Court of the United States; thus fulfilling for Frank Murphy the brilliant and deserved career that Governor Osborn had in an instant envisioned for him.

The foregoing dialog was repeated to the writer in succinct reportorial fashion by the Governor, as we drove from the Little White House down around Pine Mountain to the Sanitarium. The late Miss marguerite A. LeHand, the President's personal secretary - pleasant, unassuming, efficient, wearing a simple cotton dress and a bandeau around her hair - had suggested that we follow the President's town car when he left for his press conference and morning swim. Gaunt Marvin McIntyre - keen, fine Sigma Chi brother and friend of Governor Osborn - another Presidential secretary who since has passed beyond - was with Miss LeHand and others in the executive tonneau. Although it considerably exceeded our modest maximum speed, we did not lose sight of it too long.

At the foot of a hill, on a grassy slope by the boulevard fronting the Sanitarium, the members of the press were gathered. We left our car and stood on the Sanitarium lawn.

Dudley Glass, loyal friend and able columnist of the Atlanta Constitution, was glad to agree to bring up the subject of the Mackinac Straits bridge at the press quiz.

"Governor Osborn tells me," he said to the President, "that you have expressed yourself as interested in the proposed Mackinac Straits Bridge, to join the Upper and Lower Peninsulas of Michigan."

Voluntarily, with characteristic generosity, the President announced to the world in general: "Governor Osborn has just been giving me a lesson in geography. I thought the Straits of Mackinac were thirty miles wide!" (One of the routes proposed for the bridging, via Bois Blanc and Mackinac Islands, could give rise to such an impression.) "He tells me that less than three miles of actual span would be required."

"You may say," continued the President, "not only that I have expressed an interest in the subject but that I have asked for a special report on it from the Chief of the Army Engineers."

F.D.R. had not only offered a confession of ignorance and acknowledged a debt for instruction, in a way that was nothing short of winsomely magnanimous, but he had gone far beyond the general statement he had promised.

One other thing he did that day gave me a further indelible impression of his magnitude. In response to the request of my father, at the Little White House, that I might be permitted to meet him, the President had said he would see me at the press conference. There we were so completely enmeshed by the proceedings that I had been forgotten, even by myself. But the President remembered: "Where is Miss Osborn?" he broke in to ask. "I want to shake hands with her."

Subsequently we followed the official party to the door of the bathhouse. Miss LeHand with unfailing graciousness took us to various points of interest in that curative establishment. This was after the President had been lifted from his car, with a final farewell wave to us, and had been wheeled inside.

That night I dreamed of riding in a parade for F.D.Roosevelt - at the side of Eleanor Roosevelt Roosevelt. As the effect of the President's personality, this is worth recording. It never came true - not even figuratively. I trust the twin ogres, editorial judgment and paper stringency, will permit me to postscribe the reason why: Giving rather than taking, for the joy of it, is not the prerogative of king or of merchant prince. It is a prime source of strength and happiness for the common man as well. To give the best of one's self, in quantity and quality of labor, is far deeper satisfaction than the scattering of coins and trinkets. Any philosophy, system, policy or individual which or who develops the taking instinct of the multitude, to the extent that the will to give becomes atrophied, is fundamentally on the wrong track and not to be followed far.

*Stellanova Osborn is the daughter of Chase S. Osborn, former governor of Michigan and now a resident of Georgia. Their home, "Possum Poke in Possum Lane," is in Poulan, Worth County.
 
 
 

© Carl Vinson Institute of Government, The University of Georgia

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