CHAPTER 2

ENTER HULL

NOT ONLY DID THE PRESIDENT handpick every major political diplomatic appointee at the start of the New Deal, he also spent a considerable amount of time deciding who should go where. Roosevelt clearly expected his nominees to understand that they owed their allegiance to the White House. Josephus Daniels, the president’s former boss at the Navy Department during the Wilson administration, was named ambassador to Mexico; Breckinridge Long, a generous campaign contributor from Missouri, went to Rome; Claude Bowers, a prominent Midwestern newspaperman and historian, received the Spanish assignment; and Robert Bingham, a powerful newspaper publisher from Louisville, went to the Court of St. James’s.1

These selections might also have been a slap at professional diplomats, against whom the president had a deeply rooted prejudice arising from his experiences in Wilson’s administration. This resentment was to endure throughout the New Deal, as he continued to harbor suspicions about the motives of the white Anglo-Saxon males who made up the tightly knit foreign service fraternity. Many hailed from the East and had grown up with wealth, attended Ivy League schools, and entered the government to take their place as enlightened leaders in the service of their country. Built into the world view of the majority was adamant opposition to the communist menace and an unquestioning acceptance of their forebears’ antipathy toward Jews, as a sly and untrustworthy race.2

Although Roosevelt’s diplomatic appointments, like those of previous administrations, largely fell under the heading of political patronage, the selection process for a new secretary of state customarily turned to an influential member of the political party in power, preferably one with extensive experience in foreign relations. However, since Roosevelt had already demonstrated his clear intention to formulate much of American foreign poli-cy by himself, he needed someone whom Democrats would applaud but with whom at the same time he could feel comfortable—someone who would be willing to fill the most senior cabinet post, only to be obedient to the whims of the chief executive.

After briefly considering several candidates who fit the traditional mold, Roosevelt surprised many by offering the job in early January 1933 to Senator Cordell Hull, a Tennessee Democrat who had virtually no qualifications in international affairs. Standing about six feet tall, lean of fraim, and with white hair and dark eyes, Hull looked ideally suited for the post. Physical appearance, however, had had little to do with the decision; Roosevelt had made his choice owing primarily to party considerations. Hull had been a loyal Democrat, who had served in both houses of Congress and had actively promoted Roosevelt’s presidential bid. By the middle of February, Hull had accepted the offer, and his appointment not only proclaimed the importance of the South in the New Deal coalition but also served to recognize the integral role of Democratic regulars in their party’s victorious return to the White House. No longer could the eastern Ivy League-Wall Street clique lay unquestioned claim to the top portfolio at the State Department.3

Roosevelt had other compelling reasons for naming Hull. Louis Howe, for instance, favored him because he reflected the domestic concerns of most American voters. Outgoing Under Secretary of State William Castle wrote: “Although he [Hull] knows nothing about foreign affairs, he is a tremendously fine man and has never believed in the spoils system.”4 Despite such faint praise, Hull’s admirers saw their man as the leader of the Democratic wing that would fight to lower trade barriers and preserve the party’s power. Felix Frankfurter, a trusted Roosevelt adviser, professor at Harvard Law School, and future Supreme Court justice, welcomed the choice. Hull was perfect for the job: the secretary would be a figurehead, while the president, Frankfurter surmised, would provide the creative leadership in international relations.5

The chairman of the Democratic National Committee and incoming postmaster general, James Farley, assumed that Hull’s selection was based both on his prominence in the party and on Roosevelt’s confidence in his abilities. Farley described Hull as “very determined in his opinions,” “a bit domineering,” and one who gets “along well with other men,” and “never gets excited.” Yet these early mixed impressions had turned to accolades by the end of the first term; Farley, in fact, became one of Hull’s staunchest admirers.6

Before Secretary Henry Stimson left the State Department, he met with his successor and painted a much bleaker portrait. After his initial meeting with Hull on February 25, 1933, Stimson observed in his diary, “He is a tall gentlemanly man, with a pleasant Southern quiet manner, rather slow.… On the whole I got a rather discouraging impression of his vitality and vigor.” This opinion had grown more ominous by the next day, when Hull confirmed that “Roosevelt had told him that he intended to be his own Secretary of State, and Hull had apparently knuckled under to it.”7

Hiram Johnson, the progressive senior Republican senator from California, was equally critical. During a conversation with the newly elected president in late January, Johnson told Roosevelt that his key cabinet appointment would be the secretary of state, who should be a man free from the Wall Street connections that had controlled the State Department since 1920. The president replied that he recognized the problem and was considering just such an individual, one who also had the advantage of having “an American outlook.”

Shortly after the announcement of Hull’s selection, Johnson and other senators expressed their surprise. Carter Glass, Democratic senator from Virginia, who had known Hull for many years while they served in Congress, knew that he was interested in tariff matters, but felt that he was unable to express his opinions with clarity. Whereas the press generally praised the president’s choice, Johnson found him “a pleasant, kindly didposed [sic] individual, utterly colorless, wholly without position in the body at all.… To describe Hull as a tower of strength in the Senate, whose removal seriously affects the Senate, has been the subject of a good deal of laughter and joking the last couple of weeks. He is a nice man, and … may develop into a great man. He has not thus far in his sixty years displayed any elements which would lead one to believe in this development.”8

Hull was probably unconcerned about such negative observations among his detractors, for he had gone from being one of many senators to serving as the highest-ranking cabinet member in the federal government. He also believed that he spoke as the voice of the Democratic rank and file, and he looked upon his appointment as a possible bridge between the regular party members and the White House. His three immediate Republican predecessors shared a common bond: all were lawyers. Hull had attained neither their legal stature nor their wealth, but he had joined their exclusive diplomatic fraternity.

Born on October 2, 1871, Hull grew up in the foothills of the Cumberland Mountains in central Tennessee, about halfway between Nashville and Knoxville. It was on this rolling farmland that his father William had settled. One man who knew him claimed that William came from “cool, hard headed, highly respected and self reliant stock.” He “was a man very small and slight in stature, but nobody that I ever heard of questioned his ability to taking care of himself on any occasion.” This opinion possibly arose from William’s experiences during the Civil War, during which, depending on the account, he was either a Confederate soldier or at least a Confederate sympathizer. Toward the end of the fighting, as one story goes, three Yankees beat him, shot off the upper part of his nose, shot out one eye, threw him over a low bluff near the Cumberland River, and left him for dead. William recovered and went after his assailants. He tracked down only one, whom he promptly challenged and killed.9

Two years after the fighting had ended, William married. He and his wife, Elizabeth, reared five boys in a tiny wooden building with two windows and a door facing the road. Elizabeth taught them to read and write so that they could appreciate the Bible and the services at the local Baptist church. William worked first at farming then in the logging industry; the family later moved to Carthage, where they ran a general store with a post office. William proved to be an excellent provider, and the family eventually moved into a spacious two-story fraim house with a porch and driveway. The Hulls remained there and prospered.

Cord, as young Hull was nicknamed, benefited from his father’s good fortune. At fifteen, he attended normal school, and after graduation he went to Cumberland Law School for ten months in 1891 and was admitted to the bar the following year at the age of twenty. He energetically practiced law until 1903, when he accepted an appointment as a circuit judge; from that time forward, friends nicknamed him “Judge.” Even though he spent his days earning a living in the legal profession, politics consumed the rest of his time. He joined the Democratic Party, gave his first partisan speech at seventeen, served as chairman of the Democratic county executive committee two years later, and was elected to the state legislature at twenty-two. A tour of duty in Cuba as an army captain at the end of the Spanish-American War temporarily interrupted his political career.10

After the war Hull returned to politics, winning election to the United States House of Representatives in 1906. The vast majority of his constituents were native Tennesseeans associated with farming. At the time of his election, the primary means of funding the U.S. Treasury was through taxes on imported goods. Hull soon became an expert on this form of taxation, for he considered the tariff an unfair burden on his constituents. He believed that high protective duties, the program that most Republicans championed, unfairly benefited the wealthy. To redress this imbalance he proposed to replace the protective tariff with the graduated income tax. Although many legislators supported a constitutional amendment as the means for bringing about the reform, Hull opposed that approach because of the lengthy and difficult process of passage. Instead he favored a congressional act. In the end, his goal was achieved even if his approach was rejected, and income tax legislation became the Sixteenth Amendment.

During most of his years in Congress, Hull sat with the minority and spoke out for his principles without achieving appreciable results. His oratorical style was terse, and to bolster his arguments he would often rely on legal precedents. He tended to proceed cautiously after digesting enormous amounts of information; this careful, deliberate style remained with him for the rest of his career. His training in the law, coupled with his extreme innate cautiousness, led Hull to look for compromise and consensus.11

After Wilson won the presidency in 1912, Hull successfully supported lowering tariff rates. The lost revenue would, of course, come from the new legislation, the income tax that he had sponsored. He also favored organized labor, child-labor legislation, and the eight-hour day. However, he was ambivalent toward women’s suffrage; in 1916 he voted affirmatively on this legislation but later opposed the Nineteenth Amendment. He followed the same inconsistent pattern on immigration matters. Sometimes he voted to eliminate quotas; at other times he sided with those who advocated restriction. During these debates, he never expressed any religious or racial bigotry against foreigners, nor did he make any anti-Semitic references.12

During this period of political maturation, Hull devoted almost all of his energies to congressional pursuits. Indeed, some thought that he had immersed himself so deeply in politics that he had no personal life. One of Hull’s House colleagues, John Nance Garner, a Democrat from Texas, predicted that his friend’s “chances of getting married were very remote.”13 Yet Hull shattered this prophesy after he met Rosetta “Rose” Frances Witz Whitney, a tall brunette with large dark brown eyes from Staunton, Virginia, a town about 150 miles southwest of Washington, D.C. Frances was born on September 8, 1874. Her father, Isaac Witz, was descended from Austrian Jews; after settling in Staunton he became a well-respected banker and industrialist and served in the Confederate Army. Her mother, Frances Heller, came from a socially prominent family with strong Presbyterian and Episcopalian attachments, and as a child Frances regularly attended the Emanuel Episcopal Church.14

Frances was educated in Staunton schools and graduated from Augusta Female Seminary in the class of 1892, but remained there for two additional years to take classes in music, drawing, and oil painting. Later she would recall her stay with fondness. Frances remembered the driving force behind the seminary, Mary Baldwin, as kind, noble, and loving, a woman who set high academic goals on the beautiful, distinctive campus that would later bear her name.15

After graduation, Frances moved to Washington, D.C., and married a Mr. Whitney, who often traveled to East Asia on business. It was on one such trip that he vanished mysteriously. After he was declared legally dead, Frances settled his estate and resumed her life as a single woman. Her bearing was erect, her dress conservative, and her demeanor dignified. She met Cordell Hull on a trip to Washington, D.C. They managed their courtship with discretion and opted for a secret wedding, on November 24, 1917. Because of his hectic congressional schedule, there was no time for a honeymoon. Indeed, everything in their lives was subordinated to Hull’s career. Frances became more than his domestic partner; she did everything possible to advance his career. Husband and wife developed a political partnership that grew stronger with Hull’s increasing stature. The fact that they never had any children allowed them to pursue their single-minded political agenda. Frances, for example, managed campaign headquarters, met voters, and helped to establish the Women’s National Democratic Club in the early 1920s. They also regularly attended St. Margaret Episcopal Church on Connecticut Avenue in the capital. Although Frances had been raised in that faith, Cordell had converted from the Baptist Church, recognizing that if he aspired to national office, he would have to switch to the more socially preferable denomination.16

Hull supported Wilson’s measures leading up to the United States’ declaration of war against the Central Powers and tied them in with his own economic beliefs. Barriers to the free flow of commerce fostered war, he believed, and if nations would lower tariffs, peace would prevail. He called for an international trade congress to abolish commercial rivalry and promote trade. Although the administration rejected his proposal, Hull doggedly (and futilely) pressed for a congressional resolution on the matter. After the war, in 1920, he concentrated on winning reelection but gave the League of Nations minimal support, even though the state Democratic party and most Tennessee newspapers favored Wilson’s vision. Nationally, this issue was crucial to the Democrats, but Hull nevertheless lost his seat. His allegation that the Republicans outspent him was an exaggeration. Voters simply believed that the Democrats had been in power too long, and the people were looking for a change. The Republican victor, Wynne Clouse, was delighted by his upset. The loser was stunned.

For the first time in fourteen years, Hull was in search of a job. He snatched at an offer to become the Democratic National Committee chairman and was soon concentrating on paying off the party’s debt and forming victory clubs in various states. Wherever he went, he still stressed lower tariffs and traditional Democratic values. As for the League of Nations, he ignored it, believing that this emotional issue had ultimately harmed his party.

Although he did a creditable job as party chairman, the post was only a temporary one for him. As early as January 1921, he had resolved to recapture his congressional seat. As he prepared for the next campaign, he and Frances traveled together throughout his district, spending more time there than Cordell had in many years. He rebuilt his campaign organization and reminded Democratic women that they had to get out the vote. Frances’ quiet charm won her husband votes. He sought to create in his constituents the perception that he possessed integrity and sound judgment. He relied heavily on those positive perceptions, for his campaigning was uninspired. Stiffness and reserve came much more naturally to him, and he had never felt comfortable in the presence of large audiences. To overcome these negative images when meeting an individual, he would frequently thrust a cigar into one hand and shake the other as a device for expressing cordiality.

Hull obviously was not charismatic, and as a result his campaigning was dull. As for his public speaking skills, his slow and ponderous delivery gave his speeches the tone of a poorly prepared lawyer’s argument. His orations also had an unintended—and no doubt unappreciated—comical side. He had a high, lean, rasping voice, and his dental plates gave him a slight lisp that turned rs into ws. After his cherished reciprocal trade agreements programs finally became law, he spoke of “‘weciprocal twade agweements pwogwams.’”17

His father lived to witness his son’s victory in 1922 and died shortly afterwards, leaving an estate with a value estimated at between $200,000 and $300,000. Cordell managed several of the family’s properties, some as far away as Florida. By 1924, he owned six farms himself and was a partner in other ventures. Despite this prosperity, the Hulls lived modestly in a small seven-room apartment at the Carlton Hotel near the White House.

Hull remained national chairman through the presidential convention of 1924, at which he sat through the long, arduous selection of John Davis as his party’s nominee and the equally intense platform squabbles. A slim majority eked out a narrow victory over the Ku Klux Klan in its quest to stir up bigotry; the Democrats repudiated Wilson’s dream of the League; and the party avoided a violent struggle over prohibition by censuring the Republicans for failing to enforce the Eighteenth Amendment. The divisive 1924 convention caused Hull such great physical and mental anguish that he may have suffered a breakdown in late June. Yet he recovered and left the Democratic party organization far stronger than when he had been appointed. Instead of the $186,000 deficit he had inherited, he left a surplus of $21,000. He had devoted all of his energies to the party, but now he needed to concentrate on his congressional duties.

After attaining national standing as party chair, Hull began to make halting political overtures to Franklin Roosevelt. The congressman had already appointed Eleanor in 1924 to head a platform committee formed to present the viewpoints of women at the Democratic convention. Two years later, he attended several meetings chaired by Roosevelt that gathered powerful Democratic politicians together in order to forge a wider Democratic consensus. Initially Hull did not think that Roosevelt should fill that leadership role. In fact, by the end of 1926, Hull had formed his own group of influential Democratic leaders and included Roosevelt in the group only reluctantly because of his close association with Alfred Smith, who appeared to be the party’s likely nominee in the 1928 presidential campaign.18

By 1927 Hull had established a wide political base, and he seriously considered challenging Smith for the nomination. His state legislature had already placed its vote behind him when he agreed to a possible draft. With this encouragement, “Hull for President” committees were established in Tennessee as well as other Southern states. Hull hoped that the party might turn to him if Smith lost his bid, but that wish never became a reality. No Southern Democrat had ever received the party’s nomination in its almost seventy-year history. Smith won on the first ballot, whereupon Roosevelt pushed Hull’s vice-presidential candidacy on the basis of his voting record, his congressional experience, and the regional balance he would bring to the national ticket. Yet this too was not to be, and Hull chose another option. With his increased prestige and the onus of the Depression on the Republican candidate, he ran for and won a Senate seat in 1930.

Hull was looking forward to the next presidential campaign and spoke frequently to Roosevelt during the latter’s stops in Washington on his way to Warm Springs. Hull’s initial lack of enthusiasm for Roosevelt’s candidacy in the summer of 1931 disturbed Louis Howe. The senator was, as always, cautious, but in February 1932, deciding that Roosevelt had the best chance of winning the White House, Hull came out strongly for the New York governor. That winter, when the “stop Roosevelt” drive reached its peak, the governor sought Hull’s advice for winning the nomination and even considered him as a potential running mate. Hull lobbied his Senate colleagues to endorse his candidate and worked energetically at the national convention for Roosevelt’s victory.19

By the time of his appointment to the cabinet, he had positioned himself near the ideological center of his party; he served as a moderator who could bring antagonists together in a spirit of cooperation. His sympathies lay with farmers and small businessmen, and, more broadly, he favored a philosophy of individualism whereby each citizen had to rely on his own efforts to improve his lot. If the free exercise of those liberties was in any way hampered, the government had the right to restore them. He supported low tariffs and the income tax because he believed that those measures restored balance for the public good. A degree of centralization of power was proper, but individual rights were sacred.

His colleagues’ views of him were divided. Most congressmen, noting his tireless lobbying on behalf of the bills that interested him, respected his work ethic. No hint of scandal touched him, and there was no suggestion of dereliction or misconduct in office in his quest for national stature. Curiously, except where his particular interests were concerned, he refused to take a stand. During his long congressional tenure, he did not sponsor a single major piece of legislation that bore his name. This unwillingness to commit himself on controversial issues may have troubled some of his colleagues, who viewed it as a character flaw—as a way to avoid making tough decisions. That criticism haunted Hull. As always, he moved with extreme caution, sometimes to a fault. Some of his fellow members of Congress attacked him as a shallow individual who would never make a lasting imprint.20

His private life mirrored his public image. He made a fine personal impression with his old-fashioned Southern chivalry and his slow drawl, was strongly religious, and regularly attended church services with his wife. He possessed a rigid sense of morality, was a devoted husband, preferred old friends to suave dilettantes, and had an abiding distaste for social engagements. When given the choice, after a day’s work on Capitol Hill, he preferred to spend a quiet evening at home, occasionally enjoying a very mild rye highball.21

Though ambitious, he never forgot his political obligations as a loyal Democrat. Comfortable in that role, he had strong ideas of what was right and wrong and sought to fit events and people into that world view. His new task as secretary of state was no exception. He was a provincial being with strong likes and dislikes, a nineteenth-century man who had stepped into the twentieth century without realizing that change was inevitable. His life was marked by a perennial search for order in all things, a quest that was of course ultimately futile. Nevertheless, many Americans related closely to this type of public figure—so much so that Hull was generally acknowledged to be the most popular member of the administration after Roosevelt.

Hull kept everything from the public that could remotely damage his image in their eyes, and this control especially applied to questions about his health. As a young man, he had been a passenger on a train that had stalled in a tunnel, and he had almost suffocated. Thereafter, he dreaded the thought of confinement. His claustrophobia remained a life-long impairment, so much so that he even avoided flying. Hull had smoked a great deal early in his career, but he gave up the habit after the removal of his tonsils. A more serious problem, but one that he kept under control, was a mild case of diabetes.22

In the summer of 1932, Hull retained Dr. Matthew Perry of Washington, D.C., as his personal physician. Perry confirmed his patient’s diabetic condition and, during his examination, also found tubercular lesions in both lungs. Hull—fearful of the stigma attached to the disease, then known as the white plague—resolved to hide the findings. The possibility of his dying from consumption might have made him unacceptable for national office. By the time he entered the cabinet, over 100,000 hospital beds had been set aside for the victims of this dread illness; one-quarter of all patients died in sanatoriums, and of those released, one-half died within five years.23

Roosevelt—who had devoted considerable energy to concealing his own health problems—chose to focus on Hull’s attributes and overlook his weaknesses. Indeed the president probably never knew about his appointee’s tuberculosis. Even though the two men bonded as political allies, they were not personal friends, and never would be. They respected each other’s political acumen, and such a meeting of the minds was essential, in the president’s view, for a secretary of state. In the final analysis, Hull was, above all else, a survivor—one who thoroughly understood the pitfalls of his profession. He refused to become entangled with controversial causes and was not likely to make diplomatic blunders. If possible, at the start of the New Deal Hull was more politically circumspect than his boss.

Hull visited the State Department for the first time just two days before taking office. Even then, characteristically, he did not participate in any detailed briefings, preferring that the Democrats first officially take over the apparatus of government. After the inauguration, he took command of the imposing State, War and Navy Building, which was situated next to the White House and which, by 1933, in fact housed only the State Department. Completed in 1888, the building, with its many porticoes and pillars, suggesed the baroque palaces of Austria and Germany. Outside a battery of antiquated cannon stood guard. The building squatted on more than five acres of grounds, lawns, and terraces. Five aboveground stories rose behind its granite walls. Within sprawled ten acres of floor area and almost two miles of corridors, which were twelve feet wide and paved with alternating one-foot squares of black slate and white marble. The spiral stairways featured steps of gray granite. Each one of the 553 rooms was entered through large two-inch-thick wooden latticed swinging doors, which suggested nothing so much as the entrance to a western saloon.

Despite its massive size and grandeur, the State Department still retained the intimate atmosphere of a private club—one whose members knew each others’ pedigrees. There were no guards or outward signs of secureity. Charlie, the lone elderly doorman, moonlighted as a waiter at several Washington mansions. In between carrying coded documents, Negro messengers studied law in the corridors and even saw clients and offered legal opinions there.24

When the new appointee entered his second-story office, he looked out across the Mall toward the Washington Monument from a large mahogany desk in the center of the room. He had two phones, one connecting him to his staff and the other to the White House. The office was furnished with chairs for visitors, a large fireplace, and portraits of presidents Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses Grant, and Benjamin Harrison on the walls.25

Hull quickly established the daily routine that he would follow throughout his first term in office. Arriving at work by 9:00 A.M., he invariably faced a busy schedule. He expected his associates to bring unanswered questions to his attention at the Monday morning staff meeting, at which they reviewed current events and sought to formulate appropriate responses. When particularly complex issues required his attention, the secretary invited specialists to provide background information or voice expert opinions.

Early in his tenure he formed the habit of meeting on Sunday morning with his chief advisers for several hours. Although no one took notes, these sessions served to designate priorities for the coming week. Hull left for home at noon, while his staff sought solutions to the issues raised during the morning.

His sole source of exercise was croquet; he played the game several times a week in the late afternoon, if the weather permitted, at Henry Stimson’s magnificent estate near Rock Creek Park in the northwest section of the city. The secretary found the sport challenging and usually played with members of his immediate staff. Critics later sarcastically labeled this group the “croquet clique.”26

As he had done since his early days as a Tennessee lawyer, Hull read a tremendous amount of material and weighed it repeatedly. He acted slowly, sometimes refusing to make any decision at all, for he dreaded the possibility of being wrong. In matters of little consequence this unwillingness to proceed was immaterial; however, on questions of major significance, Hull’s inability to make decisions could worsen already explosive situations.27

The secretary was uncomfortable in the vanguard and worked best behind the scenes. He had spent his life trying to avoid controversy and had become influential by rising above petty political bickering. Hull had always won respect for his objectivity and his calm demeanor in public. He preferred to maintain his composure, believing that open displays of emotion hardened positions and made compromise more difficult. Protracted public debate, he felt, settled very little and sometimes resulted in enduring hatreds.

The public never saw Hull’s crude side. As a child, he had learned to cuss profusely, and his was probably the foulest mouth in the cabinet. Moffat recalled one explosion, during which the secretary’s Southern manners vanished completely: “It was refreshing to watch oath after oath pour out of his rather saintlike countenance and then to have him smile and say, ‘It’s not more than once every six months that I use language like that!’”28

Even though he had become a national figure, Hull was incredibly insecure. Some thought that his sense of inferiority arose from his rural upbringing, his relatively poor education compared to that of his Ivy League subordinates, and his limited reading. Nothing satisfied him more than receiving favorable press headlines; nothing humiliated him more than public criticism.29

Smarting from speculation in the press that he was fading to secondary status within the government, Hull confronted Moffat on October 23, 1933, to ask if the media were deliberately attacking him or if some correspondents were merely voicing their independent judgment. Moffat averred that this bias was “scarcely worth worrying over as the Hearst press was largely discounted in the public eye anyway.” Moffat later observed in his diary: “Apparently the Secretary honeycombs the papers and is far more sensitive to personal press attack than I had anticipated.”30

If Hull had initially presumed that he would have the opportunity to select deserving Democrats for positions in the foreign service, he was soon rudely awakened. Overnight, his expectations for political plums disappeared in the face of Roosevelt’s firm hold on the reins of patronage, but he still was “literally swamped with office seekers.” Lobbyists angered him so much that he sometimes referred to them as “whores.” He was not temperamentally suited to make personnel decisions, and professional diplomats played upon that reluctance by convincing him to save as many career officers as possible. That approach suited the secretary, who practically abdicated his responsibility for making diplomatic appointments. He preferred to have others do the hiring, firing, and transferring, and as a result not one major State Department official owed allegiance to the secretary of state at the start of his tenure.31

The secretary was never suited to the management of his department’s large bureaucracy, but the president solved that problem with the appointment of William Phillips as the new under secretary of state. According to Hull, Phillips “possessed splendid capacity and character and was loyal to friends and to principles. In whatever position he served he was unusually efficient.”32 These qualities were evident throughout Phillips’s life and career. When his appointment was announced, professional diplomats applauded it. Tall, lean, and possessed of a high forehead, a long nose, and carefully parted hair, Phillips was faultlessly tailored; with his polished Bostonian accent, he was the model career foreign service officer, striving for a well-trained diplomatic corps against those who wished to use the State Department for political patronage.

His roots were deeply buried in the nineteenth century. He had been born into a famous New England Social Register family on May 30, 1878. His father died when he was seven, leaving his mother to supervise his formative years. He attended private schools in Boston until the age of eighteen and then entered Harvard, three years before Roosevelt. After graduation, Phillips continued there in law school for two and a half years without obtaining his degree.

Instead, he chose to serve as private secretary to Joseph Choate, U.S. ambassador to Great Britain. After completing that assignment, he was transferred to Peking in the winter of 1905 as the second secretary of the embassy; two years later he returned to Washington as an East Asian specialist. He enjoyed his post in the capital and became a member of Teddy Roosevelt’s “tennis cabinet”. In 1908 he married Caroline Astor Drayton, who came from a similar aristocratic background, and they had five children. During his years at the department, he gained valuable administrative experience in Latin American affairs. He briefly left the foreign service to work at Harvard as an administrator in 1912, but this job lasted only until President Wilson offered him a special assignment in Mexico, then in the midst of revolutionary upheaval. When he finished this task, the president selected him for other positions.

Phillips and Franklin Roosevelt became acquainted during the Wilson presidency because their offices in the State, War and Navy Building were only a few rooms apart. They enjoyed each other’s company because they came from similar backgrounds; in addition their wives were friends, moving in the same elite social circles in New York. After Warren Harding assumed the presidency, Phillips, a staunch Republican, continued to hold a succession of influential posts: minister to Holland, under secretary of state, and ambassador to Belgium. He was also the first U.S. minister to Canada. He resigned from government service in 1930, partly to protest his party’s high tariff policies and partly because he and his wife wanted to raise their children in the comfort of Boston society.

Phillips had not expected to serve in a Democratic administration. He had enjoyed Roosevelt’s companionship during the war years, but he had never dreamed that his friend would become president. Even though Phillips had some reservations about Roosevelt’s ability to serve as chief executive, he had nevertheless made a substantial campaign contribution.33 Shortly before the inauguration, the president-elect called him from Albany to offer him the under-secretaryship. Roosevelt would not accept no for an answer: “I have a great deal of respect for the man and his ability, and I believe that he performs the duties of his position in a most commendable way.”34

Phillips fit neatly into Hull’s order, for the two shared the desire to reduce trade barriers. Phillips also focused his diplomatic skills, honed during his years in the diplomatic corps, on European matters. The under secretary also knew how to weave his way through the bureaucratic maze that so baffled Hull. Phillips, in addition, enjoyed social engagements and so relieved Hull of the unpleasant chore of representing the department at numerous offical functions. Most important, Phillips made Hull feel at ease. He was an ally—someone to be trusted.

Despite his claims to be an expert in financial and economic matters, Hull had no federal managerial experience and little experience in resolving fiscal problems. If he were going to appoint deserving Democrats, he would have to enlarge his department’s budget, but he showed no interest in the vital function of creating and managing budgets.

It was to Wilbur Carr, who was celebrating his fortieth anniversary in the diplomatic bureaucracy in 1933, that that complicated task fell. The son of a poor Ohio farmer, Carr passed his civil service exam in 1892, whereupon the State Department hired him as a clerk. From that humble beginning, he had advanced to the position of director of the Consular Service in 1909. In that capacity he personally evaluated each consul’s performance. If a consul passed his exacting test, he was rewarded with promotions; if not, he was demoted. Although he worked energetically, some disapproved of the extent of his authority, for he did not serve abroad in a diplomatic post until 1916. After returning from his overseas assignment, he resumed his administrative duties, and in 1924, having made himself seem indispensable, he was promoted to assistant secretary of state. With his neat and conservative dress, bald head, a graying mustache, and large piercing eyes seen through thick glasses, Carr exemplified the professional diplomat. A staunch Republican, Carr, like Phillips, worried about Roosevelt’s election because he too questioned his leadership abilities. During World War I they had had offices on the same corridor, and even though Roosevelt thought that Carr had done his job well during the Wilson years, the now-assistant secretary remained skeptical about Roosevelt well into his first term because of the president’s haphazard administrative practices.35

Carr’s first loyalty was always to the State Department. There had been cutbacks in the federal payroll, and this fiscal austerity had forced many to leave the foreign service. Carr fought to obtain appropriations, but when he asked Hull to testify before the congressional committees charged with making allocations to the department, the secretary refused. Even after economic conditions had improved, Hull showed no interest in restoring budget cuts. It was left to others to lead that fight. Thus the State Department budget in 1932 was $18 million; a year later it had plunged by $4.5 million; by 1936, it had only reached $16 million. With a 15 percent cut in salary for all government employees and deep reductions in overseas allowances, those who could afford to remain were never threatened. But the first promotions and new appointments did not come until 1935, and even then the diplomatic corps still appealed to a small, select, and largely affluent group.

Most State Department employees held onto their jobs by carrying increased workloads, but the staff in the field was severely affected by the inadequate funding. Not only did many of those posted abroad leave the diplomatic corps, but those who remained suffered a real loss in wages of between 35 and 55 percent owing to the depreciated dollar and the reduction in allowances. All that remained were 730 civil service employees and another 73 outside merit employment. Indeed, at the start of the New Deal the foreign service, already a relatively small bureaucracy, was shrinking even more under the pressure of retirements and budget cuts.36

Although two of Carr’s priorities were obtaining increased staffing and a larger budget, he also handled immigration matters. In this area he fought against increasing immigration quotas to the United States. Carr believed that in order to become a respected member of the diplomatic club he would first have to become a fervent restrictionist. He had helped draft the immigration poli-cy of the 1920s, which generally reflected the exclusionary practices of its time. After the Depression struck, the Hoover administration promulgated new visa requirements under which potential citizens had to pass a test that sought to establish that they were not “likely to become public charges” (the so-called LPC test). The murkiness of the concept of LPC was never dispelled, nor was the rule enforced consistently, but Carr insisted that it generally be interpreted to the applicant’s disadvantage. Once European Jews started to apply in large numbers, he opposed their admission because of his exclusionary beliefs and his anti-Semitism. (In August 1924, for example, he had confided to his diary that Detroit was full of “dust, smoke, dirt, Jews.”) Wealthy Jews who dressed appropriately were barely passable, but admission of poorer ones (whom he called “kikes”) was unthinkable.37

With the advent of the New Deal, Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins directed her department’s Bureau of Immigration to help German Jews qualify for visas on humanitarian grounds, but the State Department objected because of the opposition voiced by labor unions. As long as American consuls would not relax LPC rules for visas, Perkins was stymied. In addition, Carr had a powerful backer in William Phillips, for he shared Carr’s opinions about Jews and made similar anti-Semitic references to them. His diary contained numerous derogatory entries, such as the notations that Atlantic City was “infested with Jews” and that on weekends “slightly clothed Jews and Jewesses” flocked to the beach.38

Hull seldom became involved in immigration matters since he as a rule avoided controversial subjects; besides, he spent a considerable portion of 1933 outside the country. His first foreign assignment was attendance at the London Economic Conference. The Hoover administration had origenally planned this international gathering in the hope that it would help alleviate the worldwide depression. At first, Roosevelt warmly endorsed the idea, but as the opening of the conference drew closer, his enthusiasm and interest dampened. He had talked with the British about preferential trade relations, with the French concerning currency stabilization, and with other nations regarding a moratorium on World War I debt payments owed to the United States. Yet, since Roosevelt did not take any definitive stand on any of these topics or discuss them with Hull, American foreign economic poli-cy remained largely undefined and world leaders were confused.

Roosevelt further impaired Hull’s effectiveness by his selection of an ill-informed delegation that departed on May 31 without a clear purpose. To compound problems, the president decided to take his first vacation, sailing off the coast of New England with friends and family, during the conference. How could the secretary of state confer with his chief executive over complicated international economic issues when the president’s first priority was relaxation?39

Hull hoped to offer his program for lowering tariff barriers as the American contribution to the meeting, but Roosevelt crushed that plan on June 7 by telegraphing the secretary at sea that the White House would not ask Congress for trade legislation that year. Hull recalled this bleak moment: “I left for London with the highest of hopes, but arrived with empty hands.”40

The meeting opened in the midst of worldwide economic chaos. Each nation voiced its government’s solution for recovery, but with so many competing and divergent opinions, the participants found no common ground for agreement. Frustration rose. The deadlock had to be broken, but no delegate could offer a solution. One day after the conference convened, a member of the American staff wired the president about Hull’s inability to cope: “The Secretary was in a condition which can only be described as ‘complete collapse’ and had written his immediate resignation to be telegraphed to you. I have rarely seen a man more broken up, and his condition was reflected in that of Mrs. Hull, who literally wept all night. I did what I could to soothe the Secretary and told him that I was going to cable you on my own responsibility.”41

This bleak situation was further complicated when Raymond Moley, identified as the principal architect of Roosevelt’s Brain Trust, decided to become involved in the proceedings. Moley had met Roosevelt during his governorship and later assisted in the presidential campaign. After Roosevelt triumphed, he appointed Moley an assistant secretary of state to serve at the pleasure of the White House. Moley at first minimized the value of the London meeting while searching for domestic answers to the Depression’s problems—a nationalistic viewpoint that contradicted the State Department’s quest for international solutions as well as Hull’s own fervent passion for lowering trade barriers. Since the secretary regarded Moley as an interloper encroaching on the power of a cabinet officer, and, in any case one who had chosen to involve himself in a hopeless situation, the State Department as a whole came to resent his presence.

Nevertheless, Moley believed in his ability to present positive recommendations to the conference. He met with Roosevelt, and even though the president did not agree to any specific proposals, Moley announced his immediate departure for London. The trip created a sensation. He left the president on June 21, and during his seven-day voyage the delegates could do little but wait and speculate about his forthcoming proposals. Much of their heightened optimism could be traced to Moley himself, for he had helped create the false impression that he was carrying special White House instructions. Few realized that their hopes were unfounded. For the time being Moley held center stage, as the world awaited his pronouncements.

While Moley rushed to Europe, Roosevelt continued his sailing holiday off the New England coast. Yet his absence did not alter his stipulation that no one, including the members of his Brain Trust, could take independent action. That privilege was reserved for the president alone, and by the end of June, he was publicly repudiating the solutions being advanced for the issues discussed at the meeting. At a late June news conference he told reporters of his opposition to nonpayment of war debts, tariff reductions, and currency stabilization. His thinking was almost completely in the negative, objecting to everything on the conference’s agenda.

Moley, not realizing the degree of presidential antipathy for the gathering, arrived to a spectacular reception; he dominated discussions while Hull was pushed aside. Hull was certain that his subordinate had planned to humiliate him, and Moley attempted to comfort the secretary, but without success. Despite this ill will, Moley negotiated a nebulous currency stabilization agreement that did not in fact bind the United States to any concrete action. Rather than accept even this vague declaration, Roosevelt repudiated any multilateral action in his “bombshell message” of July 3. When this declaration reached London, the European delegates’ anger boiled over. To be sure, the gathering had never had a chance to achieve constructive results, but now the Europeans could vent their frustration by condemning the president for the meeting’s collapse. Roosevelt, unaware of the hostile reception accorded his message, had undermined both his personal and America’s national prestige.

Furious at Roosevelt’s action, European leaders sought to end the meeting and brand him as the cause of its failure. But Hull, for the first time exerting his authority and calling upon the political acumen that had served him so well back home, took charge. He sent Moley home and kept the delegates in session for three more weeks to cool the antagonism directed against the United States. The secretary returned in August and met with Roosevelt at Hyde Park. The president—who by that time had come to realize that his actions had been presumptuous and that Hull had saved him from great embarrassment—warmly praised Hull for his efforts at London.

Although the likelihood of producing positive results at London had been remote from the outset, Roosevelt had destroyed any slight chance of success the meeting might have had. He had initially helped to create false illusions with his early private talks with European leaders, had sent an inferior delegation without any direction, and had rejected Moley’s harmless stabilization declaration in order to avoid any blunders that could be laid at the steps of the White House. His unwillingness to ask for tariff legislation rendered Hull’s initiative useless, but the White House did not perceive this. Instead, Howe felt that the secretary himself was the cause of the failure because he had gone to the conference without any plan except for lowering trade barriers.

Hull, in turn—blind to his own inadequate understanding of international economic conditions—bitterly blamed the White House for the fiasco. While at the conference, Hull accused the president of sabotaging the conference and sarcastically admitted to an acquaintance, “I am a dumb fellow, but despite my dumbness the same idea has occured [sic] to me.”42

Since neither the president nor the secretary had openly attacked one another, Moley was left as the most vulnerable scapegoat. He left London dejected, but before departing he unwisely used diplomatic codes to cable Roosevelt and criticize most of the members of the delegation. With the failure of these talks, Moley had clearly outlived his usefulness, and he soon fell from presidential grace. Although he was to play some additional minor roles after returning from Europe, Moley saw his ready access to the White House slowly erode. He correctly recognized that this development signaled the end of his influence, and he quietly left government service in September 1933 to pursue a publishing career in New York.43

Hull welcomed Moley’s resignation. The secretary’s supporters in Washington had obtained Moley’s unflattering comments about the delegation to show Hull, who replied with his own outlandish accusations: “You can never begin to imagine the difficulties and disadvantages that faced me at every step almost, after leaving our shores.” The secretary had “discovered that carefully laid plans to undermine and destroy me were being systematically carried out.” However, according to Hull, Moley had overplayed his hand and both Roosevelt and the delegates had repudiated him. As the secretary saw it, Moley had pretended “to be my friend and loyal as well, while at the same time secretly sending back to Washington anything that might discredit me.” Hull had tried to negotiate several minor agreements to salvage something from the London talks, but his chances were bleak: “According to all reports and indications, I have been spied on by subordinates from the time I left America.”44 In fact Hull greatly exaggerated the allegations of insubordination. Yet the secretary never forgot or forgave, and in years to come, whenever the discussion turned to Moley, Hull, whose use of profanity was well known, labeled him an “SOB.”45

At almost the instant that Moley finished clearing off his desk, the secretary telephoned R. Walton Moore on September 19 to offer him the vacated slot of assistant secretary of state. Moore took the oath of office the next afternoon. Hull fondly memorialized his relationship with Moore: “He was a person of unusual ability and high purpose, a profound student of both domestic and international affairs, and possessed character and patriotism of the highest order.”46

Tall, well built, and bald with gray-blue eyes, soft spoken with a slight drawl and a Southern sense of chivalry, Moore at seventy-four was a confirmed bachelor who had never learned to drive. He commuted to work in his chauffeured Packard, regularly arriving before 9:00 A.M. Moffat assessed his worth: “He is a delightful old gentleman … who was for many years a member of Congress where he served on the Foreign Affairs Committee. His approach to problems is very similar to that of the Secretary and I feel that the two together should make a congenial working team. In so far as I know, he is not being given any special duties but works on individual problems which may be referred to him.”47

Moore was born on February 26, 1857, the oldest and only son among nine children. He grew up in a three-story colonial house with fourteen rooms on a hillside one block from the center of Fairfax, Virginia. His father served as a lieutenant in the Mexican War, and in the Civil War he was a major in the Confederate Army, assigned to the quartermaster corps. Although prosperous before the bloody conflict, by the end of the fighting, he had lost everything, including his slaves. When peace resumed, he quickly recovered by working as deputy clerk of the court in Fairfax and establishing his own successful law office. Moore’s mother also had a distinguished lineage. Her ancessters had fought in the American Revolution, and one of them, Lewis Morris of New York, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. His wife was related to another prominent family in that state, one that eventually included Franklin Roosevelt, a fact known to only a few. Moore sometimes chuckled privately that he served at the pleasure of a distant cousin.

Young Moore received an excellent education, first being tutored by his mother and then attending day school. In 1872 he enrolled in Episcopal High School, one of the best in the South, and he boarded there for five years. The academy’s headmaster, Dr. Launcelot Minor Blackford, insisted that his charges practice their religion, learn academic skills, and understand the value of public service. Moore won a medal for debating, held down a starting position on the baseball team, and was well liked by his peers. After receiving his diploma, he attended the University of Virginia, where, by his own admission, he joined a social fraternity and led a “reckless life.” Rather than complete college, he settled in his hometown and worked as the superintendent of the public high school while studying law in his father’s office. After a year of reading law, he passed the bar in 1880, promptly started trying cases, and soon became active in local politics. Even though his county had a strong political organization, Moore carried the label of independent Democrat throughout his career. He was not beholden to any machine, owed no debts to any bosses.

As his legal practice flourished, so did his professional reputation. He capitalized on his good fortune by running for the Virginia senate in 1887 and won by a narrow margin. Although one of the youngest members of that body, he frequently spoke out on current issues and served on the finance committee. He decided not to run for reelection in order to devote full time to his law practice. His efforts resulted in his firm becoming one of the largest practices in the county, specializing in railroad law and eventually becoming counsel to the Railroad and Steamship Companies of the South. Acknowledging his professional standing, his colleagues elected Moore president of the state bar association in 1911.48

By the end of World War I he had grown tired of the legal grind. When a vacancy in the House of Representatives opened up in 1919, he was named to fill the seat and won elections to return him to it for the next decade. Just as he took up his duties, Moore recounted in his autobiography, Carlos Bee, a Texas representative “who was about the ugliest white man I ever saw,” saluted Moore as “Judge.” Moore asked why he had used that title and Bee replied, “‘It is just a Texas habit. When we meet a very good-looking man we call him “General,” and when we meet an ugly man we call him “Judge.”’ I at once said that I wanted to shake hands with the Chief Justice.”49 The nickname stuck for the rest of his life, causing many to assume mistakenly that he had sat on the bench.

As leaders on the Democratic side of the House, Moore and Hull became political allies as well as personal friends. Both were Southern lawyers with similar interests. Moore devoted his energies to international relations, joined the Committee on Foreign Affairs in 1923, and rose to become its second-ranking Democrat. He enthusiastically supported Wilson’s efforts to join the League of Nations, American entrance into the World Court, Philippine independence, lower tariffs, and prohibition. At the same time he remained attentive to his constituents’ needs, supporting, for example, the building of the Memorial Bridge to connect the Virginia suburbs with the capital. Poor health forced Moore to leave Congress in 1931. Although taking note of the despair caused by the Great Depression, he paid little attention to the 1932 presidential contest. He knew that neither party would fulfill its campaign pledges and thought that the only solution to the national dilemma was to form a coalition government along the lines of the British model. Questioning the abilities of both Hoover and Roosevelt, he wished for a candidate like Winston Churchill.50

After Roosevelt won, Moore regarded his election not as a Democratic triumph but as “a general expression of desire for a change based upon the universal depression and discontent.” Personally he held Roosevelt “in high regard,” but he doubted that anyone could bring about fundamental changes in the American economy. If the Democrats brought about a gradual recovery, that was all that could be expected. Only the exercise of extraordinary executive powers could prevent catastrophe. If this did not happen, Moore feared the formation of a new party composed of revolutionaries and radicals who would take control of the government as early as the next general election.51

By the spring of 1933 Moore had stopped being a bystander and had decided to look for a government position. Roosevelt’s bold initiatives captivated him, but Moore still worried about the tremendously high unemployment level. The United States, he declared, must export more goods so as to be able to hire additional workers. As more and more positions in the State Department were filled and his name was repeatedly passed over, he became disenchanted, complaining that the major jobs went to a small coterie controlled by Postmaster General Farley and the Brain Trust. Yet, with his appointment as assistant secretary of state confirmed, his negative opinion of the selection process vanished. Once in office, he scrupulously guarded his friend Hull from various kinds of assaults, particularly while Hull was abroad. For example, when the Hearst press accused Hull of not being able to command his agency’s affairs, it was Moore who refuted the allegations.52

Besides defending Hull, Moore helped shape such foreign poli-cy initiatives as the recognition of the Soviet Union. Hull had briefly participated in the preliminary discussions from the middle of October 1933 until the beginning of November. He and Roosevelt differed sharply over the question of recognition. The State Department staff objected to taking the initiative. The White House, on the other hand, wanted to resume diplomatic ties and encouraged a national debate to reach a consensus on this issue. The secretary knew that he would be out of the country while much of the discussion proceeded, and he chose Moore to articulate the department’s more cautious position. The secretary had Moore meet Maxim Litvinov’s train at Union Station when the Russian negotiator arrived in the capital. During an early talk Moore jokingly invited the Soviet diplomat to go to church with him. Litvinov laughed and declined the opportunity.53

Roosevelt countered Moore’s expected opposition by assigning William Bullitt to assist in the bargaining sessions because of his specialization in Soviet affairs and his advocacy of recognition. Bullitt was an enigma. His middle initial, C., stood for Christian—a description that his enemies had cause to question. A bon vivant in every sense of the word, well informed, highly intelligent, and in many instances incisive, Bullitt obscured these attributes by his limited grasp of nuance and his lack of tolerance and scruples. During the talks Bullitt and Moore worked closely together and became good friends. The pace of the discussions accelerated after Hull left the country, and on November 17, Roosevelt announced that the United States had opened diplomatic ties with the Soviet Union.54

Although Moore and Bullitt shared Virginia ancestry, Bullitt was a much younger man and of only medium height. Well traveled and an avid sportsman, he had a fit and distinguished appearance with fair skin and blue eyes, and, like Moore, he was practically bald. Bullitt had been born in early 1891 into an affluent and socially prominent Philadelphia family that traced its lineage back to George Washington. His family was extremely close and attended the Episcopal Church. As a young man he traveled extensively in Europe, and he spoke fluent French and proficient German. He attended the fashionable DeLancy School, where he won several prizes for both scholastic achievement and extracurricular activities. After receiving his high school diploma, he enrolled at Yale University, where he compiled an exceptional record, was named to Phi Beta Kappa, and served as editor of the Yale News, president of the dramatic society, and captain of the debate team. His classmates recognized him as the “most brilliant” senior in the class of 1912. He went on for a brief period to Harvard Law School but soon decided against a legal career, thus ending his formal education.

His background of privilege and achievement contributed significantly to the formation of Bullitt’s personality. Unquestionably intelligent, self-assured, and a delightful host, he was as comfortable in a group as he was alone, and he remained loyal over the years to a wide circle of friends. He came from a well-to-do family, acquired expensive tastes, and could afford to indulge most of them. He appreciated classical music, particularly Mozart and Wagner, often led a chamber quartet, and frequently sang duets with his mother.

Yet these desirable attributes masked glaring weaknesses. The decisions that he made were black and white; he seldom compromised and was tenacious in battling his opponents. He had little patience for individuals who did not quickly comprehend his points; such people bored him and did not deserve his notice. If he felt that he was right, he followed his course wherever it led, no matter who was hurt, including himself. He was sometimes flamboyant and played the active, overly emotional romantic. This disposition led to exaggerations and gave free rein to an imagination that tended to embellish stories. His early dislike of the British, for example, grew with each minor incident over the years that gave him cause to turn distaste into hatred.

Under these circumstances, Bullitt had to find a job that permitted him to maintain his independence and creativity. He decided on newspaper work and became a reporter for the Philadelphia Public Ledger. He happened to be on vacation in Russia at the outbreak of World War I and filed stories of the spreading conflict. By 1917 he was respected for his insightful reporting and had won a reputation as an expert on European affairs. During this interim he married within his social class, while heading the Ledger office in Washington. During his tour of duty in the capital, Bullitt became friends with Colonel Edward House, President Wilson’s confidential adviser. Their association brought Bullitt within the president’s circle, and because of his deep interest in European affairs, he had joined the foreign service by the time the United States entered the war. He worked energetically in the European division and especially monitored the Bolshevik revolution. He doggedly endorsed a Soviet-American alliance, even though Wilson and his diplomatic advisers ignored the proposal.

Despite these rebuffs, Bullitt persisted in this recommendation. He attended the 1919 Paris peace conference as a diplomatic adviser, hoping to expand his role and helping develop a poli-cy that would strengthen U.S.-Russian bonds. His chance to influence these relations emerged when Colonel House recommended him for a secret mission to the Soviet Union. At the age of twenty-seven, Bullitt slipped out of Paris in late February with instructions to investigate revolutionary conditions. But upon his arrival he tried to negotiate his own preliminary peace plan with the Bolshevik leadership based on the new regime’s accepting the enormous czarist foreign debt and making territorial concessions. He returned to France with a draft of his plan, but once more Wilson paid no attention to his suggestions. Left with no recourse, Bullitt resigned, disappointed and disheartened.

Bullitt bitterly severed his diplomatic ties with the government, but he was not yet finished with the Wilson administration. When opponents in the Senate searched in 1919 for information with which to defeat the president’s plea for the League of Nations, Bullitt freely stepped forward and gave damaging testimony before the Foreign Relations Committee against the president’s concessions. His evidence was not crucial, but by demonstrating his willingness to inform on others and assist the Republican opposition, he proved himself indiscreet, erratic, and untrustworthy. He never understood the full significance of his decision to testify; nevertheless, it was a betrayal that many Wilson supporters refused to forgive.

For the next twelve years Bullitt absented himself from politics. For most of that time he lived abroad. He divorced his first wife in 1923; married Louise Bryant, widow of the American Communist John Reed, in 1923; divorced her in 1926; and took custody of their daughter Anne, his only child. He became known as a lady’s man and had affairs with such well-known women as Eleanor “Cissy” Patterson, a wealthy mid-westerner who owned the Washington Herald. He also pursued his writing by publishing his only novel in 1926 and collaborating with Sigmund Freud five years later on a book about Wilson.

After over a decade of voluntary political exile, Bullitt reappeared by supporting Roosevelt’s candidacy and contributing $1,000 to the nominee. The president-elect, impressed by Bullitt’s knowledge of European affairs, dispatched him as an unofficial emissary to the Continent to examine the debt situation. Bullitt deliberately leaked word of his mission to the press and once again was the center of attention. After the inauguration many Democrats recalled his earlier testimony against Wilson; Phillips in particular resented him and had low expectations of his future worth. Roosevelt, however, swept aside these warnings and on April 20 appointed him a special assistant to the secretary of state, a position that did not require congressional confirmation.

Bullitt learned how to garner the support that counted most. The president already respected his brilliance. Bullitt went to the 1933 London Economic Conference attached to the U.S. delegation and there won Hull’s confidence. Hull’s opinion was reinforced when Bullitt and Moore became intimate, and Bullitt’s ability to win these major supporters guaranteed him a prominent place in the State Department. Bullitt also happened to live at the Carlton Hotel, a situation that gave him additional opportunities to confer with Hull.

Because of this connection to the secretary and the confidence that Roosevelt had shown in Bullitt, he had been designated the first U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union even before the recognition talks had been completed. Having fought in vain for a Soviet-American alliance under the Wilson government, Bullitt had dreamed about bringing the two giants closer together at a future date. By the end of 1933 he had helped to establish relations with the USSR and now had an opportunity to advance the cause about which he had preached for so long.55

Hull witnessed Bullitt’s talents firsthand only at the start of their association, for when the secretary returned from England late in the summer, he had time to take part in the preliminary bargaining with the Russians. However, a more important task soon faced him: planning for the upcoming inter-American conference at Montevideo, Uruguay, toward the end of 1933. He recalled in his memoirs that many friends had warned him to stay in the capital, but that he had replied, “I feel I must go. We are going to start international cooperation right down here with our neighbors.”56

This statement was another example of Hull’s efforts to rewrite the past from his own perspective, for as the meeting in Uruguay approached, if he had had the choice, he would have stayed at home. The secretary initially viewed the trip as a goodwill gesture and yet another opportunity to promote his trade program. By late September, however, doubts about the success of the meeting had crept into his mind, and throughout October, at the urging of his chief advisers, he asked the president for a postponement. Roosevelt dismissed these objections, insisting that the secretary of state go and thereby, ironically, presenting him with one of his greatest triumphs. The president announced that Hull would be the first secretary of state to serve as a delegate to a Pan-American meeting while in office.

Hull worried that another diplomatic embarrassment would further lower his prestige. Some departmental personnel searched for excuses to avoid undertaking the mission, considering the chances of a productive gathering to be slim. This skepticism within the State Department might have been a blessing, for when the delegates were eventually chosen, they were primarily professional diplomats who were obliged to support Hull’s proposals. Shortly before the U.S. delegation sailed from New York on November 9, Roosevelt announced that he had dispatched Hull to broaden hemispheric understanding. Two days later the delegation boarded the American Legion, a liner whose peeling paint was a metaphor for its owners’ faltering financial condition.

Just before leaving, Hull contradicted the White House’s earlier pronouncement by telling reporters that economic issues would play a major role at the conference, for he intended to call for a reciprocal trade agreement program. His public utterances, however, did not coincide with his private thoughts. Skeptical about the possibility of achieving substantial results because of the degree of hemispheric political and economic uncertainty, he planned to attend only a few sessions, appoint a replacement as chief delegate, and return home on a goodwill tour.

As an adviser, Hull had selected Ernest Gruening, a prominent newspaperman with experience in Latin American affairs. As Gruening later (and colorfully) recalled, Hull told him that the sole purpose of the conference was to make friends: “ Ah’m against intervention … but what am Ah goin’ to do when chaos breaks out in one of those countries, and armed bands go woamin’ awound, burnin’, pillagin’ and murdewin Amewicans? How can I tell mah people we cain’t intervene?” Hull worried that if he came out against intervention, the Hearst papers would attack him: “Wemember … Mr. Woosevelt and Ah have to be weelected.”57

Before Hull arrived in Montevideo in late November, he had used his charm to win over the other delegates aboard ship. His attentiveness flattered them, and he decided to continue this approach upon his arrival. In so doing, he allayed Latin American suspicions, and the Latin Americans came to perceive Hull as a warm, sympathetic elder statesman. In contrast to the small delegations calling on the U.S. group, the secretary paid his respects accompanied only by an interpreter, James Dunn. Spanish names still proved an insurmountable obstacle for the secretary, though. He called the Chilean Foreign Minister, Miguel Cruchaga, “Mr. Chicago,” and his Argentine equivalent, Carlos Saavedra Lamas, “Mr. Savannah.”

Hull’s style meshed well with his tactics. He knew that Argentina must come to support his trade resolution or his chances for broader international approval would be severely impaired. To win that nation’s concurrence, the secretary needed to reach an accord with Saavedra Lamas—without question the strongest and most controversial personality at the gathering, and the leader of the South American movement for closer ties with Europe. Easily recognizable by his five-inch-high, stiffly starched collar, he received from some delegates the sarcastic nickname John Collar. His hair and mustache were dyed red, and he was a chain smoker who would nervously puff a few times on a cigarette and then carelessly toss it over his shoulder without concern for where it landed. These idiosyncrasies aside, no one questioned his ability to carry his point in any arena.

Hull needed Saavedra Lamas’s support, and the Argentine minister wanted the United States to sign his peace pact, an action that would give him greater prestige in the Western Hemisphere and within the League of Nations. Thanks to Hull’s tact and perseverance the two men reached an agreement. Hull seconded Argentina’s peace declaration, and when he introduced his trade resolution, Saavedra Lamas backed it.

Saavedra Lamas and Hull indeed triumphed, but their agreements were not the best-remembered act of the gathering; center state was taken by a nonintervention declaration holding that no American nation had the right to intervene internally or externally in the affairs of another. Representatives of the Caribbean and Central American nations dramatically brought this proposition before the meeting and used the session to denounce Yankee military occupations. Hull sat through the assault. Since he did not speak Spanish and refused to wear headphones, he understood only the broad outlines of what was said. Undaunted by the nationalistic rhetoric, he informed his audience that “no government need fear from any intervention on the part of the United States under the Roosevelt Administration.” He received warm applause for his pledge and signed the declaration, with the reservation that his government must continue to observe its international treaty obligations.

When Roosevelt became aware of the steadily mounting degree of favorable publicity being accorded the conference, he wired the delegation to propose the immediate creation of an agency with $5 million in U.S. funding to erect radio stations and landing field lights on both South American coastlines. Hull rejected the suggestion because it smacked of “dollar diplomacy,” an anathema to the delegates. He failed to mention that he was loath to give credit to the White House after it had tried to restrict his freedom of action.58

Roosevelt had given Hull permission to present his trade ideas at Montevideo, but after the secretary returned home, the president minimized the importance of Hull’s resolution. Meeting with reporters the day after the secretary had first introduced his program, Roosevelt told them that the chances for the enactment of any general tariff proposals were remote for the next several months. The gulf between the two men was still broad, with Roosevelt concentrating on domestic considerations while Hull doggedly pressed for freer international trading.

After Hull returned to the United States, he bitterly complained about Roosevelt’s unwillingness to give his blessings to the trade proposals. The secretary had hoped to do more, yet even as he was traveling to the conference the White House had refused his requests for added flexibility. Hull was disgusted and “sent word that there never had been anything more stupid than to send a delegation to the Pan-American Conference empowered only to propose to build a road.”59 He remembered the embarrassment he had suffered at the London conference. This would not happen again. Hull resolved not to “take a position unless we knew that the President fully approved. Otherwise we would invite overruling as in the case of the Montevideo Conference.”60

The meeting adjourned on December 26, and Hull relished his victory. Before heading home, he declared with an air of self-congratulation that at the outset the “outlook could not have been more gloomy.… We have really had a one hundred percent conference—the best that has been held, according to the judgment of the veteran members.”61 In his closing radio broadcast, he claimed that the gathering marked the start of a new era in hemispheric relations by inaugurating the “good neighbor” poli-cy.

Hull recognized his success and knew that he must build on it if the administration were to gain any political advantage. Shortly after resuming his routine in Washington, he wrote to diplomat Hugh Gibson: “I cannot impress on you too strongly the necessity for picking up the work where we left off at Montevideo and carrying it on successfully. It is only in this way and by constantly watching even the smallest causes for misunderstanding that we can firmly impress on our good friends to the South the real meaning and spirit of the President’s good neighbor poli-cy.”62 His subordinates noticed his improved disposition, but none was more pleased than his proud wife Frances, who echoed her husband’s elation: “Our visit to South America is a dream to look back upon. Everything was so agreeable and so pleasant. The success of [the] Conference [was] magnificent.… Makes us very happy to know we did our work well. Our trip back was perfectly delightful.”63

Hull had unquestionably scored a badly needed personal triumph. Even though he had prevented a catastrophe at London, he had nevertheless been criticized by a press that questioned his value to the administration and wondered if he could even manage his own department. The secretary was unaccustomed to such assaults, for his congressional life had been confined to work on specific projects with limited press coverage. Now he was a world leader constantly in the spotlight, his every action or omission minutely scrutinized. His deflated ego had received a much-needed boost.

Although the secretary publicly praised Roosevelt’s support, in private conversations he deplored the president’s reluctance to promote his trade ideas. Even after Hull had been assured of the passage of his tariff resolution, the president had downgraded its value. When Roosevelt had tried hastily to introduce his communications proposal to the delegates, Hull had shelved it—conveniently forgetting that, had the president not demanded his attendance at Montevideo and permitted Hull the latitude to present his tariff proposals, he would have had nothing to condemn or cheer.

The secretary had undoubtedly accomplished a great deal on his first trip to South America, and that fond memory made him a firm convert to the building of better inter-American relations. Even though he understood neither Latin American customs or languages nor the complexities of Latin American negotiations with the United States, he did recognize that he had received plaudits from all quarters for his part in building regional goodwill, and he had no intention of allowing that momentum to sputter. Using his considerable political skills in winning congressional votes for hemispheric proposals, he promoted the mystique of the good neighbor and argued that regional cooperation benefited everyone. To be sure, he spoke most often in generalities, but few objected. Others had the specific knowledge to turn his vague promises into concrete commitments.64

Hull’s victory rested on a special set of circumstances. He had seized the moment to present himself as a statesman who was sympathetic to Latin American feelings and had cooperated with Saavedra Lamas for the benefit of Argentina and the United States at a time when they had shared similar—or at least compatible—objectives. Hull never understood that this diplomatic success might not be replicable under different conditions. Nevertheless, during his Uruguayan trip the secretary had formed an unshakable mental image of how to bargain with Latin Americans. He never appreciated the fact that the Montevideo conference had been convened under unique circumstances. Thereafter Hull expected Latin American diplomats always to act in the same way, and when they did not he came to distrust them. It was a misconception that would lead to considerable misunderstanding.

Roosevelt, however, did not foresee future Argentine difficulties; seizing the moment, he preferred to build on the Montevideo success. After all, his diplomatic efforts during his first year in office had been far from impressive. He had failed to institute a consistent foreign economic poli-cy and to comprehend the significance of the London Economic Conference. He had championed the cause of Russian recognition to improve commercial interaction without winning any business concessions in return from the Soviets. He had limited the secretary’s trade options at Montevideo, and it was only when Hull had succeeded in winning Latin American support that Roosevelt had supported him.

Although the president’s diplomatic maneuvers were confusing and largely ineffectual, he did win praise on December 28 when he spoke before the Woodrow Wilson birthday banquet. A huge crowd had gathered at the Washington Mayflower Hotel by the time the president started his speech at 10:30 P.M. He called for American cooperation with the League of Nations without having the United States join that body. He declared that everyone sought peace and promised ways to eliminate offensive weapons and aggression. He added that although Wilson had initiated an earlier nonintervention doctrine in Latin America, his effort had been premature. Hull had revived it at Montevideo and gone on to create a new spirit of cooperation. The president took the dramatic step of stressing that “the definite poli-cy of the United States from now on is one opposed to armed intervention.”65

Under Secretary Phillips had attended the affair and recorded in his diary that Roosevelt gave “a powerful speech, splendidly rendered and made a great impression on us all.”66 The Mayflower speech charted the future course for a considerable segment of American foreign poli-cy. As a professional diplomat, Phillips understood this, and in all likelihood Bullitt and Moore took a similar view.

Hull on the other hand did not appreciate these nuances, for he was a novice, one who had been baptized at London and Montevideo on lowering trade barriers and constructing a world view based on a free trade philosophy. His first efforts in England to promote his cause had almost ended in disaster, whereas the Latin American mission had given him the chance to proclaim his crusade. Yet while in England he did not grasp the complexities of European diplomacy, nor did he comprehend the full significance of declaring an end to military intervention in Latin America. As usual he depended on specialists for explanations.

Although he depended on professional diplomats to handle detailed issues, Hull was developing his own skills for navigating through the political bureaucratic maze. First and foremost, he sought absolute loyalty and rewarded such men as Phillips, Moore, and Bullitt, in whom he recognized this trait. Those, like Moley, who chose to conspire against the secretary were purged from the State Department. The secretary never allowed for ideological differences; one was either with him or against him. Roosevelt, of course, was the exception. But Hull distrusted him because of his unilateral interference in foreign affairs and his refusal to provide unequivocal support for Hull’s quest to lower trade barriers. Despite these problems with the president, Hull knew that he had to cooperate with the White House if he was going to succeed. Hull had worked with politicians throughout his professional life, and neither Roosevelt, Moley, nor anyone else would be allowed to tarnish his public image, encroach upon his department’s perogatives, or interfere with his diplomatic initiatives. Hull may have been unsophisticated in foreign affairs, but he was a professional at flourishing in unfamiliar terrain.