The Rise & Fall of the Roosevelt Dynasty

_{The Republic of New Netherlands (2022)}

This is just a little alternate history idea that popped into my head and wouldn’t leave me alone until I wrote it all down. The Roosevelt family is probably the most successful political dynasty in American history, and I had a lot of fun playing around with that. One thing I want to be very clear about: I DID NOT CREATE THIS MAP. I stole it from this guy‘s Republic of New Netherlands scenario, because I realized I couldn’t make a better one. I hope he doesn’t mind.

1. INTRODUCTION: THE OLIGARCHY AND THE FIRST DEMOCRACY (1795-1901)
2. THE ROUGH RIDERS & THE MARCH ON NEW AMSTERDAM (1901)
3. A PROGRESSIVE DICTATORSHIP (1901-1919)
4. THE INTERREGNUM (1919-1930)
5. THE QUIET COUP (1930)
6. THE NEW DEAL (1930-1945)
7. THE REGENCY & ELEANOR’S THAW (1945-1953)
8. OPERATION AJAX (1953)
9. MARTIAL LAW & THE COUSINS’ WAR (1953-1964)
10. THE NOVEMBER 7th MOVEMENT (1964-1966)
11. LIBERALIZATION & THE BEGINNING OF THE SECOND DEMOCRACY (1966-1968)
12. THE ROOSEVELT LEGACY (1968-TODAY)

INTRODUCTION: THE OLIGARCHY AND THE FIRST DEMOCRACY (1795-1901)

Political historians of the Republic of New Netherlands generally divide the country’s history into four distinct eras: ‘The Oligarchy’ (1795-1872), ‘The First Democracy’ (1872-1901), ‘The Roosevelt Dynasty’ (1901-1968), and ‘The Second Democracy’ (1968-Present Day). To understand how the Roosevelt Dynasty came to power, we must first understand the historical context that the Republic found itself in 1901.

In the decades following the Republic’s Declaration of Independence, it was initially dominated by the manorial class known as ‘the Patroons‘. These great families owned most of the farmland, controlled most trades and industries, and held a stranglehold on the House of Burghers, which required voters to meet stringent income qualifications in order to qualify for the franchise. Led by the great Van Rensselaer family, the Patroons turned the Republic of New Netherlands into one of the world’s foremost economic powers, despite its small size. But this triumph came with several caveats. As their wealth increased, so did resentment from those without access to it. As the Republic’s economy grew, so did the masses of the proletariat who made it possible. Starting as early as the 1840s with the so-called Anti-Rent War, sporadic violence erupted, growing in scale and complexity as the century continued. Under intense pressure, the Oligarchy bent, and then broke. Political Reform Bills passed in 1859, 1866, and finally, in 1872, extending the franchise to every adult citizen of the Republic. Thus began the First Democracy.

Unfortunately, democracy brought little benefit to New Netherlands, at least at first. The patroons continued to hold an iron grip on the economy, and they used their wealth to viciously defend their privileges, even from the new, popularly-elected House of Burghers. A government system built for oligarchic cliques proved unable to function in the hands of mass political movements, and the 1880s and 1890s became notorious for a series of corruption scandals, parliamentary gridlock, and fiscal irresponsibility, as a series of short-lived governments (seventeen Prime Ministers in twenty-nine years) tried to navigate between recalcitrant patroons and militant trade unionists. It was a grim time, when many questioned if the Republic could survive.

Into this chaos stepped Theodore Roosevelt.

THE ROUGH RIDERS & THE MARCH ON NEW AMSTERDAM (1901)

The Roosevelts were an old patroon family, extraordinarily rich, with a history of political involvement going back to the foundation of the Republic. Theodore, however, was something of the proverbial black sheep. An invalid as a child, he attempted to compensate for this in adulthood with a fetish for hunting, hiking, and all manner of sports. Forced into exile after losing one the Republic’s notoriously vicious political fights, Theodore, or “Teddy” as he was more commonly known, spent most of the 1890s serving as a mercenary in the U.S. Army in their campaigns in Mexico and Texas. His writings about his time there made him a celebrity back home, especially when he turned his pen to political matters.

In 1897, he returned to New Netherlands in triumph, and that year won election to the House of Burghers, along with twenty-seven other members of the new “Progressive Party”. Teddy hadn’t founded the Progressives, but he turned them into a force to be reckoned with virtually overnight by his endorsement, and had soon established himself as unquestioned party leader. The Progressives sought to break the deadlock of Socialists, Liberals, and Conservatives in Parliament, pledging a government of common sense, national strength, and a “square deal for every citizen”. It was a popular message, especially Roosevelt’s frequent exhortations on the need for a strong leader to take command and bypass the petty squabbling of politicians.

Theodore’s skill as a politician undoubtedly would have earned him a measure of success anyways, but he was aided by the fact that he had not returned home from the war alone. His “Rough Riders” came with him, a motley band of veterans and mercenaries who soon earned a hard reputation on the streets of New Amsterdam and Fort Orange for their willingness to spread the Progressive party line with clubs or truncheons. Their ranks swiftly swelled with disaffected young men looking for adventure, and Roosevelt’s army was soon a law unto itself in many parts of the Republic. Few doubted that he had his eye on the Prime Ministership, and most believed he would win it. But in the end, it didn’t come to that.

In 1901, enraged by the government’s failure to pass a budget for the third year in a row, Theodore called for a “March on New Amsterdam” to speak the will of the people directly to those in power. Thousands of armed and angry supporters poured into the streets of the capitol, with local police either standing by, or joining them, as they looted the campaign offices of the Socialist Party and violently demonstrated outside Parliament House. At least forty-six people were killed in riots across the city over the course of a week. Some in government called for the Army to be mobilized, and for Roosevelt to be arrested. Instead, on September 14th, Prime Minister Van Schaik bowed to the inevitable.

Voluntarily dissolving his government, he invited Theodore Roosevelt to take up an emergency position as interim Head of State in order to ‘resolve the present crisis’.

Though nobody knew it at the time, Nikolas Van Schaik would be the last non-Roosevelt to rule the Republic of New Netherlands for the next sixty-seven years.

A PROGRESSIVE DICTATORSHIP (1901-1919)

For all his other faults, Roosevelt could not be said to be indolent. Whereas the New Netherlands government had spent decades struggling to pass even ordinary administrative legislation, Theodore had the Republic voting in a plebiscite for a new Constitution on January 10th, 1902, less than four months later. Widespread reports of voter intimidation and violence marred the referendum, but it’s likely that the Constitution of 1902 (more widely known as the Roosevelt Constitution) would have passed by a wide margin anyways. In the end, the official tally was 86% in favor.

On its face, the Roosevelt Constitution still maintained a democratic government, albeit a more centralized one. The President of the Republic, before a ceremonial position appointed by Parliament, would now be a directly-elected Head of State, with power to appoint and remove the Prime Minister. But he was still accountable to the House of Burghers and the People. In theory. Some liberals pointed in concern to provisions of the new document that seemed to grant the President sweeping emergency powers in almost any situation, as well as the ability to override or remove elected officials who gainsaid them, but the burning of the offices of the New Amsterdam Zeitung silenced most critics. As it happened, they had been right. Using his “anti-corruption” authority, President Roosevelt quickly purged the Republic’s election boards and civil service commissions of opponents. The Socialist Party was banned in an emergency session in April, and when elections to the House of Burghers were held in August, the Progressives easily won a two-thirds super-majority. The new tamed parliament passed legislation enshrining even more vast presidential powers, including the ability of the government to detain “seditious persons” without trial indefinitely. The Rough Riders were formalized as a party paramilitary force, supplemented by a new National Police to maintain order. Within just a few years, Roosevelt’s hold on power was complete.

Why did the people of New Netherlands put up with this? Did they not understand that they were losing their democracy that they’d so recently won? In truth, the answer was simply that Theodore Roosevelt was an extraordinarily effective politician and that the Republic had been an ongoing disaster. The new Progressive administration moved rapidly to prosecute corruption, resolve inefficiency, and regulate industries long allowed to run wild. A degree of “labor peace” was fostered through the creation of the National Labor Front to represent workers and mediate disputes. Most famously, he moved to break up the Vertrouwen, the massive, monopolistic “trusts”, owned by the patroon class, that still dominated the New Netherlands economy. Certain accusations have been brought here–Roosevelt’s actions helped open up the economy of the Republic to American corporate entry, and it has been alleged that he received significant funding and support from the U.S. government in his coup d’etat in return for this quid pro quo. This has never been proved, and regardless, it was a highly popular action.

Roosevelt had claimed that strong leadership could break the deadlock of Republican politics, and so far, he seemed to be right. Aside from his policies, Theodore also displayed a positive gift for media and propaganda. His beaming face gazed out at New Netherlands citizens from billboards, currency, and newspapers, and he was careful to create a carefully-curated image of the hard-working, honest, but avuncular President.

Roosevelt’s ruled as president for eighteen years, virtually without opposition. But his regime was not without tragedy. In 1918, his son Quentin Roosevelt died in France, where he had enlisted as a volunteer pilot with New Netherlands Expeditionary Force after the Republic’s entry into WWI in 1915. It was a devastating blow to the President, and it was not without political ramifications, as it generally believed that Roosevelt had been grooming his younger son as his eventual successor. Theodore never fully recovered, and on January 6th, 1919, he passed away in his sleep from a pulmonary embolism. He was only sixty years old.

THE INTERREGNUM (1919-1930)

Nobody quite knew what was going to happen next. There were no plans for succession, no obvious chain-of-command. Many believed–or at least hoped–that with the Old Lion’s death, a return to democratic government could be effected. Progressive party apparatchiks saw an opportunity to grasp the reigns of power themselves, as did radical socialists and militant trade unionists. As it happened, however, the Roosevelt family moved swiftly to outmaneuver the opposition. In a family council at Oyster Bay on January 12th, Roosevelt’s children chose the eldest son, Field Marshal Theodore Roosevelt III as the new President.

Theodore III was an accomplished soldier, seeing action in the N.N.E.F in the First World War, and serving as colonial governor of Surinam between 1912-1914. His skills as a politician, however, much left to be desired. Where his father had been able to form a cult of personality and dominate the Progressive Party by force of will alone, Theodore III found himself in an endless series of political fights, within the government, and within his family. The new President assumed he would rule as his father had, as absolute and unquestioned dictator. His brothers, cousins, and nephews, however, saw this new era as one of ‘Family Rule’, with Theodore III as mere ‘first among equals’. He had neither the political skills to geld his rivals, nor the ruthlessness to crush them, and New Netherlands government rapidly descended into a quagmire of confusion.

_{President Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1919)}

In 1922, another family council was summoned, and Theodore III was forced to resign the presidency. He was replaced by his younger brother, Archibald Roosevelt, the General-Commander of the Rough Riders. Archibald was more politically-astute than his brother, but no more effective as president. Eschewing his father’s populist policies, he was an admirer of Benito Mussolini and other European “fascista” movements. (This admiration went both ways–Mussolini later wrote that Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders were one of his inspirations for the Blackshirts). This attracted support from the right-wing of the Progressive Party, and some of the surviving Vertrouwen, but alienated the traditional Party elite, as well as the National Labor Front. And again, unlike his father (or Mussolini), he was unable to compel obedience. Archibald’s presidency lasted only until 1925, when he resigned from office after receiving an ultimatum from the Party leadership. He was replaced by Nicholas Longworth III, the American-born husband of Alice Roosevelt, Theodore’s eldest child.

Longworth was aristocratic, charming, and well-connected, seemingly a perfect choice to unite the warring factions of family and party leadership. Unfortunately, he was also ambitious, ruthless, and corrupt. Efforts to consolidate his personal control over the New Netherlands might have been tolerated by the Roosevelt family, but selling off state assets to American relatives and friends provoked unanimous opposition, as did his clumsy attempts to push his wife’s brothers out of power. Ironically, it may well have been his predilection for womanizing that did him in, in the end. His sudden death in 1927 is widely believed to be the result of poisoning by his wife, though this has never been proven.

With Longworth gone, Archibald returned to the Presidency again, having learned none of the lessons of the last decade. How long could this game of musical chairs continue? Surely not for much longer. Discontent with the Theodore’s feckless descendants had been building, and the store of legitimacy that the dynasty had built up between 1901 and 1919 was all but exhausted. The global economic crash of 1929 was probably the final blow, especially when Archibald proved incapable of formulating a coherent response. What might the result have been? Collective party rule? Military dictatorship? Return to democracy? It was an open question, but it was rendered moot merely a year later by the Quiet Coup.

THE QUIET COUP (1930)

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a cousin of Theodore Roosevelt, and thus a member of the ruling dynasty, although not part of the inner circle. His branch of the family, the Hyde Park Roosevelts, were not particularly close to the Oyster Bay Roosevelts, but they supported Theodore’s dictatorship, and were well-rewarded for it. Franklin began serving in the House of Burghers in 1910, where he was a firm pillar of support for the Progressives, and in 1922 he was appointed Gouverneur of Hudson Province. In 1925, he was appointed Minister of the Navy, which was widely seen as a prestigious but unimportant sinecure for a man whose career had been ruined by his polio infection and subsequent paralysis below the waist. Franklin, however, had greater ambitions.

As the upper levels of the New Netherlands government continued to descend into chaos, Franklin used his ministerial position to amass a significant power base. He used control of naval contracts to assert influence over the appropriations process, inserting men personally loyal to him in key positions while suborning others via control of their budgets. With the President(s) fully invested in political infighting, there was virtually no oversight of the civil service or lower-level political appointees. His most important alliance was with Field Marshal Theodore Roosevelt III, who still resented his ouster from the Presidency, and retained substantial loyalties among the officer corps.

They called Franklin’s assumption of the Presidency ‘The Quiet Coup’ because it happened so suddenly and silently. On March 8th, 1930, President Archibald Roosevelt was simply informed that he had lost the confidence of the Government, the Party, the Army, and the Navy. The Presidential Palace was surrounded by Naval Infantry by the 17th and 5th Regiments, and Archibald found himself signing a letter of resignation for the second (and last) time in his life. The next morning, citizens of the Republic woke up to hear President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s voice on the radio, promising an end to the chaos, a solution to the economic crisis, and a ‘New Deal’ for every citizen.

THE NEW DEAL (1930-1945)

Theodore’s children had uniformly been unable to assert direct and personal control over the apparatus of state. Franklin had no such compunctions. He moved swiftly, extending his personal control to all reaches of the New Netherlands government and the Progressive Party. Theodore’s children were removed from public life, and placed under loose house arrest, while members of the Hyde Park branch of the family assumed control of key posts. This political consolidation was matched by a program of public policy to match, the so-called ‘New Deal’ that would come to arguably define New Netherlands politics up to the present day.

Franklin’s early career had been dogged by accusations that he was a closet Socialist; whether or not this was true, it soon became clear that he had a certain sympathy for their goals, if not perhaps their radicalism. Under his leadership, the House of Burghers swiftly promulgated a series of emergency measures and economic reforms designed to resolve the ongoing economic crisis. The Emergency Banking Act, the Public Works Administration, the Republic Emergency Relief Administration, the National Industrial Recovery Act, and the Hudson Valley Authority were all enacted or established within the first few years of his regime. This was followed up by the establishment of a European-style Welfare State, most notably with the Social Insurance Act of 1933.

Franklin’s policies built on the Progressive foundations laid by Theodore’s administration, but went much farther, seeking to extend beyond dismantling monopolies to true regulation of capitalism, as well as establishing a true governmental responsibility for the welfare of the Republic’s citizens. Coming on the heels of a decade of chaos, the result was to catapult Franklin to a level of popularity not seen since Theodore’s ascension to power in 1901-1902. This was helped along by FDR’s astute grasp of public relations and propaganda. The new Public Works Administration commissioned hundreds of unemployed artists to document the successes of the new administration in story, statuary, and song. Even today, many small towns in Adirondacks or Catskills Province feature heroic statues of FDR Leading The People. He also made use of new radio coverage to launch a Fireside Chat program, weekly broadcasts in which he spoke directly to the citizenry.

Even today, most liberals grudgingly acknowledge their debt to FDR for laying the basis of the welfare and regulatory state they fight for. But Franklin’s economic populism and popularity should not obscure the fact that this not matched by any political liberalization. Under his rule, the power and size of the National Police and the Rough Riders was extended, and a new Presidential Guard was created to try and protect his administration from the sort of military coup that had brought him to power. Franklin liked to play the part of ‘beloved father of the nation’, but he remained a ruthless dictator, as could be seen most famously in the Business Plot of 1933, when a dozen prominent business leaders were arrested and executed for plotting to overthrow the government. Even today, it remains controversial whether or not they were guilty of anything more than being opponents of the New Deal. FDR liked to quote his cousin and predecessor on how to run the Republic: “Speak softly but carry a big stick.” For both men, the iron fist of the dynasty’s force was well-masked under the velvet glove of propaganda and populism.

In terms of foreign policy, Franklin eschewed the fascist-friendly politics of Archibald Roosevelt, aligning the New Netherlands closely to the United States and Great Britain. He declared war on Nazi Germany in July 1940, earning gratitude from a beleaguered Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Despite the New Netherlands small size and illiberal politics, FDR was able to parlay his Republic’s wealth and high-profile into attendance at the Atlantic Conference of August 1941 and the Arcadia Conference of December 1941 with Prime Minister Churchill and President Henry Wallace.

The New Netherlands Army and Navy fought valiantly in the Battle of the Atlantic, the North Africa Campaign, the invasion of Italy, the D-Day Landings, and the Argentine Intervention; and the Republic was a founding member of the United Nations in 1945. But FDR would not live to see the success of his internationalist diplomacy. He died suddenly on April 12th, 1945.

THE REGENCY & ELEANOR’S THAW (1945-1953)

Like Theodore before him, Franklin left multiple children and no clear plan of succession. Unlike his predecessor, the aftermath of FDR’s death was not marked by chaos or infighting. Instead of a succession struggle among his sons, his wife Eleanor Roosevelt assumed office, taking the title ‘President-Regent’. Eleanor was Franklin’s fifth cousins, and the niece of President Theodore Roosevelt, and a public figure in her own right. One of Franklin’s strongest supporters, she had campaigned in public and private for the rights of women, workers, and minorities, often severing as the FDR Administration’s “gentler face”.

As ruler of the New Netherlands in her own right, Eleanor Roosevelt continued to support and expand the policies of the New Deal, most notably establishing a National Health Service in 1951 based on the British model. However, she also enacted policies of social reform that FDR had always hesitated from; passing legislation designed to protect women’s gains in wages and employment earned during the war in 1946, desegregating the New Netherlands Armed Forces in 1947, and enacting anti-discrimination legislation to protect the citizens of the New Netherlands Antilles and Surinam in 1949. Beyond even that, she began what has since been called ‘Eleanor’s Thaw’, the first significant liberalization of the regime since the 1901 coup.

_{President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1930-1945)}

Starting in 1947, the government relaxed censorship laws almost entirely, allowing an unprecedented degree of press freedom. In 1949, opposition candidates were allowed to stand for election to the House of Burghers without harassment, though the Progressives still easily retained their customary super-majority due to gerrymandering and vote-rigging. That same year, Eleanor released a number of political prisoners from jail, or commuted their sentences of exile, allowing them to return from abroad. It remains questionable just how far she was intending to take these reforms. In later years, as leader of the New Netherlands Freedom Foundation, she claimed that she was planning to gradually allow the return of full democratic government. It should be noted, however, that in her time in office, she made no moves to dismantle the powerful apparatus of the presidency, or to place her own office up for free and fair election. Still, it would be too harsh to judge her a liar. We simply do not know what her long-term plans were if her reign had not been so abruptly ended.

OPERATION AJAX (1953)

On August 15th, 1953, Eleanor’s government was overthrown in a bloody and messy coup d’etat, led by Kermit Roosevelt Jr., one of Theodore’s grandchildren. Kermit had risen to lead the New Netherlands Intelligence Directorate, where he had served with distinction and (apparent) loyalty for many years. His seizure of power received substantial aid from the USA’s newly-established Central Intelligence Agency. The New Netherlands was a member of the United Nations and NATO, and President Eisenhower’s Administration looked askance as what they saw as President-Regent Eleanor’s destabilizing and dangerously pro-Soviet policies.

The coup of 1953, or Operation Ajax, as it was known to the plotters, was a far cry from the bloodless Quiet Coup of 1930. Opposition groups, clandestinely supplied with arms and money by the CIA and NNID, launched a series of violent protests and riots, prompting the government to declare a State of Emergency, and giving cover for Kermit to deploy troops and police loyal to him. Though some units of the Presidential Guard fought to the death, other commanders surrounded in return for bribes and promises of promotion, and Eleanor Roosevelt was quickly taken into custody. Kermit was not willing to inflame public opinion by murdering the wife of the still-beloved Franklin D. Roosevelt, and so Eleanor was allowed to go into exile in Toronto. However, Prime Minister Thomas Dewey was killed in the fighting, and two of Eleanor’s sons (Elliot Roosevelt, the Minister for Aviation, and Franklin Roosevelt Jr., Progressive Party Central Committee Chairman) died under torture in Rikers Island Prison.

By August 22nd, Kermit had control of New Amsterdam and the surrounding provinces, and was able to force the House of Burghers to ratify his assumption of the presidency, but opposition continued to fester further afield. The Gouverneurs of Erie and Vermont Provinces refused to recognize his regime, as did the High Chief of the Iroquois Confederacy, and it would not be until December that the New Netherlands Armed Forces had secured control of the entirety of the Republic. Kermit had won, and was duly recognized as the seventh President of the Republic. But at what cost?

MARTIAL LAW & THE COUSINS’ WAR (1953-1964)

As President, Kermit moved immediately to reverse the reforms of Eleanor’s administration, cracking down on any form of opposition or dissent. In fact, he went farther than any Roosevelt before, promulgating a Declaration of Martial Law in 1954 that extended the already dictatorial powers of the presidency even farther, suspending local law courts, abolishing civilian magistracies, and appointing military Gouverneurs to most provinces. In this, he received harsh condemnation, both from his contemporaries and from most historians. But in truth, Kermit probably had no choice. Theodore had been respected, Franklin loved, Eleanor admired. Kermit was only feared, and that was a poor foundation to build a stable government on.

The bloody events of August 1953 had destroyed most of the Dynasty’s claim to inherent legitimacy, and it had ruined forever the fragile unity of the Roosevelt family. Kermit quickly found himself trapped in a vicious cycle; unable to rule except through coercion and fear, those very policies dug away at his base of support, forcing him to rely ever-more on the same crude instruments that were destroying his regime. In short, he had exchanged Power for Violence, as the political philosopher Hannah Arendt would put it. The advent of the Cousins’ War was the inevitable result of this spiral.

It is hard to pinpoint the exact moment in which the Cousins’ War began, and some scholars date it all the way back to Operation Ajax itself. Most, however, choose the attempted assassination of President Kermit by Franklinite loyalists in June 1958 as the true starting point.

Two of FDR’s sons were still alive, in exile in Europe, and they retained significant followings at home. As Kermit’s administration sought to stamp these out, and they sought to expand their influence and control, a ‘War of Assassins’ began, fought throughout the Republic in car-bombings, assassinations, and acts of sabotage. As Kermit’s grip on power slipped, other players entered the game. Theodore Roosevelt IV, son of Theodore Roosevelt III, began to make his own play for power, after being approached by a consortium of business leaders concerned about the breakdown of public order. In 1960, Archibald Roosevelt Jr. (son of former President Archibald Roosevelt) fled the country after a warrant was issued for his arrest. He had been Kermit’s replacement as head of the Intelligence Directorate, but the increasingly paranoid President now trusted almost nobody.

By 1964, the government’s control of the Republic seemed increasingly fragile. Much of rural Adirondacks and Vermont, as well as the Antilles Islands, had descended into low-level guerilla warfare, as poor residents helped by the New Deal had little love for the Kermit Administration. The security services and military seemed riddled with traitors and spies, but none of Kermit’s rivals had a sufficient power base to challenge him, either. It was an increasingly unstable situation, and the Republic of New Netherlands seemed destined for a crash.

THE NOVEMBER 7th MOVEMENT (1964-1966)

On November 7th, 1964, the National Police carried out a firebombing of an apartment building in Brooklyn, New Amsterdam, that they believed to be a safe-house for operatives of Archibald Roosevelt Jr. They were incorrect. Nineteen people died in the inferno, all of them civilians, five of them children.

The “Deal” that the Roosevelt Dynasty had made with the people of the Republic–whether Theodore’s ‘Square Deal’ or Franklin’s ‘New Deal’–was that they traded freedom for security and safety. Nobody believed anymore that Kermit was upholding his end of the bargain. Protests began in New Amsterdam almost at once, spiraling rapidly as word spread through pirate radio broadcasts and word-of-mouth. On November 16th, police attacked the funeral procession for the victims of the bombing, sparking riots, and copycat protests and marches in Fort Orange, Amboy, Philadelphia, New Haven, and Fort Nassau. Initial demands for justice and vengeance were supplemented, as self-appointed protest leaders began to call for new elections, for a new constitution, for a new President.

^{President-Regent Eleanor Roosevelt (1945-1953)}

Attempts were made to both crush and placate the movement–Police leaders involved in the November 7th bombing were fired, and promises for renewed local elections were made, at the same time that the security services attempted to clear the streets. It was no use, and nobody trusted Kermit’s promises. In December, there were several reports of Army units mutinying and protecting protestors from the Rough Riders and National Police. The N.N.A. was a professional organization, and one that resented the degree to which it had lost prestige and authority under Kermit’s presidency. By January, local officials in Orange and Delaware Province were endorsing the demands of the marchers, as politicians began to calculate which way the wind was blowing.

Further blows to the regime came from abroad. The United States had played a major role in propping up the Roosevelt Dynasty, both in 1901 and 1953. But with Kermit’s government in shambles, it was increasingly seen as an embarrassment. In February 1965, the United Nations imposed sanctions on New Netherlands, with the U.S. withdrawing its customary veto, and U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson called for new elections. This was almost certainly the final straw, though Kermit stubbornly resisted the inevitable for as long as he could. Finally, on April 3rd, Kermit resigned the presidency and fled into exile in the United States. In a desperate bid to maintain the Dynasty’s hold on power, he named his brother Joseph Roosevelt as his successor.

Joseph was no dictator. He wasn’t even a politician, he was a composer and pianist. He had not sought the Presidency, and he did not particularly want it. By the time he assumed office, the violence in the streets had died down, but the Republic’s government simply did not control much of its territory now, with self-elected ‘Citizen Councils’ governing several cities in all but name. Joseph attempted a period of deescalation and reform, amnestying political prisoners and opening negotiations with protest leaders, but it soon became clear that the problem was insolvable. The regime was in tatters, and it could not recover. In January 1966, after less than a year, Joseph resigned as well. In a surprise move, however, he named James Roosevelt II, one of FDR’s surviving sons as his successor.

LIBERALIZATION & THE BEGINNING OF THE SECOND DEMOCRACY (1966-1968)

James II had been in exile in the United Kingdom since the 1953 coup, but his return was met with cautious approval from all parties. In light of the disastrous Kermit Administration, the rule of the Hyde Park Roosevelts was increasingly well-remembered, and James was smart enough to understand that he couldn’t simply roll back the changes of the last decade. Initially, he pursued a careful course of action as President, cautiously reasserting governmental authority in rebellious provinces and cities, while simultaneously negotiating with and co-opting protest leaders. The hated Rough Riders were abolished in May, and elections for Gouverneurs and other local officials were held for the first time since 1951. The Office of State Information was shut down, and the Emergency Powers Act of 1902 was repealed.

In September 1966, the first fully-free elections for the House of Burghers since 1897 were held. Despite everything, the Progressive Party still made a very good showing. They were, to many, still the party of the status quo, the party of stability. But they fell short of a majority, taking only 44% of the seats in Parliament, compared to an Opposition Joint List that won a clear majority of 53% (the remaining 3% were independents that refused to caucus with either side). Nelson Rockefeller, newly-released from Rikers Island, was sworn in as Prime Minister in October.

The following year, Rockefeller announced his intention to convene a Constitutional Convention to overhaul the Constitution of 1902. President James II acquiesced to the inevitable. Though the Progressive Party was able to appoint a sizable minority of delegates, it was unable to prevent the new document from totally overhauling the Roosevelt State. A form of parliamentary democracy was restored, with the presidency reduced once again to a figurehead, though the writers were careful to remove many of the stumbling blocks and statutory traps that had reduced the First Democracy to impotence. Other new provisions put strict limits on governmental authority, with a Citizen’s Bill of Rights attached. The Constitution was put to public vote in February, 1968, where it was approved by a margin of 62%.

In retrospect, this all seems neat, orderly, and inevitable. But we must not forget to credit James II for making it possible. Even as the constitutional reform process rolled forward, hardliners in the National Police and Intelligence Directorate continued to push for a renewed crackdown, and it is to his credit that he resisted those demands, as was recognized when he and Rockefeller jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1969.

In July 1968, the first election for Parliament was held under the new Constitution. James Roosevelt II stood for election as Prime Minister, leading the Progressives. They won only about 36% of the seats in the House of Burghers, with the Democratic Joint List winning a majority of 57%. That same month, Nelson Rockefeller was sworn in again as Prime Minister, the first democratically-elected leader of the Republic of New Netherlands in sixty-seven years.

THE ROOSEVELT LEGACY (1968-TODAY)

How to measure to legacy of the Roosevelt Dynasty? It would be too easy to dismiss their nearly three-quarters of a century of rule in the Republic as an aberration or a misstep that can be ignored. The Republic’s system of national parks was created by Theodore Roosevelt, and its criminal code still owes a major debt to his reforms. The foundations of its welfare state and economic regulation system were created by Franklin Roosevelt. Many historians question whether the broken system of the First Democracy was even reformable, without the intervention of someone operating outside the conventions of normal politics. The Republic of the Second Democracy that exists today exists because of them, in so many ways.

But it would also be a mistake to give in hero worship. Both great Roosevelt Presidents were dictators, who fought to hold and secure power by murdering and jailing their opponents. That is not something that can be passed over or ignored. And, for all their genuine accomplishments, their dictatorial rule nearly undid them. Neither Theodore or Franklin proved capable of establishing a functional system of succession, and the chaos of the 1920s and 1960s came close to plunging the Republic over the abyss into civil war and societal breakdown. The stable, democratic Republic of today is so in spite of the Roosevelt system, which despite producing two great leaders, proved incapable of functioning in the long-term.

The Progressive Party still exists today–in 1987 it changed its name to the Democratic Progressive Party, presumably to try and impress upon the electorate that the leopard truly had changed its spots–as of 2022 it is the fifth-largest party in the House of Burghers, following the National Conservatives, the Liberal Party, the Democratic Socialists, and the Working Families Party. Its current leader is Mark Roosevelt, President Kermit’s son. Perhaps some day this latest “Rough Rider” will be able to mount up again and lead New Netherlands like his father and grandfather. Or perhaps the Republic has had its fill of Roosevelts.

Only time will tell.