There is Woodrow Wilson's essay on "Edmund Burke and the French Revolution" and Theodore Roosevelt's book on Gouverneur Morris, our minister in France during the Terror.
Theodore Roosevelt certainly thought a lot about the French Revolution:
It would be well if our people would study the history of a sister republic. All the woes of France for a century and a quarter have been due to the folly of her people in splitting into the two camps of unreasonable conservatism and unreasonable radicalism. Had pre-Revolutionary France listened to men like Turgot, and backed them up, all would have gone well. But the beneficiaries of privilege, the Bourbon reactionaries, the shortsighted ultra-conservatives, turned down Turgot; and then found that instead of him they had obtained Robespierre. They gained twenty years' freedom from all restraint and reform, at the cost of the whirlwind of the red terror; and in their turn the unbridled extremists of the terror induced a blind reaction; and so, with convulsion and oscillation from one extreme to another, with alternations of violent radicalism and violent Bourbonism, the French people went through misery toward a shattered goal. May we profit by the experiences of our brother republicans across the water, and go forward steadily, avoiding all wild extremes; and may our ultra-conservatives remember that the rule of the Bourbons brought on the Revolution, and may our would-be revolutionaries remember that no Bourbon was ever such a dangerous enemy of the people and of freedom as the professed friend of both, Robespierre. -- Theodore Roosevelt, "The Right of People to Rule," an address originally delivered at Carnegie Hall, New York City, on March 20, 1912
Roosevelt thought a lot about the French Revolution, even in everyday conversation:
I remember one occasion when he had asked me to meet a group of men from California to talk about Bret Harte and Kipling. Bret Harte and Kipling were, however, never mentioned. He said suddenly, turning with the air of ferocious earnestness which he sometimes assumed to one of these gentlemen, who was recommending to him a San Francisco friend, ‘No, sir! Your man is a French Revolutionist.’
The three Californians were evidently shocked. They were men of cultivation and influence. As a friend of Mr. Roosevelt’s, I thought it was my duty to see that he did not offend them, so I tried the ‘phrase.’
‘You mean,’ I said, ‘Mr. Roosevelt, that he is of the type of Camille DesMoulins, not of the type of Marat or Robespierre.’
I knew the name would catch him. ‘Certainly,’ he said. And he dashed into a sketch of Camille Desmoulins, bringing in a quotation from Hilaire Belloc’s Danton, which pleased everybody.
After they had gone, he roared with laughter. ‘Your phrase,’ he said, ‘saved that situation for me and drew me off the track. I am not sure at all that their man isn’t a mixture of Marat and Robespierre.’ But he bore no malice, and chuckled several times afterwards at the effect of the interpolation. -- "Theodore Roosevelt in Retrospect," Maurice Francis Eagan, The Atlantic, May 1919.
The other great historical preoccupation of Roosevelt and his contemporaries, like Brooks Adams, was the end of the Roman Republic and the beginning of Caesarism. Roosevelt saw his activities as a way of preventing something like that as well.
Butler was an insider. College professors always are and have been since the progressive era.
In the early 20th century there was a tension between universities and corporations. Just how that translated into politics varied. Some professors and university presidents wanted to remake society. Others turned their back on the modern market system and retreated from political engagements. Still others put their energies into moralizing uplift. Columbia, Harvard, Yale and Princeton believed that they were educating "the best men," and wanted "the best men" to have more say in how the country was run. What that meant for politics and government wasn't always clear. It must have meant more government than we had at the time, but how far that would go, and whether we'd consider what was advocated to be illegitimate is not that easy to say.
"Roosevelt saw his activities as a way of preventing something like that as well."
Yeah, a real legend in his own mind. With just his outsized use of executive orders alone what he ended up setting up was that very thing. Obama's as well as Biden's first few months here with the end-run of executive orders are a very faithful and painful continuation of TR's ruinous activity. He was proud of it too, in the full arrogance of progressivism that we've come to expect:
I did not usurp power, but I did greatly broaden the use of executive power. In other words, I acted for the public welfare, I acted for the common well-being of all our people, whenever and in whatever manner was necessary, unless prevented by direct constitutional or legislative prohibition.
"Columbia, Harvard, Yale and Princeton believed that they were educating "the best men," and wanted "the best men" to have more say in how the country was run."
They still do. Universities are not a place where people learn. Universities are a place where social evolutionaries(spelling intentional) are specially trained operatives and their real specialty is infiltration and if necessary, overthrow.