Rare Book Monthly
Articles - February - 2004 Issue
An Amazing Collection of Autographs<br>And Letters from Steven Raab
Theodore Roosevelt defines the progressive movement.
Hoover leads naturally to FDR. Item 52 is a letter Roosevelt wrote in April 1932 while still governor of New York but the favorite for the Democratic presidential nomination. FDR was a man of privilege whom many of his fellow scions of wealth considered a “traitor to his class.” His concern for those in need during the hours of the Great Depression earned him that epitaph. The principles that would guide his administration are spelled out in this letter as he writes “…I am ‘obliged’ to no one organization or group of individuals, that I am trying to administer, to the best of my ability, the affairs of my state so that no class, organization or individuals may be favored above others…” $4,995.
FDR was not the only, nor even the first Roosevelt to be considered by some a “traitor to his class.” In 1911, a year before Teddy Roosevelt’s presidential run as an independent would split the Republican Party, he wrote to the President of the Progressive Republican League of New Jersey. In his letter, this remarkable Republican leader who was elected to the presidency exactly 100 years ago, sounds like one of this year’s Democratic candidates. “The progressive movement of our day, the movement against special privilege and in favor of an honest and efficient political and industrial democracy, is as emphatically a wise and moral movement as the movement of half a century ago in which Lincoln was the commanding figure. It is the movement in which so far as we can see at this moment lies the hope for the future, not only of the Republican Party, but of the American people.” Times change. Item 53. $17,900.
Few presidents stand out in our history like the Roosevelts. For example, here’s John Tyler, whose 3 year 11 month administration was the longest non-elected presidency in American history. Tyler was a ticket-balancing Democrat-turned-Whig who ran with William Henry Harrison, the president who died one month into his term when he lacked the sense to come in out of the rain. Tyler, disliked by both Whigs and Democrats, proceeded to purge many of Harrison’s appointees. In this 1843 letter, Tyler writes to his Secretary of the Treasury instructions for removing officeholders not deemed to be sufficiently loyal. About one officeholder Tyler figuratively writes “off with his head.” Tyler would not even be nominated to succeed himself the following year. Item 61. $6,995.
Franklin Pierce’s wife did not want her husband to run for president. She preferred life in her New Hampshire home. As Raab notes, “Jane Pierce disapproved of her husband’s political career.” Ultimately, so did just about everyone else. He was not nominated for a second term either, and history has not rehabilitated him. While some presidents unpopular in their time are now regarded in a more favorable light, the ineffectual Pierce is more likely to be found on a list of our worst presidents. In this 1863 letter to a Boston Lawyer the ex-president asks to postpone a meeting, in part because of the illness of Mrs. Pierce. Tragically, all of the Pierce children died during their parents’ lifetime, and Mrs. Pierce blamed the presidency for the last one. Perhaps this explains Pierce’s unwillingness to leave his wife. As it was, she died just two months later. Item 48. $895.
![<b>Sotheby’s, Dec. 11:</b> Darwin and Wallace. On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties..., [in:] <i>Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society,</i> Vol. III, No. 9., 1858, Darwin announces the theory of natural selection. £100,000 to £150,000.](https://ae-files.s3.amazonaws.com/AdvertisementPhotos/00d5fd41-2542-4a80-b119-4886d4b9925f.png "<b>Sotheby’s, Dec. 11:</b> Darwin and Wallace. On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties..., [in:] <i>Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society,</i> Vol. III, No. 9., 1858, Darwin announces the theory of natural selection. £100,000 to £150,000.")
