Franklin D. Roosevelt: Typed Letter Signed as New York Governor....

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Wonderful letter on State of New York, Executive Chamber, Albany stationery, dated August 8, 1932, to one of FDR's political opponents from his home state, Hamilton Fish, Jr., while FDR was in the beginning months of his 1932 campaign as the Democratic candidate for President of the United States. FDR writes "Dear Ham:/ I must apologize for my long delay in thanking you for your delightful telegram to me after the Convention. It was held for me during my absence on the cruise with the boys and since then I have only just been able to reach it in the mass of my correspondence./ I greatly appreciate your thought of me and I shall hope to see you one of these days soon./ Very sincerely yours,/ Franklin D. Roosevelt." Hamilton Fish, Jr. (December 7, 1888- January 18, 1991), Congressman, was born in Garrison, New York, the son of Hamilton Fish, a United States Representative, and Emily Mann. He was also the grandson of another Hamilton Fish who had been a Governor of New York, a United States Senator, and Secretary of State. After attending Chateau de Lancy near Geneva and St. Mark's School in Southborough, Massachusetts, Fish enrolled in Harvard University, graduating cum laude in 1910. In his prime Fish stood six-foot-four, weighed 200 pounds, and was distinguished by his handsome demeanor, distinctive speaking style, and flamboyant personality. A crack football player, he was also the only Harvard man on sportswriter Walter Camp's "all-time All-American eleven." Fish then attended Harvard Law School for one year without completing his degree. From 1914 to 1916 Fish served in the New York State Assembly as a member of the Progressive party, where he fought for direct Presidential primaries, penal reform, and workers' compensation. As an infantry captain during World War I, he commanded the 369th Infantry Regiment, which was composed of black troops from New York's National Guard and was known as the "Harlem Hellfighters." Fish's unit spent more time in the trenches than any other American regiment, experiencing 30 percent casualties in the process. Returning home in 1919 as a highly decorated hero, he helped organize the American Legion, chairing the subcommittee that drafted its preamble. Elected to the House of Representatives in 1920 from Orange, Putnam, and Duchess counties in New York, Fish served in Congress for the next twenty-five years. He was the ranking Republican on the House Rules and Foreign Affairs Committee. Fish introduced the resolution providing for burial in Arlington Cemetery of the Unknown Soldier. He was also a strong champion of antilynching legislation, the veterans' bonus, and prison relief and was a proponent of a national homeland for Jews in Palestine. In addition to fighting for these causes, he supported balanced budgets, a high tariff, and tight money. During the New Deal era, Fish broke both personally and professionally with his good friend Franklin D. Roosevelt. Although Fish supported Social Security and minimum wage laws, he opposed the President's court-packing and government reorganization proposals, as well as the Works Progress Administration. Earlier, prior to his election to Congress, Fish had opposed the ratification of the Versailles treaty and American entry into the League of Nations in 1919-1920. During the 1920s, however, he had endorsed American membership in the World Court, the 1928 Pact of Paris, various disarmament conferences, and, later in the 1930s, proposals for a referendum on war, a nondiscretionary arms embargo, and wartime conscription of wealth. In 1937 Fish called for the relinquishment of American extraterritorial rights in China, the withdrawal of American gunboats and troops there, and disengagement from the Philippines. He opposed the dredging of Guam harbor and increased naval appropriations, while endorsing a "small, mechanized, efficient, modern army." In January 1939 he also introduced a resolution to prohibit the exportation of pig iron, scrap iron, and steel scrap to China and Japan, but his resolution was ultimately tabled. Within a year, however, Fish would oppose increased pressure on Japan, fearing that the budding Far Eastern crisis would serve as a "backdoor to war." In August, 1939 Fish headed the American delegation to the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) in Europe, where he met with various foreign diplomats, including German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop. While there, he drew sharp criticism because he flew from Salzburg to Oslo on a German government plane. Earlier, in 1938, he had been similarly criticized when he was photographed speaking at a German Day rally in Madison Square Garden with a swastika behind him. During the same year, however, in a measure aimed at the German-American Bund, Fish paradoxically sought legislation to prevent the arming and drilling of paramilitary groups. At the IPU conference Fish introduced a resolution calling for a thirty-day moratorium on "all political and international disputes." Such a meeting, he believed, would give Great Britain, France, Germany, and Italy time to settle their pending disagreement over Danzig and the Polish Corridor. When the British and Norwegian delegates opposed the resolution, however, Fish pressed no further. At the conference he also called for the settlement of Jewish refugees in Central Africa. In the spring of 1939 Fish founded the National Committee to Keep America Out of Foreign Wars, which was composed of fifty current and former House members. When World War II broke out in Europe in September 1939, Fish led the House fight against the "cash-and-carry" Neutrality Act of 1939, the Selective Service Act of 1940, and term-of-service extension in 1941. In addition to these battles, after unsuccessfully opposing the Lend-Lease Bill of 1941, he proposed instead a substitute of $2 billion credits to Great Britain. Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Fish maintained his opposition to Nazism but warned against American aid "to make the world safe for Communism." During this time, he spoke frequently for the America First Committee, though he voted in October 1941 for arming American merchant ships. Then, in the fall of 1941, Fish's assistant secretary, George Hill, was indicted by a grand jury for giving German-American propagandist George Sylvester Viereck the use of Fish's Congressional frank to distribute antiadministration materials through the mail. Fish, though careless in this regard, correctly denied any personal collaboration with the German government. Loyal to his country above all other interests, however, once the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Fish called for "final victory, cost what it may in blood, treasure and tears." Given his long and successful career in Congress, Fish was often prompted to run for office – New York's Governorship in 1924 and 1926, the Vice Presidency in 1928, and the Presidency itself in 1940. In 1936 he was a prime booster of William E. Borah's presidential candidacy, visiting forty-four states in two-and-a-half months. Then, in 1942, although he incurred the opposition of party leaders Thomas E. Dewey and Wendell Willkie, as well as the scorn of the New York Times and Life magazine for his anti-invasionist stance from 1939 to 1941, Fish was reelected to the House in 1942. Two years later, however, partly as a result of the gerrymandering of his district, he lost the House race by a decisive margin.  After his defeat Fish resided in Forest Hills, New York; Manhattan; and Newburgh, New York. A businessman with interests in insurance, automobiles, and oil, Fish also wrote a number of books, some of them blaming Roosevelt for everything from helping to launch World War II to spreading world communism. In 1946-1947 he published Today's World, a militantly anticommunist monthly, and in 1954 he founded the rightist and isolationist American Political Action Committee. Continuing his quest against the spread of Communism, a year later he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee against American participation in the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization. In 1920 Fish married Grace Chapin Rogers; they had two children. She died in 1960, and in 1967 he married Marie Choubaroff Blackton, who died in 1974. In 1976 he married Alice Curtis Desmond; they divorced in 1984. In 1988 he married Lydia Ambrogio. Fish died in Cold Spring, New York. A most interesting letter from FDR to Ham Fish while FDR was the Democratic Party's candidate for President of the United States in 1932.