Franklin D. Roosevelt: Typed Letter Signed....

Description

FDR on the vice presidency: "... a thankless, disagreeable and perfectly futile task."

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A very rare and historic letter written by FDR, dated November July 18, 1923, as he continued his recovery from poliomyelitis, written during the critical period in the immediate time period in which FDR was making plans to return to political life, an interesting political letter from FDR concerning becoming Vice President of the United States. Written on FDR's Fidelity and Deposit Company of Maryland stationery to Mr. Stephen Demmon of Hollywood, California. FDR writes: "My dear Mr. Demmon:/ Your telegram has only just reached me as I have been up in the country./ It is very good of you, but I do not want to be Vice President./ To have to preside over the United States Senate, as at present constituted, for four whole years would be a thankless, disagreeable and perfectly futile task. If I undertook it I should probably get into such a violent row with Lodge and the other Reactionaries that I should be promptly impeached!/ Very sincerely yours,/ Franklin D. Roosevelt." What interesting content! FDR had in fact been the Democratic Vice Presidential candidate in the election of 1920 with James M. Cox of Ohio. FDR and Cox lost the election to Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge in 1920, one of only two ill-fated national political campaigns in his life, the other being his attempt to secure the Democratic nomination for United States Senator from New York in 1914. Less than three years after his defeat for Vice President, FDR completely repudiates another run for the Office which he describes as a "thankless, disagreeable and perfectly futile task." John Nance Garner, who would serve 8 years as FDR's Vice President beginning a decade later similarly described the Office of Vice President not being worth "a warm bucket of spit," although reporters allegedly changed the of the last word from "piss" to "spit" for print. In this fabulous and historic letter FDR also refers to the fits he would have as Vice President having to preside over the Republican majorities in the United States Senate led by Senator Henry Cabor Lodge and the other "Reactionaries." Lodge was then serving as the Majority Leader of the United States Senate. The Sixty-Eighth United States Congress was a meeting of the legislative branch of the United States Federal Government, comprised of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. It met in Washington, D.C. from March 4, 1923 to March 3, 1925, during the last months of the administration of President Warren G. Harding, and the two years of the first administration of his successor, President Calvin Coolidge. The apportionment of seats in this House of Representatives was based on the Fourteenth Census of the United States in 1920. Both chambers had a Republican majority, with the United States Senate to which FDR referred in this letter to Mr. Demmon having a 53 to 42 Republican to Democratic majority, with one independent. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, the subject of FDR's ire in this letter to Mr. Demmon, strongly disliked FDR's former boss as Assistant Secretary of the Navy President Woodrow Wilson, and was eager to find an issue for the Republican Party to run on in 1920, when FDR himself was the Democratic Party's candidate for Vice President. Senator Lodge argued in 1919 against the League of Nations, the centerpiece of President Wilson's plans for world peace in a post-Great War world. The League of Nations was established without American participation in 1920. With headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, it remained active until World War II. After the War, it was replaced by the United Nations, conceived and named by FDR who was then President of the United States, which assumed many of the League's procedures and peacekeeping functions. Ironically, Lodge's grandson and namesake served as United States Ambassador to the United Nations from 1953 to 1960 under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, after he was defeated in 1952 for re-election to the United States Senate by a young John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Senator Lodge was also a vocal supporter of immigration restrictions. The public voice of the Immigration Restriction League, Lodge argued on behalf of literacy tests for incoming immigrants, appealing to fears that unskilled foreign labor was undermining the standard of living for American workers. In 1907-1911, he served on the Dillingham Commission, an American joint commission established to study the era's immigration patterns, and make recommendations to Congress based on its findings. The Commission's recommendations led to the Immigration Act of 1917. Lodge died the year after FDR wrote this letter to Mr. Demmon, in 1924 at the age of 74. This historic document was obtained from the Christie's auction of the Malcolm Forbes document collection, November 2, 2006.