Description:

Roosevelt Franklin



FDR "On board U.S.S. Potomac" TLS Re: "Neutrality for the United States"

 

1p TLS signed by sitting president Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945) as "Franklin D Roosevelt" at center right. Written "On board U.S.S. Potomac" somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico near Galveston, Texas (judging from the corresponding envelope's postmark) on May 7, 1937. On watermarked pistachio colored bifold paper, with embossed "The White House / Washington" letterhead. Comes with a companion "The White House" envelope bearing a cancelled 3 cent violet George Washington stamp. The letter has expected light paper folds, else near fine, 7" x 8.875". The envelope shows some isolated foxing and weathering.

 

President Roosevelt wrote in part:

 

"My dear Mr. Davidson:

 

Many thanks for your nice letter of April twenty-seventh and for the copy of 'Neutrality for the United States'. I am very glad to have the volume.

 

My best wishes to you.

 

Very sincerely yours,

 

[signed] Franklin D Roosevelt."

 

The U.S.S. Potomac served as Roosevelt's presidential yacht between 1936 and his death in 1945. The Coast Guard submarine chaser first commissioned in 1934 had been retrofitted with wheelchair access and other amenities for Roosevelt's use as a pleasure craft, but also as a "floating White House." Roosevelt, who was an avid fisherman, typically plied the waters off the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean; he was likely on such a fishing trip when he dispatched this letter. The U.S.S. Potomac was also the site of at least one fireside chat, however, and also played a significant role as a decoy ship when Roosevelt secretly met with Winston Churchill off the coast of Newfoundland in August 1941.

 

Roosevelt's correspondent Eugene A. Davidson (1902-2002) was a book editor and publisher, poet, linguist, and author. After receiving both his bachelor's and graduate degrees at Yale University, Davidson joined the staff of the Yale Review. He was appointed editor of Yale University Press in 1931, and it was in this capacity that Davidson probably came across the text that he later sent to Roosevelt.

 

Edwin Borchard and William Potter Lage co-authored Neutrality for the United States (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1937), and a critique appeared in the Yale Review in Volume XXVI (1936-1937). The book differentiated between ideological and practical neutrality in the context of Woodrow Wilson's policies during World War I. Davidson's selecting this book is eerie, in that it anticipates the United States' entry into World War II just four years later. Like Wilson, Roosevelt would have to balance the idea of neutrality with its true expression, and decide when neutrality was no longer tenable.

 

A fascinating letter from Roosevelt's "Floating White House," presaging World War II!

 



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