Description:

Truman Harry 1884 - 1972 Fabulous Truman Modesty and Self-Derision: "As a professor, I am a dud, but I have a lot of fun working at it, just as I did as Senator and as President of the United States"

Typed Letter Signed "Harry" with 28 word handwritten postscript, 1 page, 7.25" x 10.5". Independence, Missouri, June 4, 1959. To Judge F. Ryan Duffy, Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Fine condition.


In full, "Your letter of May 18th has just come to the top of the list and I will answer it as well as the last one of June 2nd. It was wonderful to see McCarthy finally appeased, by the way. As a professor, I am a dud, but I have a lot of fun working at it, just as I did as Senator and as President of the United States. I sent a letter to Mr. Uihlein's funeral and had a letter from one of the family acknowledging it. He was quite a man. Margaret's boy has turned out all right, but it was a little hard on the old man to have her in the hospital in New York at the same time Mrs. Truman underwent her operation here. Both came through in fine shape, and both are now at home."

Truman adds a lengthy handwritten postscript at the conclusion, "Remember me to all the family. Talk about seeing all your friends at a funeral, we had [a] political boss here once named Joe Shannon; he never missed one!"

Democrat Francis Ryan Duffy (1888-1979) represented Wisconsin in the U.S. Senate from 1933-1939. Appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, he served as United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Wisconsin from 1939 to 1949 when President Harry S. Truman appointed him U.S. Judge of the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. He became Chief Judge in 1954, serving until 1959. Duffy continued serving as Judge of the Court of Appeals until he retired as a full-time member of the court in 1966. Assuming the status of Senior Judge, he continued to hear some cases until retiring at age 90 in 1978.

From 1939-1946, Duffy and Joe McCarthy were each serving as a Judge in Wisconsin. Republican Joseph R. McCarthy (1908-1957) was elected Judge of the Tenth Judicial Circuit of Wisconsin in 1939. While serving as Judge, he enlisted in 1942 in the U.S. Marine Corps. He ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senator in 1944 while in the military service. In 1945, still in the Marines, McCarthy was reelected Circuit Judge. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1946, serving from 1947 until his death.

On May 2, 1959, a month before Truman wrote this letter to Judge Ryan, on the second anniversary of Sen. Joseph McCarthy's death at age 48, a bust of the late Wisconsin Senator was unveiled in the Outogamie Courthouse not far from his home in Appleton, Wisconsin, by two uniformed U.S. Marines, eliciting Truman's comment, "It was wonderful to see McCarthy finally appeased."

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