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Lot 152
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Superb FDR Eulogy, Written and Signed by his Vice President, Henry A. Wallace
Superb FDR Eulogy, Written and Signed by his Vice President, Henry A. Wallace
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Description:

Henry A. Wallace
n.p., ca. Apr. 12, 1945
Superb FDR Eulogy, Written and Signed by his Vice President, Henry A. Wallace
TDS
Very fine content typed document signed, two pages, 8.5" x 14", [n.p., n.d. but ca. April, 1945], titled "HE LED THE COMMON MAN" by Henry A. Wallace. In very fine condition.

It reads: "To those of us who worked with Roosevelt day by day, the outstanding thing about him was his ability to lift the spirits of those around him. No matter how difficult the problem, he always had a worthwhile suggestion.

His leadership was always on behalf of the common man, both in the United States and the world. In his airplane flights abroad he was impressed by the miserable living conditions in certain backward areas. He was convinced that it would eventually prove profitable to the United States to furnish engineering leadership to those areas.

He was completely shocked by imperialistic exploitation of backward peoples and felt that in some way he could do something about it.

His vision was always worldwide. As a boy he loved postage stamps, maps, and boats—symbols of things which would take him everywhere in the world. No other man had such a detailed, personal, vivid understanding of world geography.

The first time I met Roosevelt he started talking to me about the shelter belt of trees to be planted in the Great Plains all the way from Texas through Nebraska, and North Dakota. Those were the days of the dust storms, and he felt that if trees were planted they would change the climate. Some of his agricultural ideas seemed fanciful; nevertheless, some of them have turned out to be more nearly right than I had anticipated. His love for trees equaled his affection for maps and boats. When he registered to vote, he gave his occupation as that of ‘tree planter.'

He might also have called himself an architect and dam builder. He loved to draw plans of just how things should be built. No President except, perhaps, Jefferson was so precisely conscious of space relationships. The engineering aspects of the TVA fascinated him. But in the final analysis, the TVA interested him most as a demonstration of how the living standards of people might be raised.

Roosevelt was not a scientist, but he had an intuition which made him respond in a remarkable way to the suggestions of scientists. The outstanding example, of course, was the way he acted at once on Einstein's atom-bomb suggestion in the fall of 1939. It took the highest order of executive courage to pour more than two billion dollars into an utterly untried project. No President ever had such a remarkable combination of courage and imagination. Without the imaginative courage, America would not today be the world's greatest democratic nation.

No one in the United States will ever be elected four times to the Presidency with the support of a party victory in seven successive congressional elections. Undoubtedly, Roosevelt made many political mistakes but the essential fact remains that he held the Democratic Party together as an effective political force, at a time when no one else could have done it. He made it an instrument of progress without completely alienating the conservative elements in his own party. Many accused him of duplicity when he was merely reconciling in a practical way conflicting elements. He played his politics by ear. Or perhaps we should say that he composed as he went along. He never wavered in his desire to serve the plain people, but his political methods and political advisers might change in the twinkling of an eye. In making these changes he was as impressionable as a woman and responded sometimes to the pressure of the last person who saw him. Yet, he always prided himself on being a hard-headed stubborn Dutchman. And at times he was exactly that. This combination of adaptability and stubbornness baffled everyone. Henry Morgenthau, when I first saw him fourteen years ago, summed it all up briefly by saying: –

'This man Roosevelt is lucky.' Yes, he was lucky. He came on the national scene at a time when his unique qualities could best serve the world. He died as soon as he had made his essential contribution. He missed the bitterness of postwar wrangling. He missed the Woodrow Wilson tragedy of seeing his mental and physical powers slip away when the world need for those powers was greatest. His passing was our loss but his gain. His name will live as long as the memory of man."

Henry A. Wallace (1888 - 1965) was the thirty-third Vice President of the United States under Franklin D. Roosevelt, eleventh Secretary of Agriculture (1933-1940), and the tenth Secretary of Commerce (1945-1946). He was the presidential nominee of the revived Progressive Party in the 1948 presidential election.

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

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  • Dimensions: 8.5" x 14"
  • Medium: TDS

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