“Please accept sincerest thanks for your telegram of September twenty-seventh. It is heartening and I appreciate much your sending it.”

FDR thanks Republican New York City attorney Frederick R. Coudert Jr. for a telegram received a day earlier, September 27, 1938. On that date, in response to Hitler’s threat to annex the western third of Czechoslovakia, known as the Sudetenland, Roosevelt sent a message urging German Chancellor Adolf Hitler to avoid the “incalculable disaster which would result to the entire world from the outbreak of European war” and “the mutilation and death of millions of citizens.”

“the Court is packed now, and has been for fifty years, against progressive legislation…. The country will be just as safe, the Constitution just as strong, and the Republic just as great… [if we] let the privileges of our Government be for the whole people and not for just a favored few.”

This sheet contains five rough sketches of graphics calling on the workers and voters of America to support Franklin D. Roosevelt’s reelection in 1936. They did, in record numbers.

“We have been passing through a period of depression longer than that of the World War and more corrosive in its effects. We have before us a work of recovery and reconstruction.”

“We have emerged from the losses of the Great War and the reconstruction following it with increased virility and strength. From this strength we have contributed to the recovery and progress of the world. What America has done has given renewed hope and courage to all who have faith in government by the people.”

Casts of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt from Mount Rushmore. On verso, the Lincoln head has been signed by the artist, Gutzon Borglum; the Roosevelt head bears a period provenance note: “MOUNT RUSHMORE MEMORIAL This is one of the few models taken from the first and final casting of Gutzon Borglum’s Head of Theodore Roosevelt.” (It is entirely possible that the Roosevelt head is signed beneath the affixed note.)

President Calvin Coolidge reappoints Amy Louise Veerhoff as a member of the Board of Trustees of the National Training School for Girls. Originally appointed by President Warren G. Harding, Veerhoff served as president of the Board of Trustees for several years.

Both Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt were avid readers. With this postcard, the future president orders three books from Pierce & Scopes, Booksellers and Importers, in Albany, New York.

Key political circular from the first-year Republican President written to influence off-year elections in New Mexico and other places. Harding justifies, and praises, the rapid postwar dismantling of America’s military by Congress, while backhandedly criticizing the inattention of his predecessor – Woodrow Wilson – to the peacetime transition. “Vast expenditure without proper consideration for results, is the inevitable fruit of war.”

Roosevelt looks to the right and is wearing his signature pince-nez eyeglasses attached to his clothing by a thin cord, above one of the most famous epigrams attributed to him.

“The Government and peoples whom we represent would be glad to cooperate, without thought of political, military or financial advantage, in any proposal which would relieve this situation in Russia.”

To combat starvation in Europe during World War I, President Woodrow Wilson created the United States Food Administration by executive order. Under the direction of Herbert Hoover, it became one of the most efficient and successful governmental initiatives in American history. More than 5 million Russians died of starvation before food aid was allowed in 1921.

“I am a good example of the melting pot—and I am straight United States.”

From his summer residence in Oyster Bay, Long Island, Theodore Roosevelt writes to historian Theodore C. Blegen.  While Blegen would go on to a prominent career in higher education, at this time, he was teaching high school in Minnesota.  Here, the former President criticizes Woodrow Wilson’s immigration policies while discussing his own family’s immigration experience.

“the National Committee can not defeat the wishes of the rank and file of the Republican voters by unseating delegates honestly elected & seated…” With note on verso, “I think I could probably be nominated”

After former president Theodore Roosevelt won nine of thirteen Republican primaries in 1912, he was convinced that he was the choice of the people to succeed fellow Republican William Howard Taft. After the Republican National Committee refused to seat Roosevelt delegates instead of Taft delegates chosen by state committees, Roosevelt cried foul. Most of his delegates abstained from voting, and Taft just reached the number of delegates needed for the nomination.

In response, Roosevelt formed his own Progressive Party and divided the Republican vote, allowing Democrat Woodrow Wilson to win the general election.

“Just at the moment I am so angry with that infernal little Cuban republic that I would like to wipe its people off the face of the earth. All we have wanted from them was that they would behave themselves and be prosperous and happy … they have started an utterly unjustifiable and pointless revolution and may get things into such a snarl that we have no alternative save to intervene - which will at once convince the suspicious idiots in South America that we do wish to interfere after all, and perhaps have some land-hunger!...”

This “Confidential” letter brims with significant content, as Roosevelt comments on hunting, disarmament, the Cuban Revolution, and the American voter. He expressed particular frustration at the inability of the new Cuban Republic to maintain a legitimate democracy. In September 1905, candidate Tomás Estrada Palma and his party rigged the Cuban presidential election to ensure his victory over liberal candidate José Miguel Gómez. The liberals revolted in August 1906, leading to the collapse of Estrada Palma’s government the following month, and to U.S. military and political intervention.

Discussing His “Muck-rake” Speech, Roosevelt Goes Toe-to-Toe with the Head of the ‘Steel Trust’ over the Idea of a Death Tax for America’s Wealthiest. He Takes Aim at Powerful Monopolies and the Largest Fortunes, while Condemning the Radical “socialists of the bomb-throwing persuasion.”

“I utterly and radically disagree with you in what you say about large fortunes. I wish it were in my power to devise some scheme to make it increasingly difficult to heap them up beyond a certain amount.”

“I will go to the limit in enforcing the law against the wealthiest man or the wealthiest corporation if I think he or it has done wrong; but my whole soul revolts at a campaign of foul slander waged against men, … because they have succeeded in business....”