“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.”

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.

The 1876 presidential election between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel Tilden came down to a dispute over Florida’s electoral votes. These pamphlets and documents include official signed copies of key Florida court and executive decisions. From the papers of Edward Louden Parris, an attorney for Tilden, who ended up losing in the “Compromise of 1877.”

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.

“… until that moment I did not suppose he could have been forced to Vote for Gen^l Jackson.… I might ask the Gentleman from North Carolina (M^r Saunders) if he does not know some, who made earnest and solem appeals to members who were uncommitted, saying, save the Nation, save the Nation, by the election of M^r Adams, and who are now to be found arrayed among the foremost of the opposition”

In this letter to the editors of the Daily National Intelligencer, Maryland governor Joseph Kent attacks a “false & scurrilous” publication by R[omulus] M[itchell] Saunders regarding the 1824 election, asking them to publish a “correction.” An excerpt from a letter Kent had written in May 1827 characterized Congressman Saunders, a supporter of William Crawford, as anxious that the election be settled on the first ballot so that North Carolina would not “be forced to vote for” Andrew Jackson.[1] In 1827, Saunders vehemently denied Kent’s recollection and denounced the governor and the newspapers that had published his charge.

In this fascinating letter, Alexander Hamilton’s son thanks U.S. Senator Jacob M. Howard for his report on President Andrew Johnson’s attempt to dismiss Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. That attempt and the refusal of the Senate to endorse it led the U.S. House of Representatives to impeach Johnson just six weeks after Hamilton wrote this letter.

John Hamilton also jokingly refers to Howard’s thinly veiled criticism of Thomas Jefferson, whom Hamilton characterizes as the “Machiavel of the U States.” Italian Renaissance man Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) wrote The Prince (1513, published 1532) in which he commends an amoral expediency in the ruthless exercise of power, exactly the view the younger Hamilton held of Jefferson. Hamilton also commends his father’s plan for funding the nation’s Revolutionary War debt as a model for funding the Civil War debt.

“If there is one measure better calculated than another to produce that state of things so much deprecated by all true republicans, by which the rich are daily adding to their hoards and the poor sinking deeper into penury, it is an exclusive metallic currency....”

On a cold, wet day, March 4, 1841, President Harrison delivered the longest inaugural address in history. Harrison wrote the entire speech himself, though it was edited by his soon-to-be Secretary of State, Daniel Webster. Webster said afterwards that in the process of editing the text, he had “killed seventeen Roman proconsuls.” Contracting pneumonia, Harrison became the first president to die in office 31 days after delivering this address. His vice president John Tyler became the new president and served out Harrison’s term.

In an 8,460-word address, printed here on the front page of the National Intelligencer, Harrison presents a detailed statement of the Whig agenda and a repudiation of the populism and policies of Democratic Presidents Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren. Harrison promises to reestablish the Bank of the United States, to issue paper currency, to use his veto power sparingly, and to appoint qualified officers of government in contrast to the spoils system that Jackson heralded. He favors term limits, limits on the powers of the presidency, and devotion to the nation rather than party. Harrison avoids specifics on the divisive issue of slavery, which in theory he might have opposed, but of which he was in practice a staunch defender.

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.

Before John F. Kennedy could defeat Richard Nixon in the election of 1960, he had to win his party’s nomination against veteran Senator Lyndon Johnson and perennial candidate Adlai Stevenson. Kennedy did so handily, on the first ballot of the convention.

“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.”

“I should be very happy to run with Harry Truman. He’ll bring real strength to the ticket!”

This anti-Klan message would not have helped Dewey in the South; white southerners voted solidly Democratic from 1876 through 1964, while African Americans were prevented from voting. So, this poster was meant to appeal to Catholic and immigrant voters, whom the Klan targeted, as well as to black voters in northern cities.

“The States are emphatically the constituents of this Government....”

With this order, new President Chester A. Arthur authorized Secretary of State James G. Blaine to affix the seal of the United States to the fully ratified Angell Treaty of 1880 that suspended the immigration of Chinese laborers to the United States. Further discriminatory steps were enacted by subsequent legislation continuing until 1943.

This poster uses the 1960 presidential campaign between Democrat nominee John F. Kennedy and Republican nominee Richard M. Nixon to sell Sylvania television picture tubes. It features the faces of Kennedy and Nixon on a picture tube with a hand pointed to the bottom of the poster. It encouraged customers to “Enjoy the Presidential Campaigns More on a Silver Screen 85 Picture Tube” and to “Vote Here for Expert Radio-TV Service with Sylvania Tubes, Free Tube Testing Inside, Prompt ‘At-Home’ Service & Be Sure to Vote in November.” Local television dealers could add their business information beneath this poster.

Featuring Franklin Roosevelt’s acceptance speech at the 1936 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, the 1936 Democratic National Platform, and the results of the election of 1936, this lavish book includes statements by the first lady and cabinet members, sketches of other party leaders, histories of the Democratic Party, Congress, and the White House, and biographies of Roosevelt and Vice President John Nance Garner. With fantastic illustrations and advertisements.

President Roosevelt signed colorful printed illustrations of the White House, which were bound into this souvenir book created by the DNC to pay down the post-election campaign deficit.

“it affords me much satisfaction to be able to communicate the commencement of a favorable change in our foreign relations....”