Details
ROOSEVELT, THEODORE, President. Typed letter signed ("Theodore Roosevelt") as President, to President of the University of Califonia at Berkeley, Benjamin Ide Wheeler, Washington, D.C., 17 June 1908. 1¼ pages, 4to, White House stationery, written on pages one and four of a four page sheet, marked "confidential" in TR's hand in upper left margin, with several emendations also in his hand.
TR COMMENTS ON THE REPUBLICAN CONVENTION OF 1908
A fine political letter: "...You have summed up admirably the situation as regards [Secretary of War William Howard] Taft's strengths as a candidate [for President], and the wrong estimate thereof. I am myself a little surprised at the consevative temper of the delegates -- what you well call the 'old commercial conservatism' of that Republicanism of the party's first decade as the latter was unlike Tammany Democracy or socialistic populism. I think that the cause is to be found in the fact that there was no fight, on a principle, made in choosing the delegates. Before they were chosen the reactionaries had made up their minds that I could be beaten only by their accepting Taft, and accordingly they put all their strength into getting men of their stamp who would nevertheless be avowedly for Taft, and as of course this prevented any fight, they naturally got a rather ultra-conservative set of delegates..."
See lot 98.
TR COMMENTS ON THE REPUBLICAN CONVENTION OF 1908
A fine political letter: "...You have summed up admirably the situation as regards [Secretary of War William Howard] Taft's strengths as a candidate [for President], and the wrong estimate thereof. I am myself a little surprised at the consevative temper of the delegates -- what you well call the 'old commercial conservatism' of that Republicanism of the party's first decade as the latter was unlike Tammany Democracy or socialistic populism. I think that the cause is to be found in the fact that there was no fight, on a principle, made in choosing the delegates. Before they were chosen the reactionaries had made up their minds that I could be beaten only by their accepting Taft, and accordingly they put all their strength into getting men of their stamp who would nevertheless be avowedly for Taft, and as of course this prevented any fight, they naturally got a rather ultra-conservative set of delegates..."
See lot 98.