Nov 08, 2018 - Sale 2492

Sale 2492 - Lot 260

Price Realized: $ 975
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
RIGHTS OF IMMIGRANTS, DEMISE OF PROGRESSIVE PARTY, ETC. WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT. Group of 4 Typed Letters Signed, "WmHTaft," to various recipients, concerning the demise of the Progressive party, the rights of immigrants in California, his own presidential candidacy, the League of Nations, and other topics. Together 7 pages, 4to, personal stationery; generally good condition. One with the original envelope. Vp, 1913-19
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2 October 1913, to Baltimore American publisher Gen. Felix Agnus: ". . . Unless we mistake the signs of the times, the Progressive party is rapidly disintegrating, and the only danger now is that its head will take a running jump into the Republican party and seek to obtain the nomination, in spite of all the abuse that he has heaped on the party. It is the weak and cowardly in the party, and those who are willing for a victory to sacrifice principle, who approve such a result. My impression is that there are enough staunch men with backbone in the party, of a conservative tendency, to show before a national convention that should he become the nominee of the party, in spite of his admitted popularity, he will drive away from the polls or into the support of the Democratic candidate, enough of the conservative element of the Republican party as to make his victory impossible. . . ."

8 December 1914, to New York Evening Post editor Oswald Garrison Villard: ". . . [T]he clause of the article upon aliens' rights, . . . is more important in preventing war than even adequate military defenses. The recklessness of Johnson and the trades-unions in California is a real danger in our relations with Japan, but I fancy the gentlemen who are agitating in favor of military defenses will not be found very loud in demanding such a law as we need to give the National Government control where it ought to have control."

2 April 1915, to Felix Angus: ". . . Garthe proposed to have an interview with me on the subject of the Presidency, but I appealed to him not to insist on it, and I did it on two grounds: First, on the ground that it would be very distasteful to me to give an interview upon the subject which would at once thrust me forward as an earnest seeker after the nomination. I do not occupy that attitude, as you know, and I wish earnestly to avoid the appearance of such a thing. Second, . . . the probability of my election . . . would be greatly diminished were the public to get the impression that I was being pushed by my friends, at my instance, or with my connivance. . . ."

13 July 1919, to Yale classmate Howard C. Hollister: ". . . The fight over the League of Nations is bitter, but I anticipate that the League will be adopted. I hope that only a few reservations will be required . . . . The personal and partisan bitterness which the Republican Senators have displayed toward Wilson, I don't think has helped the Republican party. The Senators I think hate me now nearly as much as they do Wilson. . . ."