Mar 19, 2015 - Sale 2376

Sale 2376 - Lot 134

Price Realized: $ 2,750
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 700 - $ 1,000
COMPARING WASHINGTON POLITICS TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION ROOSEVELT, THEODORE. Typed Letter Signed, as President, to Editor of The Congregationalist and Christian World Howard Allen Bridgeman, thanking him for sending an editorial, expounding upon the two dangers that face political contestants of the day and likening them to those present during the French Revolution, and praising his "progressive and yet conservative" preaching. 2 pages, 4to, White House stationery, written on a single folded sheet with leaves now detached at center vertical fold, each page mounted to a larger board; moderate fading to signature, marginal discoloration from prior matting. (TFC) Washington, 14 July 1906

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". . . In any civil contest such as we have been taking part in at Washington there are always two opposite dangers. In the first place there is the danger of becoming so carried away by indignation against the wrongs committed by men of wealth that we go into a fantastic crusade with its self-seeking demagogues and impossible visionaries, and commit ourselves to a course of action which can only bring disaster . . . . In the next place, there is always the danger that in the revolt against this demagogy and visionary business we shall take an attitude which amounts to a championship and defense of the very real wrongs that have been committed by the man of great wealth.
". . . [I]t must be incessantly said if we wish to keep this nation in a state of mind as far as possible alike from the state of mind of the Bourbon reactionaries among the French nobility at the time of the French Revolution, and from the state of mind of the wicked and fantastic extremists who in that revolution followed Robespierre, Marat, Danton, and their colleagues . . . ."