Rare Book Monthly
Book Catalogue Reviews - October - 2004 Issue
America's Paper Trail: Amazing Manuscripts<br>From The Raab Collection
The Last Will and Testament of President Warren Harding.
In 1910, when being associated with a prestigious university still commanded respect from the electorate, Woodrow Wilson was a reform president of Princeton University. It brought him popularity and national respect. The Democrats were very interested in seeing him run for Governor of New Jersey, but the party bosses were concerned that he would throw them all out and bring in his own party apparatus. To learn Wilson's intentions, they employed Wilson's friend John Harlan to act as a go between. Wilson reassures Harlan, "...I would not, if elected Governor, set about 'fighting and breaking down the existing Democratic organization and replacing it with one of my own.' The last thing I should think of would be building up a machine of my own." However, Wilson goes on to indicate that he would expect the party to work for the best interests of the state and that he would have power over appointments. Apparently the letter was sufficiently comforting, as Wilson would be elected New Jersey Governor later that year, and two years later complete his meteoric rise to the presidency. And if the name of the recipient of this letter, John Harlan, is familiar, that's not surprising. His father, John Harlan, was a Supreme Court justice who wrote a marvelous dissent in Plessy vs. Ferguson, the case which approved of "separate but equal" segregation (overturned in 1954's Brown vs. Board of Education), and his son, yet another John Harlan, was also appointed to the Supreme Court the year after the Brown decision. $40,000.
This is just a few of the truly amazing signed documents in this collection. Here are a few more. There is Grant's last command before he was temporarily exiled from field responsibility (he would return as general-in-chief and the course of the Civil War would be changed). There is also an odd later letter in which Grant debunks claims that he ever acted on the basis of dreams. Included is Warren Harding's almost last will and testament, prepared before the start of the western trip on which he died (a slightly revised version was probated). Another letter offered is from Orville Wright, prepared in 1944, 40+ years after Kitty Hawk, in response to those who claimed the Wright Brothers didn't invent the airplane. There is William Henry Harrison's first order as commander of the Northwest Army in 1812, a role which would propel him to the presidency 28 years later. Grover Cleveland was the only president to have two successors, as he was the only president to serve nonconsecutive terms. He outlived both of his successors, Benjamin Harrison and William McKinley, and Raab offers Cleveland's eulogies to both. There is a back channel attempt by F.D.R. to get the British more involved in forming a united front against the developing threats from Japan, Germany and Italy while appeaser Neville Chamberlain was still Prime Minister. Of course Churchill would later be the one doing the arm twisting to get America more involved. There's an anti-racism letter from Ronald Reagan sounding like a liberal Democrat, which he was in 1945. And there are documents from George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Robert E. Lee, William Sherman, Harry Truman, John Marshall, Meriwether Lewis, Albert Einstein, Mark Twain, and W.C. Fields, to name a few more. This catalogue is a wonderful piece of Americana itself.
You will find The Raab Collection on the internet at RaabCollection.com, or you may call them at 610-446-6193.
