^Lot 116 Franklin D. Roosevelt

Menu from the 1936 Jackson Day Dinner, 6 x 9, held at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington on January 8, 1936, and bearing an embossed profile portrait of Andrew Jackson and his quote, “The federal union must be preserved.” Beautifully signed on the front cover in fountain pen by Roosevelt, and by his close friend and secretary Marvin H. McIntyre. In fine, fresh condition.

In his speech at the dinner that night, Roosevelt drew many comparisons between the challenges Jackson had faced a century earlier and the challenges facing 1930s America. Just as the seventh president was forced to contend with a severe depression from 1837 to 1844 that caused a massive increase in national debt within its first year, FDR was also charged with the ‘preservation of the union’ as a devastating economic turmoil yet again threatened America. As such, FDR increasingly saw himself as a ‘modern day Andrew Jackson’ and proponent of Jacksonian democracy—the political philosophy that promoted the strength of the presidency at the expense of Congress. The economic destruction of the Great Depression led some camps to argue that the president should have enhanced political powers to fight the economic downturn as if it was a war. A fine connection between Jackson, the founder of the Democratic Party, and one of that party’s greatest leaders.