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Document
#1739; February 7, 1956
To Victor Emanuel
Series:
EM, AWF, DDE Diaries Series
; Category:
Personal
The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, Volume
XVI - The Presidency: The Middle Way
Part
IX: "Concerning my political intentions"; December 1955 to April 1956
Chapter
18: On "an almost normal schedule"
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Dear Victor:1 Of course it is not an "intrusion" for you to give me your thoughts and the benefit of your personal experience. On the contrary, I am more than grateful to you for taking the trouble to write me as you did.2
I suspect there is much truth in your statement that, for me, the "emotional strain" would be greater should I retire from the political scene. That aspect does not concern me nearly as much as does the very real question in my mind as to what effect I would have upon the Presidency, with the ever present possibility that in the next five years my activities would be slowed up considerably.3
The arguments, pro and con, descend around me in bewildering and overwhelming fashion. I cannot quote the line precisely, but there is a passage in "John Brown's Body" in which Lincoln soliloquizes about the "deputations and platoons" that come to him daily to define for him God's will. I shall ever remember the line in which Lincoln says very humbly that it might be thought God would "reveal it to him directly" as he so earnestly desires to know.4 I, too, desire to know wherein my duty lies.
With warm personal regard, Sincerely
Bibliographic reference to this document:
Eisenhower, Dwight D. Personal To Victor Emanuel,
7 February 1956.
In The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, ed. L. Galambos and D. van Ee, doc. 1739.
World Wide Web facsimile by The Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial
Commission of the print edition; Baltimore, MD: The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1996, http://www.eisenhowermemorial.org/presidential-papers/first-term/documents/1739.cfm
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