<--PREV Doc #178  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  Second Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #180 Document #179; June 3, 1957 To Frank Owen Haywood Williams Series: EM, WHCF, President's Personal File 20-D ; Category: Personal The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, Volume XVIII - The Presidency: Keeping the Peace Part II: Civil Rights; June 1957 to September 1957 Chapter 3: "I am astonished and chagrined"   Dear Mr. Williams: Of course I remember your visit to Paris in 1952, and again let me thank you for all you have done in the intervening years to support the policies for which this Administration stands.1 Your letter arrived on my desk coincidentally with a report from a former staff member who is now in Ohio. He is convinced, as you are, that the vast majority of the people of our country are solidly in favor of maintaining our defensive strength, despite the admittedly high costs.2 Incidentally, I feel that many of those who claim that they are following in the footsteps of the late Senator Taft are either unaware of his deepest convictions or are quite careless in their interpretation of his beliefs. During the last few weeks of his life he became one of my closest associates and collaborators in government, and I not only learned to respect him but found to my amazement that on many major issues he was far more of the so-called "liberal" than I was. I refer here particularly to an expansion of the public housing program and his advocacy of a general system of Federal aid to education.3 Thank you very much for the more than kind sentiments contained in your final paragraph.4 With best wishes, Sincerely 1 Williams, a manager of Connecticut General Life Insurance Company, had been Eisenhower's Connecticut campaign finance chairman in 1952. Williams had visited Eisenhower in Paris in March of that year (for background see Galambos, NATO and the Campaign of 1952, no. 755). In a letter dated May 27, 1957, Williams had reminisced about the meeting, which he termed "the most rewarding experience of my life" (same file as document). Williams said that he was "gr[i]eviously concerned over the apparent trend in the Republican party to a return to let us say, Taftism." He cautioned that if the conservatives who had opposed Eisenhower's nomination in 1952 should prevail, the Republican party would "go down to a defeat from which it will never recover. The security of this great nation," he wrote, "is far more important to those millions of citizens than what must be an insignificant cut in the budget or reduced taxes." 2 For background see nos. 94 and 138. 3 Republican Senator Robert Alphonso Taft had died in 1953; see Galambos and van Ee, The Middle Way, nos. 2 and 222. On Taft's support for federal aid to education see no. 196. 4 Williams had written, "My prayers are with you and also an always increasing feeling of gratitude for the great sacrifices that you have made and are continuing to make as a citizen of our country." Bibliographic reference to this document: Eisenhower, Dwight D. Personal To Frank Owen Haywood Williams, 3 June 1957. In The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, ed. L. Galambos and D. van Ee, doc. 179. 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/second-term/documents/179.cfm <--PREV Doc #178  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  Second Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #180

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