Presidential Papers, Doc#30 To Margaret Louise Coit, 6 February 1957. In The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower
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Document #30; February 6, 1957
To Margaret Louise Coit
Series: EM, WHCF, President’s Personal File 68
The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, Volume XVIII - The Presidency: Keeping the Peace
Part I: A New Beginning, Old Problems; January 1957 to May 1957
Chapter 1: The Mideast and the Eisenhower Doctrine

 

Dear Miss Coit: While I would like to be helpful to you with regard to the biography you are writing of Bernard Baruch, I cannot give you permission to quote from my personal letters to him. So long as I am in my present position--and because both Mr. Baruch and I are alive--I could not consent to the use of any extracts taken from my private correspondence. The list of people with whom I correspond is a considerable one, and to establish such a precedent would put me eventually in an impossible position. I am confident of your understanding.1

On the other hand, I see from the file that over a period of time you have sought a personal interview with me. I assure you I would be glad to see you to talk of my association with my friend Mr. Baruch.2 It would have to be understood, of course, that I had your previous assurance that you would not use in direct quotation or attribution anything I might say.

With best wishes, Sincerely

1 Journalist Coit (A.B. University of North Carolina 1941), who had won the 1950 Pulitzer Prize for her biography of John C. Calhoun, had written Eisenhower on January 2. She was writing an authorized biography of financier Bernard Mannes Baruch, Eisenhower's old friend and veteran public servant, and had asked permission to use quotations from Eisenhower's letters. In subsequent correspondence Coit sent the quotations she wished to use and requested an interview with the President. Noting that she was a "Republican party worker," a "former Town Committee vice-chairman," and had interviewed former President Truman, Coit complained that she had not had "access to the President, whose relationship with Mr. Baruch was so much closer than Mr. Truman's was with him." She added, "I hate to have Mr. Truman loom bigger in the book."

2 Coit would meet with Eisenhower for a half-hour on April 8, 1957. In a subsequent thank-you letter, Coit would write that it meant "a lot to an American, trying to do a serious job, to know that the President of the United States will take time out of the most crowded schedule in the country to help guarantee that the job be a good one." In her published study, Coit would refer to, but not quote from, the Eisenhower letters in Baruch's files (see Margaret L. Coit, Mr. Baruch [Boston, 1957], pp. 676 - 88). Baruch, who had in the meantime quarreled with Coit, would publish the first volume of his own autobiography (Baruch: My Own Story [New York, 1957]) in this same year. All correspondence is in same file as the document; see also New York Times, November 21, 24, 1957.

Bibliographic reference to this document:
Eisenhower, Dwight D. To Margaret Louise Coit, 6 February 1957. In The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, ed. L. Galambos and D. van Ee, doc. 30. 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/30.cfm

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