<--PREV Doc #44  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  Second Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #46 Document #45; February 22, 1957 To Henry Agard Wallace Series: EM, AWF, Name Series ; Category: Personal 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 Mr. Wallace: It is indeed humbling to realize that anyone so widely read as yourself should find similarities in the characters of President Washington and myself.1 Of one thing I assure you--at this moment I am very much in need of the wisdom, faith, and strength that he possessed. My sense of pride is all the greater because I've never been able to agree with those who so glibly deprecate his intellectual qualities. I think that too many jump at such conclusions merely because they tend to confuse facility of expression with wisdom; a love of the limelight with depth of perception. His Newburgh Address to his officers must have been largely his own;2 and so far as I know, everyone agrees that he substantially corrected, and possibly re-wrote, Hamilton's draft of his Farewell Address.3 I've often felt the deep wish that The Good Lord had endowed me with his clarity of vision in big things, his strength of purpose and his genuine greatness of mind and spirit.4 Thank you very much for sending me a copy of your talk. With personal regard, Sincerely 1 Wallace, a former Vice-President of the United States (1941 - 1945) and Progressive party candidate for President (1948), had written Eisenhower on February 19 (AWF/N) to forward a copy of his recent talk on "George Washington as a Statesman and Religious Man." Stressing the postwar difficulties faced in both American revolutionary and contemporary times, the talk drew comparisons between Washington and Eisenhower. Wallace stated that he believed the likeness between Eisenhower and Washington was "more than superficial." "You both have a combined military-agricultural background," he wrote. "But above everything you both have a profound faith in God, innate in your own natures and bequeathed to you by God-fearing ancestors." Wallace also expressed the hope that his talk would give the President "renewed strength." For background on Wallace see Galambos and van Ee, The Middle Way, nos. 88 and 2125. 2 In his March 1783 Newburgh Address, Washington had sought to diffuse the anger of officers who had demanded back pay from the government. While assuring his men that he would do everything in his power to help, he pleaded with them not to challenge the nascent authority of Congress. Washington's extemporaneous opening remarks are the most often quoted lines from this famous speech: "Gentlemen, you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for I not only have grown gray but almost blind in the service of my country." See George Washington, Basic Writings of George Washington, ed. Saxe Commins (New York, 1948), pp. 455 - 60; Douglas Southall Freeman, George Washington: A Biography, 7 vols. (New York, 1948 - 57), vol. V, Victory with the Help of France (Fairfield, N.J., 1981), pp. 428 - 37, vol. VII, First in Peace, by John Alexander Carroll and Mary Wells Ashworth (1957); and John E. Ferling, The First of Men: A Life of George Washington (Knoxville, Tenn., 1988), pp. 309 - 12. 3 Washington's Farewell Address is perhaps best known for his warning against entangling alliances ("Tis our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances, with any portion of the foreign world"). See Washington, Basic Writings, pp. 627 - 44, and Carroll and Ashworth, George Washington, vol. VII, First in Peace, pp. 402 - 7. 4 On Eisenhower's respect for Washington, see, for example, Galambos, NATO and the Campaign of 1952, no. 379, and Galambos and van Ee, The Middle Way, nos. 1192 and 2141. Bibliographic reference to this document: Eisenhower, Dwight D. Personal To Henry Agard Wallace, 22 February 1957. In The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, ed. L. Galambos and D. van Ee, doc. 45. 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/45.cfm <--PREV Doc #44  |  Memorial Commission Home Page  |  Second Term Table of Contents  |  Presidential Papers Home Page  |  Doc#  |  NEXT--> Doc #46

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