Dear Arthur: Thank you for your courtesy in sending me excerpts from Mr. Hickey's letter. I acknowledge a feeling of great compliment in what he had to say.1
Some time you and I may, perhaps, have a chance to discuss the possibility he suggests that the thinking and action of an individual might subconsciously be shaped by the great respect and admiration such an individual might have for another.
Speaking in general, I think such an influence would certainly be felt. But when such a thought is made definitely specific and personal to me, I cannot escape a feeling of humility bordering on embarrassment.
In any event, both my son and I share Mr. Hickey's enthusiasm for Freeman's biography of George Washington. Both of us likewise liked his biography of Lee and his volumes entitled "Lee's Lieutenants."2
Again let me say I deeply appreciate your passing on to me a thought that could not fail to give me a heartwarming lift.
With warm regard, Sincerely
P.S. I am taking the liberty of writing Mr. Hickey a little note of appreciation.3
columnist Krock had enclosed the excerpts with his letter of January 21. E. James Hickey, an attorney from Rochester, New York, had written to Krock (Jan. 7) to express his approval of Krock's January 3 editorial defending Eisenhower against mounting criticism. Hickey told Krock that while reading Douglas Southall Freeman's six-volume set George Washington: A Biography (New York, 1948 - 57), he found himself "struck time and again by the similarity of character traits between Eisenhower and Washington." Hickey said he believed that Eisenhower "subconsciously or otherwise patterned his life" after the first president. Hickey's opinion had been prompted by Krock's reference to an interview in which Eisenhower said he believed that the "greatest American leaders in time of peril" were Washington, Lincoln, and Robert E. Lee. Hickey also wrote that he recently read that Eisenhower described Washington as "the greatest individual produced in the history of the English speaking peoples."
2 These were the Pulitzer Prize-winning R. E. Lee: A Biography, 4 vols. (New York, 1934 - 35) and Lee's Lieutenants: A Study in Command, 3 vols. (New York, 1942 - 44).
3 Eisenhower would write to Hickey on this same day. See also Hickey to Krock, and Hickey to Eisenhower, January 27, 1958. All correspondence is in the same file as the document.
