Beschreibung:

ROOSEVELT, Theodore. Autograph letter signed ("Theodore Roosevelt"), as President, to Elizabeth E. Marshall Washington, 15 November 1904. 2 pages, 8vo, White House stationery, with a photocopy of first page tipped to the blank integral, with original envelope . In pencil. "TOO MUCH ELECTION": A CHARMING NOTE TO ARCHIE ROOSEVELT'S TEACHER, EXCUSING HIM FOR MISSING CLASS AFTER HIS FATHER'S 1904 ELECTION "Can Archie be excused for Wednesday last," the President pleads with Miss Marshall, "when he was suffering from 'too much election;' and for yesterday, Monday, when in the hurry of bustling out of the white House he managed to forget his books. I am aware that the last seems rather a slender excuse," the Chief Executive admits, "but Archie evidently hopes it may suffice & I hope so too, even though I have doubts!" Young Archie was 10 years old when his father won election in his own right on 8 November 1904, and he was a key source of information for his anxious parent. "Covered with campaign buttons," biographer Nathan Miller writes, the boy "raced breathlessly back and forth from the telegraph office in the Executive Wing with fresh batches of returns." The results showed a landslide for the incumbent. "How they are voting for me!" he exclaimed with each new reports that Archie brought in. T. R. beat his opponent Alton Parker by some 2.5 million popular votes and an even more lopsided margin of nearly 200 Electoral College tallies. "I am no longer a political accident," he proudly told his wife. And to his other son, Kermit, he later boasted, "I have the greatest popular majority and the greatest electoral majority ever given a candidate for President. I am stunned by the overwhelming victory we have won." Homework for the boys would just have to wait.