Excellent TLS signed “Theodore Roosevelt,” two pages, 7.75 x 9.5, The Outlook letterhead, February 21, 1913. Roosevelt writes to Henry M. Wallace, the Progressive Party’s National Committeeman for Michigan. In part: “I will be glad to have you quote ... this letter. The Progressive Party has come to say. I am as confident as I can be that there will be no compromise, bargain, or consolidation with either of the old parties or old party bosses. I have no question that there are millions of men [adding in ink, “and women”] in the Republican Party who are progressive in principle. But just so long as they remain in the Republican Party they doom themselves to impotence. That party ... by its conduct now in putting Mr. Taft forward as a leader and in keeping the same old bosses in control, has shown the utter impossibility of the Progressives ever again amalgamating with it. We have in our ranks ex-Democrats no less than ex-Republicans. We are bound to the one just as much as to the other.... Let the Progressive Republicans come over to us. We will welcome them exactly as we will welcome the Progressive Democrats but to ask us to go into either the Republican or the Democratic parties is to ask us to put on our necks the yoke which we have cast off, and against any such proposal I most heartily protest. A touch of light soiling and small paperclip stain to first page, otherwise bright, very fine condition. The significant political content, the handwritten addition of “and women” (more than seven years before the Nineteenth Amendment, enabling women the right to vote, was ratified), and the bold, absolutely perfect signature, make for a Roosevelt item of exceeding interest and desirability! LOA John Reznikoff/PSA/DNA and R&R COA.
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