Then the motors slowed and we began to swoop down around in a circle. I saw a big town nearby and somebody said it was Nashville, Tenn., but I was surprised; and I was glad, too, when we came down on the landing field of an airport, a muddy field which we tore up badly. And I learned that it was a regular stop-off station. I darted into the rest-room, got a sandwich and a Coca-cola while some passengers got out and others were buying tickets. We did not stop long. Climbing in again, we raced through the mud, paused, set the motors going full power and so again up, but not so high this time. It was raining, the clouds hung low,—what they called a low ceiling,—and the pilot to see and keep his course had to stay near the ground.
Then we came to high hills,—almost mountains, and we ran into big pieces of fog. That drove the pilot down lower, and from then on we always followed a river or railroad that was going our way. Cars and horses, pigs and sheep were frightened by us,—so close,—and ran and kicked up, while farmers looked up at us and automobiles halted to watch us as we zoomed along. For now we seemed to be going fast, very fast. The boy pilots took turns and sometimes they were both out there together. A passenger I met afterward, one who had flown a lot, told me he was scared; and that the pilots were, of the fog. Anyway, it was 1 hour 50 minutes, this time, when we settled again to Memphis; as I was going out, I asked the pilot how long before we would go on. He shook his head and said: “Not today: we'll cancel this afternoon's flight.” And they did. My ticket was to Dallas, Texas, where we were to arrive at 5:30 P.M. The agent bought me a railroad ticket and berth on the Pacific Missouri Railroad to here instead of to Dallas. And to make up, the agent took us to a hotel, gave us luncheon and a room to wait in till 7:15 that (yesterday) evening. I had a bath, a nap and came on last night this long, long journey down to San Antonio, which is in Texas near the Mexican border.
It is sunny here. I have to stay here and try to get over my bronchitis in time to speak here on Monday (today is Wednesday): to Houston on Tuesday: and then next Wednesday, I have to fly again from Houston to Amarillo so as to speak at Canon, Texas, at a college. But flying is good here: it is almost always clear, and usually sunny. After that, Pete, I'll be going home, stopping only for a day at Los Angeles. I can't name my date yet: I'll wire that to Anna later, but I think it will be about December 21 or 22: Carmel, and I'll be so glad.
Love to all: Betty Ann, Leslie, Pete, your teacher and the whole town.
Dad
HARRY S. TRUMAN TO MARGARET TRUMAN
“Stalin and Churchill paid your pop a most high
compliment by saying that my presiding had
been the ablest they'd ever seen.”
In July 1945 Harry Truman met with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin (“Uncle Joe”) at the Potsdam Conference to discuss the future of postwar Europe and how best to bring an end to the continuing war with Japan. Before this trip to Germany, Truman had traveled to Europe just one other time—as a reserve officer in World War I. He had never been to college and he had been president of the United States for only three and a half months.
Here the sixty-one-year-old Harry Truman writes to his only child, twenty-one-year-old Margaret. The day before he wrote the letter, on the twenty-fourth of July, it had apparently been decided that, if everything went as expected, within weeks a new weapon, the atomic bomb, would be used against Japan.
Berlin, July 25, 1945
Dear Margie:
—We went to the British dinner night before last—and was it a show piece too! Mr. Byrnes and I walked from the Berlin White House (it's still yellow trimmed in a dirty red—dirty yellow too) to Mr. Churchill's place about three blocks down the street or up (it's level so either one is all right). Churchill had phoned Gen. Vaughan, my chief of protocol, that he would greatly, very greatly appreciate it if I would arrive a few minutes late as I happened to be the senior guest and Uncle Joe should realize it. Well we arrived as directed and were received by the P.M and his nice daughter, Mary. I had to shake hands with Marshall, now Generallisimo Stalin, General of the Army Antonov, Marshall Zhukov, Field Marshall Montgomery, Lord this & that and a lot more Ruskies and Limies, we went out to dinner. It was a very colorful affair, as you can see. I am enclosing you the menu and the list of guests. The menu is signed to you by J. Stalin & Winston Churchill and the guest list is signed by all the guests. Stalin and Churchill paid your pop a most high compliment by saying that my presiding had been the ablest they'd ever seen. That's what Adm. Leahy and all the rest say but it is hard to believe because I've had plenty of trouble.
Churchill said his crowd went home today to see how the vote in England came out. I am going to Frankfurt tomorrow and inspect some American divisions.
Friday we resume sessions and I believe we shall wind up Sunday so I should be out to sea on Tuesday and home by Sunday August 4th.
Had a telegram today saying Harry had safely landed at Washington Air Port. He should be home by the time this letter gets to you. I hope you and your mamma will be at the White House when I get back to Washington. That old barn is terribly lonely for me alone. Especially since I'm so hemmed in.
Kiss Mamma & lots for you
XXXXXXXXXXXX Dad
Rosetta Douglass
Woodrow Wilson (center) and family (Jessie second from left)
Loss
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS TO JOHN ADAMS
“May it be your lot in life to enjoy the society even
of a few spirits, so nearly approaching
to perfection as hers . . .”
Upon reading heartbreaking news in a letter from his fifteen-year-old son, Secretary of State Adams immediately left his Washington office and went home. He had just learned that his mother, Abigail Adams, at seventy-four years old had died in her bedroom in Quincy, Massachusetts, on October 28 of typhoid fever. John Quincy Adams adored and revered his mother, and he appreciated, too, that without her steadfast, intelligent, and “affectionate participation and cheering encouragement,” his father, John Adams, could not have endured and accomplished all he had. “There is not a virtue that can abide in the female heart but it was the ornament of hers,” John Quincy wrote in his diary.
To his second son, John, who was in school in Massachusetts, he wrote the following letter. The loss was particularly profound for young John and his brother George, as the elder Adamses, Abigail and John, had cared for the boys entirely for nearly six years, from 1809 to 1815, while their parents, John Quincy and Louisa Catherine, were serving the United States government in Russia.
Washington 2 November 1818
My dear Son:
Your letter of the 28th of last month, has this day brought me the most distressing intelligence that I ever received, yet my dear John, if there was any thing that could soften its bitterness, it was that it should first come from a beloved and affectionate hand. Such it was coming from yours, and I thank you, for the kind and filial attention with which you immediately communicated the event, by which it has pleased God to remove my ever blessed Mother to a better world. I thank you too for the same attention, with which you repeatedly wrote to your mother, during the illness of mine, and which apprised us of her real situation, when we were too ready to trust in the hopes, which other friends fondly cherished by listening to their ardent wishes. I pray you to return your mothers and my most affectionate and grateful thanks to Miss Harriet Welsh both for her kind and unwearied attendance on my mother in her illness, and for the assiduous and active friendship with which she wrote from time to time, while a lingering hope was left, to keep it alive in our breasts.
You have lost, my dear son, one of the kindest, and most precious of parents, for such she truly was to you, and to all my children. If you live, as I hope and pray you may, to an age as advanced as hers, you will never meet on earth one, to whom you will owe deeper obligations, or who will be to you a more faithful and affectionate friend. May it be your lot in life to enjoy the society even of a few spirits, so nearly approaching to perfection as hers, and abov
e all, my son, may he who is the supreme God, inspire and guide your conduct through your earthly career, so that at the final scene, you may surrender your spirit to its creator as unsullied as was hers. I have no greater blessing to bestow. Be it yours, and be it that of your brothers!
From your affectionate father
John Quincy Adams
DANIEL WEBSTER TO CHARLES WEBSTER
“But ah! thy little day is done,—”
Just before his third birthday, Charles Webster died at home after a two-week battle with “lung fever.” At the time of the little boy's death, his father, Congressman Daniel Webster, was departing from Monticello after a meeting with eighty-one-year-old Thomas Jefferson. Upon hearing the news, Webster, having already endured the loss of a daughter to tuberculosis, now lamented being absent at the time of his son's death. He wrote this short poem to his dead son in an effort to console his grief-stricken wife.
[c. January 1, 1825]
My son, thou wast my hearts delight
Thy morn of life was gay & cheery:
That morn has rushed to sudden night.
Thy fathers house is sad & dreary
I held thee on my knee, my son!
And kissed thee laughing, kissed thee weeping:
But ah! thy little day is done,—
Thou'rt with thy angel sister sleeping.
The staff, on which my years should lean,
Is broken, 'ere those years come over me,
My funeral rites thou should'st have seen,
But thou art in the tomb before me
Thou rear'st to me, no filial stone.
No parents grave, with tears, beholdest;
Thou are my ancestor, my son!
And stand'st in Heaven's account, the oldest.
On earth my lot was soonest cast,
Thy generation after mine;
Thou has thy predecessor past.
Earlier Eternity is thine.
I should have set before thine eyes
The road to Heaven, & showed it clear;
But thou, untaught springest to the skies teacher
And leavest the father lingering here
Sweet Seraph, I would learn of thee
And hasten to partake thy bliss!
And oh! to thy world welcome me,
As erst I welcomed thee to this.
Dear Angel, thou art safe in Heaven:
No prayers for thee need more be made
Oh! let thy prayer for thee be given,
Who oft have blessed thine infant head.
My Father, I beheld thee born,
and led thy tottering steps with care;
Before me risen to Heaven's bright morn
My Son! My Father! Guide me there—
FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO
ROSETTA DOUGLASS SPRAGUE
“The peace of death is with the living
not with the dead.”
In a baritone voice that was thunderous and clear, Frederick Douglass exposed nineteenth-century Americans of the North to the evils of slavery in a way no one ever had before. With broad shoulders and a deep chest, he stood over six feet tall and he knew his subject well as he himself was an escaped slave. He moved and stirred the nation with his speeches and best-selling autobiographies. When the Civil War was over, Douglass at first felt all he had worked for had been accomplished. Yet the struggle “for the ultimate peace and freedom of [his] race” continued throughout his life and he consistently protested publicly against racial discrimination of any kind.
He was the father of five children, one of whom, Annie, died when she was just eleven years old. His concern for his children never dwindled, even when they reached adulthood. He worked to help find them careers and to set them on solid paths toward their futures, but they were always a financial drain and concern to him. Of particular worry was his eldest child, Rosetta, who married Nathan Sprague, a man who seemed to fail and disappoint at every opportunity. It was Rosetta who stood as the main support for her seven children.
In 1875, from his new home in Washington, D.C., Douglass wrote to his daughter in Rochester, New York. Exactly three years earlier the Douglass house in Rochester was burned to the ground by an arsonist. The circumstances of the illness and death of Rosetta's daughter, Alice, described in the following letter are unclear. Likely Douglass wrote to Rosetta for himself and for her mother, Anna Murray Douglass, his wife of thirty-seven years, who remained illiterate until her death.
Washington, D.C. June 3, 1875
My dear Rosa:
Nearly six weeks ago, I received a telegram from dear Nathan, almost in the precise words of the one which came yesterday, and since that time I have been waiting daily expecting to learn that the dear suffering child had passed beyond the reach of care, trouble, sickness and pain. Since it now seems that the dear child cannot live and that she could never be strong and healthy if she did live, her passing away will be a happy release from a life of misery. With her high spirit, a life of weakness and dependence would be intolerable.
I hope dear Rosa, that you are thoroughly nerved for the event, that you are wholly emancipated from the superstitious terrors with which priest craft has surrounded the great and universal fact of death and that you will be able to look with calmness upon the peaceful features of the dear child whose sufferings are ended. Death is the common lot of all and the strongest of us will soon be called away. It is well! Death is a friend not an enemy. It comes at the right time when it comes naturally, and not by violence. It takes the feeble infant from prospective misery and releases the aged from continued aches and pains. The peace of death is with the living not with the dead. We shall all miss our dear little Alice. She was the remarkable child of your flock, a real character. The memory of her words and ways will live with us all. I do not dogmatize as to the life of the future. I know not and no man can know what is beyond or what is the condition of existence, whether conscious or unconscious, beyond this life, but whatever else it may be, it is nothing that our taking thought about can alter or improve. The best any of us can do is to trust in the eternal powers which brought us into existence and this I do for myself and for all.
I do not think our house should be left alone or entirely in the hands of strangers. We have been burnt out once and may be burnt out again, and if burnt out a second time I have no more strength to start life anew again and build up another house.
We are not among friends here any more than in Rochester. It is our misfortune to create envy wherever we go. The white people don't like us and the colored people envy us. I do not wish to burden Amelia with the responsibility of taking care of all here and she told mother before she went away that she did not want to take the responsibility.
Your father,
Fred K Douglass
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE TO
GEORGIANA STOWE
“. . . mamma is sitting weary by the wayside, feeling weak and worn, but in no sense discouraged.”
Author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe was America's first great female novelist. She was a member of the socially reforming and outspoken Beecher family and the mother of seven children. By 1858 Stowe had already lost two sons; eighteen-month-old Charley died during a cholera epidemic, and nineteen-year-old Henry, a sophomore at Dartmouth College, drowned in the currents of the Connecticut River. Here, at forty-seven years old, she writes to her fourteen-year-old daughter, Georgiana, nearly two years after Henry's death.
February 12 [1858]
My dear Georgie,
Why have n't I written? Because, dear Georgie, I am like the dry, dead leafless tree, and have only cold, dead, slumbering buds of hope on the end of stiff, hard, frozen twigs of thought, but no leaves, no blossoms; nothing to send to a little girl who does n't know what to do with herself any more than a kitten. I am cold, weary, dead; everything is a burden to me.
I let my plants die by inches before my eyes, and do not water them, and I dread everything I do, and wish it was not to be done,
and so when I get a letter from my little girl I smile and say, “Dear little puss, I will answer it”; and I sit hour after hour with folded hands, looking at the inkstand and dreading to begin. The fact is, pussy, mamma is tired. Life to you is gay and joyous, but to mamma it has been a battle in which the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak; and she would be glad, like the woman in the St. Bernard, to lie down with her arms around the wayside cross, and sleep away into a brighter scene. Henry's fair, sweet face looks down upon me now and then from out a cloud, and I feel again all the bitterness of the eternal “No” which says I must never, never, in this life, see that face, lean on that arm, hear that voice. Not that my faith in God in the least fails, and that I do not believe that all this is for good. I do, and though not happy, I am blessed. Weak, weary as I am, I rest on Jesus in the innermost depth of my soul, and am quite sure that there is coming and inconceivable hour of beauty and glory when I shall regain Jesus, and He will give me back my beloved one, whom He is educating in a far higher sphere than I proposed. So do not mistake me,—only know that mamma is sitting weary by the wayside, feeling weak and worn, but in no sense discouraged.
Posterity: Letters of Great Americans to Their Children Page 23