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. . . Men’s minds are prepared for a pretty high tone as in the demeanour of the Executive; but I doubt whether for so high a tone as in the abstract might be desireable. The notions of equality are yet in my opinion too general and too strong to admit of such a distance being placed between the President and other branches of the government as might even be consistent with a due proportion. The following plan will I think steer clear of extremes and involve no very material inconveniences.

1. The President to have a levée day once a week for receiving visits. An hour to be fixed at which it shall be understood that he will appear and consequently that the visitors are previously to be assembled. The President to remain half an hour, in which time he may converse cursorily on indifferent subjects with such persons as shall strike his attention, and at the end of that half hour disappear. Some regulation will be hereafter necessary to designate those who may visit. A mode of introduction through particular officers will be indispensable. No visits to be returned.
2. The President to accept no invitations: and to give formal entertainments only twice or four times a year on the anniversaries of important events in the revolution. If twice, the day of the declaration of Independence, and that of the inauguration of the President, which completed the organization of the Constitution, to be preferred; if four times, the day of the treaty of alliance with France & that of the definitive treaty with Britain to be added. The members of the two houses of the legislature Principal officers of the Government Foreign ministers and other distinguished strangers only to be invited. . . .
3. The President on the levée days either by himself or some Gentleman of his household to give informal invitations to family dinners on the days of invitation. Not more than six or eight to be invited at a time & the matter to be confined essentially to members of the legislature and other official characters. The President never to remain long at table. . . .

	Cartoonist Clifford Berryman mocks the confidence level of the 1912 presidential candidates—Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and William Howard Taft—before the election. The cartoon is part of the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library’s online archive. NEH support has helped the library preserve its collections and plan its gallery space.
	—NARA, Center for Legislative Archives, U.S. Senate Collection

I wrote to you the impossibility of procuring french China, but in setts. There is no such thing as Cups & saucers alone. And you know the setts are very small, what will you do? I can send you some very handsome Nankin china cups & saucers (blue & white) by the dozen—the Coffee Cups of the shape of the Séver china and also the saucers. The tea Cups of the old shape—The Coffee Cup & Saucers 15$ pr doz. The tea cups 10$ there is one sett of beautiful french china in town Containing one doz. of Coffee & one doz. tea cups and saucers to each, tea pot, bowl sugar dish and (I believe) a plate. The Colour is a pea green richly gilt at the edge—price 70$—This is realy the only thing worth looking at in the way of a tea sett. The late situation of the Country I imagine is the cause of great deficiency in the stores throughout the City, for many articles are not to be had for Love or Money—I enclose you a list of the China we send, and beg you to believe we have used every exertion to get the best we could. . . .

From Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 (Oxford University Press, 1999) by David Kennedy. Reprinted with permission of David M. Kennedy. Roosevelt began inaugural day by attending a brief service at St. John’s Episcopal Church. His old Groton School headmaster, Endicott Peabody, prayed the Lord to “bless Thy servant, Franklin, chosen to be president of the United States.” After a quick stop at the Mayflower Hotel to confer urgently with his advisers on the still-worsening banking crisis, Roosevelt donned his formal attire and motored to the White House. There he joined a haggard and cheerless Hoover for the ride down Pennsylvania Avenue to the inaugural platform on the east side of the Capitol. Braced on his son’s arm, Roosevelt walked his few lurching steps to the rostrum. Breaking precedent, he recited the entire oath of office, rather than merely repeating “I do” to the chief justice’s interrogation. Then he began his inaugural address, speaking firmly in his rich tenor voice. Frankly acknowledging the crippled condition of the ship of state he was now to captain, he began by reassuring his countrymen that “this great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. . . . The only thing we have to fear,” he intoned, “is fear itself.” The nation’s distress, he declared, owed to “no failure of substance.” Rather, “rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods have failed through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and have abdicated. . . . The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths.” The greatest task, he went on, “is to put people to work,” and he hinted at “direct recruiting by the Government” on public works projects as the means to do it. He then touched on the notion of “balance” as he had heard the Brain Trusters discuss it, promising “to raise the value of agricultural products and with this the power to purchase the output of our cities.” He added a flourish of his own about the desirability of redistributing population from the cities to the countryside. He mentioned the need to prevent mortgage foreclosures, to regulate key industries, and especially to cut government budgets. He called for “strict supervision of all banking and credits and investments.” He stressed the primacy of domestic over international concerns. He obliquely hinted at inflationary measures in a pledge to ensure “an adequate but sound currency.” (One hard-money congressman complained that this meant Roosevelt was “for sound currency, but lots of it.”) He announced that he was calling a special session of Congress to address these issues. Then, guardedly but nevertheless ominously, he declared that if Congress should fail to act, “I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis—broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.” Kennedy researched and wrote Freedom from Fear with NEH support. Humanities, January/February 2009, Volume 30, Number 1 Subscribe to Humanities magazine hereSee www.neh.gov.