Typed letter signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt
ROOSEVELT, Franklin D. (1882-1945) Typed letter signed (“Franklin D. Roosevelt”), as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, to Martin A. Morrison, Washington, 20 December 1919. 2 pages, 4to, on official stationery, punch holes along top edge. [With:] –ROOSEVELT, Franklin D. Typed letter signed (“Franklin D. Roosevelt”) as Acting Assistant of the Navy, to Rear Admiral Charles F. Pond, Washington, 13 June 1916. 1 page, 4to, on official stationery.
FDR writes the president of the U.S. Civil Service commission to try and fix a screw-up over one if his patronage appointees. “As you know,” he writes, “I am very much interested in this matter of the Utica Postmastership,” where FDR’s preferred candidate for the post, the Mayor of Utica, was barred from consideration because he failed to take the required civil service examination in time. Roosevelt had requested an extension of that exam deadline until after a local election and through a miscommunication, thought it had been granted. “I trust the Commission will rule…that inasmuch as the names presented did not include all of the obviously eligible candidates, therefore the intent of the examination…was thwarted, and will, accordingly, direct a supplementary examination for additional names.” As a junior Cabinet official, FDR lacked the sway he would later enjoy as President in such matters. Here, his concluding request is answered with a curt pencil marginalia: “No.”
Roosevelt’s 1916 memorandum to Pond concerning reorganization of the Navy” noting that “the ‘Auxiliary Division, Atlantic Fleet’ will hereafter be known as the ‘Train, Atlantic Fleet’..."