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FDR and the Supreme Court
Hon. Franklin D. Roosevelt,
In reference to your proposal to revitalize the Supreme Court, I want to say to you briefly but firmly and with sincere convictions:
1. That I have no ulterior motive in my opposition but the preservation of our liberties (please tell this to Mrs. Roosevelt so that she will not report me to the press as being in that group).
2. Your metaphor about the three horses fastened to the plow is most unfortunate. It is bad enough to plow America under, but we never hitched three horses to a plow without eveners and whiffle-trees and clevis pins, etc. to equalize differential strains as exerted by the different horses. Furthermore, the Supreme Court was never intended to be a plow horse while the chief executive and the Congress put their heads through the oval collar just for that purpose. The Supreme Court was never intended to be a substitute for motive power. To my mind the illustration could have been made much more truthful, if the Congress and the executive had been likened to the girders of a bridge crossing a stream and the Supreme Court to the hand rail that kept matters aright where they belonged on the regularly traveled path.
3. Outside of all the foregoing, I want you to know that from the very roots of my soul, imbedded as they are among the rocks and hills of old New England, that I oppose your proposed usurpation of authority and the opening of a door through which, perhaps the mad tyrants, envisioned by those men in 1791 and 1792 who so valiantly opposed the repeal of the then existing judiciary law, may enter and destroy our liberties.
Last but not least--- AND THIS IS MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL--- You received no mandate from me last November to do anything of the sort and I remind you that the members of Congress and yourself are but our agents--- and that despite your exalted position, we are still the principals in this government and the only ones whose voice can be heard in altering our fundamental structure of government.
Yours respectfully,
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