19

“He Loved Peace and He Loved Liberty”

April 13, 1943, Washington, D.C.

On a gray and gusty Tuesday, President Franklin D. Roosevelt stood before 5,000 people at the Tidal Basin in West Potomac Park, while millions more prepared to listen to his words by way of a radio broadcast. The crowd had gathered to dedicate a memorial to America’s “apostle of freedom,” Thomas Jefferson, on the 200th anniversary of his birth.

“Today, in the midst of a great war for freedom, we dedicate a shrine to freedom,” said Roosevelt, who faced the crowd and the gleaming white pantheon that encircled the bronze statue of Jefferson on the banks of the Tidal Basin. With the Washington Monument at his back, Roosevelt said that earlier generations could not understand what his generation knew all too well—“men who will not fight for liberty can lose it.” With war raging around the globe, with millions enslaved by totalitarian regimes, honoring Jefferson and the principles of freedom he espoused was entirely appropriate. “He loved peace and he loved liberty,” Roosevelt said of the nation’s third president. “Yet, on more than one occasion he was forced to choose between them. We, too, have been compelled to make that choice.” For the lessons Jefferson taught the young nation about freedom, self-government, and unalienable rights, “we are paying a debt, long overdue,” FDR said. It was to honor Jefferson’s greatest legacy—in his own words, his “eternal hostility against every form of tyranny”—that brought war-weary Americans to Potomac Park and caused them to huddle around their radios.

And for those who had found their way to the nation’s capital, President Roosevelt also wanted them to partake in the glory of Thomas Jefferson’s crowning achievement.

For that reason, he had ordered the original engrossed copy of the Declaration of Independence removed from its secret storage location and displayed at the base of its author’s new memorial.

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PLANS FOR THE JEFFERSON MEMORIAL had been on the drawing board since 1934 and ground had been broken on the monument in 1938, but the hastily organized dedication event had only come together in the previous several months. Not everyone agreed that the ceremony should go on in wartime, but President Roosevelt believed the event would bolster morale as the nation headed into its sixteenth month of war.

To enhance the magnitude of the occasion, FDR had ordered the Declaration exhibited at the memorial from the day of commemoration until one week thereafter.

For Archibald MacLeish, who had written the president’s remarks for the dedication, Roosevelt’s directive meant scrambling to make appropriate arrangements. In a secret memo to the treasury secretary, he once again requested Secret Service assistance in accompanying the Declaration from Fort Knox to Washington, “under conditions of security,” and in assuring its safe return to the bullion depository at the conclusion of its public display. “We propose to bring it to Washington on or about April 7, and to return it to Fort Knox on or about April 20,” MacLeish said. He also arranged with the U.S. Marines to “furnish a 24-hour guard for the document during the period of its stay in Washington.”

Once again, Harry Neal was put in charge of the Secret Service end of the operation. In early March, a month before the dedication and early in the planning, MacLeish and Neal dealt with their first controversy of the event: Life had got word that the Declaration would be on display for the Jefferson Memorial ceremonies. The magazine, which was planning to devote considerable space in an issue to Jefferson, the memorial, and the bicentennial of the founder’s birth, “asked whether it would be possible to take photographs of the journey of the object you and I are concerned with,” MacLeish wrote to Neal. “I replied that it would not be possible.” However, MacLeish said he would be “willing to raise the question of photographs of the arrival at the [train] station in Washington and the transport from that point to the Library and thence to the place of the exhibit.” The question was one for the Secret Service to answer, MacLeish concluded, but he thought that Life would be willing to accept any conditions officials thought necessary.

In his careful response, Neal said that while the Secret Service had no objection to such photographs, he did not want to grant an exclusive to Life, but that “the three major press associations should be given the same opportunity.” Further, photographers should not be informed of the date and time of the special train’s arrival in Washington until the day it was slated to arrive. Finally, Neal insisted that if photos were taken, “their publication in any newspaper or magazine be withheld until after the material has been returned to its destination.” Neal saw no room for compromise on the final point.

Nor was there a need to: MacLeish agreed with Neal on all conditions.

On April 5, MacLeish told the House Subcommittee on Appropriations of the plan, and the story became public when the Associated Press ran it in many newspapers across the country. When Walter Christian Ploeser, the representative from Missouri, questioned MacLeish about the wisdom of risking the Declaration, a document “which in no way in the world can be replaced,” MacLeish replied: “If there is any document in the United States which should be allowed to be exhibited to the people of this country, at this moment, it is that document.”

MacLeish further explained that the Secret Service and the Library of Congress had agreed to exhibit the Declaration in a steel case with a “bullet-proof glass cover.” Two Marines would stand twenty-four-hour guard, “one on each side of the case, which will be fitted to the steps at the foot of the statue.”

On April 10, two army trucks with seven military police arrived at Fort Knox and placed the Declaration on a truck equipped with a submachine gun. Filled with contingents of MPs and Secret Service agents, the trucks made their way to the Louisville train station; by 8:30 the following morning, the Declaration had arrived safely at the Library of Congress.

The Declaration was on display at the Jefferson Memorial from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. for a week. At night, the exhibit case was transferred to a side room where one sentry stood guard; quarters had been provided inside the memorial itself for the whole detachment assigned to the duty. Thousands of Americans viewed the Declaration during the period of its display in front of the new Jefferson Memorial.

On April 19, the Marine detachment accompanied the Declaration back to the Library of Congress, where it was removed from the exhibit case, remounted in its frame, photographed, and repackaged in the bronze container in which it had been stored at Fort Knox. After its safe return to the bullion depository on April 23, MacLeish wrote to Henry Morgenthau, again congratulating the Secret Service agents for their efforts—Neal on the Washington end and the agents who met the train in Louisville.

“We have just redeposited, in a place of utmost security, one of the fundamental constitutional documents of the United States Government after its brief period of exhibit during the Thomas Jefferson Bicentennial celebration,” he wrote. “It has meant a great deal to me personally to have had complete confidence in measures taken to protect this document during its transportation to and from Washington.”

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ALSO DURING THE SPRING of 1943, the Library of Congress’s Alvin Kremer spent another sixty days at the university storage repositories. His tasks, MacLeish reported later, included “overseeing the various guard forces, correcting conditions of humidity, and re-examining fire risks.” Kremer also directed the removal of the 1,400 cases that had originally been shipped to the Virginia Military Institute; because of dampness, these were now transferred to two locations: Washington and Lee University and Denison.

Verner Clapp made at least two visits to Fort Knox to examine the library’s documents, one in June and another in October. He sounded a note of caution in June, fearful that summer heat and humidity would create a “dangerous concentration of moisture within the packages.” But when he arrived at Fort Knox on October 29, the situation was appreciably better. “The weather outside was warm, but dry; and I found, with pleasure, that the repository heating system was going, and that the packing room conditions were good.”

In his mind, the documents were as safe as possible.