Woodrow Wilson to William G. McAdoo
Title
Woodrow Wilson to William G. McAdoo
Creator
Wilson, Woodrow, 1856-1924
Identifier
WWP25519
Date
1918 November 21
Description
President Wilson accepts the resignation of the Secretary of the Treasury.
Source
Library of Congress, Woodrow Wilson Papers
Publisher
Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum
Subject
United States. Department of the Treasury. Office of the Secretary--Resignation from office
Wilson, Woodrow, 1856-1924--Correspondence
Contributor
Mark Edwin Peterson
Relation
WWP25520
Language
English
Provenance
Document scan was taken from Library of Congress microfilm reel of the Wilson Papers. WWPL volunteers transcribed the text.
Text
My dear Mr. Secretary:
I was not unprepared for your letter of the fourteenth because you had more than once, of course, discussed with me the circumstances which have long made it a serious personal sacrifice for you to remain in office. I know that only your high and exacting sense of duty had kept you here until the immediate tasks of the war should be over. But I am none the less distressed. I shall not allow our intimate personal relation to deprive me of the pleasure of saying that in my judgement the country has never had an abler, a more resourceful and yet prudent, a more uniformly efficient Secretary of the Treasury; and I say this remembering all the able, devoted, and distinguished men who preceded you. I have kept your letter a number of days in order to suggest, if I could, some other solution of you difficulty than the one you have not felt obliged to resort to. But I have not been able to think of any. I cannot ask you to make further sacrifices, serious as the loss of the Government will be in your retirement. I accept your resignation, therefore, to take effect upon the appointment of a successor, because in justice to you I must.
I also, for the same reason, accept your resignation as Director General of Railroads, to take effect, as you suggest, on the first of January next. The whole country admires, I am sure, as I do, the skill and executive capacity with which you have handled the great and complex problem of the unified administration of the railways under the stress of war uses, and will regret, as I do, to see you leave that post just as the crest of its difficulty is about to be passed.
For the distinguished, disinterested, and altogether admirable service you have rendered the country in both posts, and especially for the way in which you have guided the Treasury through all the perplexities and problems of transitional financial conditions and of the financing a war which has been without precedent alike in kind and in scope I thank you with a sense of gratitude that comes from the very bottom of my heart.
Gratefully and affectionately yours,
Hon. William G. McAdoo
Secretary of the Treasury
I was not unprepared for your letter of the fourteenth because you had more than once, of course, discussed with me the circumstances which have long made it a serious personal sacrifice for you to remain in office. I know that only your high and exacting sense of duty had kept you here until the immediate tasks of the war should be over. But I am none the less distressed. I shall not allow our intimate personal relation to deprive me of the pleasure of saying that in my judgement the country has never had an abler, a more resourceful and yet prudent, a more uniformly efficient Secretary of the Treasury; and I say this remembering all the able, devoted, and distinguished men who preceded you. I have kept your letter a number of days in order to suggest, if I could, some other solution of you difficulty than the one you have not felt obliged to resort to. But I have not been able to think of any. I cannot ask you to make further sacrifices, serious as the loss of the Government will be in your retirement. I accept your resignation, therefore, to take effect upon the appointment of a successor, because in justice to you I must.
I also, for the same reason, accept your resignation as Director General of Railroads, to take effect, as you suggest, on the first of January next. The whole country admires, I am sure, as I do, the skill and executive capacity with which you have handled the great and complex problem of the unified administration of the railways under the stress of war uses, and will regret, as I do, to see you leave that post just as the crest of its difficulty is about to be passed.
For the distinguished, disinterested, and altogether admirable service you have rendered the country in both posts, and especially for the way in which you have guided the Treasury through all the perplexities and problems of transitional financial conditions and of the financing a war which has been without precedent alike in kind and in scope I thank you with a sense of gratitude that comes from the very bottom of my heart.
Gratefully and affectionately yours,
Hon. William G. McAdoo
Secretary of the Treasury
Original Format
Letter
To
McAdoo, W. G. (William Gibbs), 1863-1941
Files
Collection
Citation
Wilson, Woodrow, 1856-1924, “Woodrow Wilson to William G. McAdoo,” 1918 November 21, WWP25519, World War I Letters, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum, Staunton, Virginia.