By Michael Moore

When President Franklin D. Roosevelt made plans to run for a third term in 1940 he decided to drop conservative Vice President John Nance Garner from the ticket, both because Garner disapproved of Roosevelt running again and Garner’s opposition to much of the New Deal. Instead Roosevelt chose Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace.

However, many of Garner’s fellow conservative Democrats, including the party’s reactionary wing based in the South, despised Wallace for his liberalism and attempted to block his nomination at the convention before Roosevelt’s arrival. The book American Dreamer: A Life of Henry A. Wallace describes what happened next:

At the White House, Franklin Roosevelt sat in the Oval Room playing solitaire, listening to the proceedings with growing disgust”It was a hot, humid evening in Washington, and Roosevelt was out of patience. Suddenly he reached for a pad and began to scribble. Shortly he handed his notes to [federal judge and confidant] Sam Rosenman and told him to “clean it up” because he might have to “deliver it quickly.”

Below is the letter which Roosevelt drafted, in which he vowed not to run if his fellow Democrats blocked his choice of Wallace. (In the end the letter was never sent, as a speech by Eleanor Roosevelt turned the tide for Wallace at the convention.) Roosevelt’s letter, with its powerful critique of the Democratic Party, was published almost nowhere and was essentially unknown before it appeared in Oliver Stone’s new Showtime documentary series Untold History of the United States:

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