Harrison, Caroline Scott | Caroline Harrison praises the United States and excoriates Congress, while pledging to assist a jeweler in placing a commemorative suite in the Smithsonian

Harrison, Caroline Scott
Autograph letter signed ("Caroline S. Harrison") as First Lady, to Herman Marcus of Marcus & Co. Jewelers in New York City, offering to help place his work in a museum

4 pages (155 x 98 mm) on a bifolium of gold-embossed Executive Mansion letterhead, Washington, 31 March 1892.

Herman Marcus, who had previously made jewelry for Caroline Harrison, had evidently enlisted her assistance in finding a public benefactor for a suite of his works, which must certainly have been designed to commemorate the quadricentennial of the discovery of America. The First Lady responds with enthusiasm for the jewelry but with pessimism for the willingness of Congress to support such a purchase.

"Your kind letter & the Works which accompanied it arrived safely yesterday. I thank you so much for them as well as for your many other kindnesses & attentions. I think with you, that this collection ought to be in some Museum or public institution, where it could be seen & examined. The Smithsonian is I presume the proper place for it. I will take great pleasure in speaking to Prof. [Samuel] Langley [Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution], & would be glad if I could aid in placing them in so worthy a place. The great obsticle in the way is Congress. They are so unwilling to spend the necessary money. As to the present Congress I expect nothing, a their main object this session is to cut down appropriations, & we can expect nothing liberal of them, but I hope the day will come (even if we don't live to see it) when our Representatives will not be looking back to their Constituents for return, on the narrow basis of what can be saved, but desire great & liberal things worthy of such a government as ours. The greatest on the Earth." Harrison concludes the letter with a presidential gift: "I send you a Presentation Copy of the Presidents speeches. We had a few which we have given to particular persons, & it gives me much pleasure to send you one of them."

Although Columbus Day did not become an official annual holiday of the United States until 1934, Caroline Harrison's husband, President Benjamin Harrison, proclaimed "Friday, October 21, 1892, the four hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America by Columbus, as a general holiday for the people of the United States." By sad coincidence, Mrs. Harrison died of tuberculosis just four days after this holiday, which perhaps blunted the effort to find a museum home for Marcus's jewelry.

Condition Report:
Condition as described in catalogue entry.