Notes from Washington: Highly Prized Morgenthau Signatures
A group of silver certificates tied to Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. illustrates the legacy of the New Deal Treasury during the Great Depression and World War II.
Courtesy FDR Presidential Library & Museum/Flickr.com.
Lee Lofthus provided two 1935 series $1 silver certificates that he has been fortunate to acquire, signed by Henry Morgenthau Jr., FDR’s Secretary of the Treasury. In addition, he has provided an image of another $1 silver certificate to round out this story: a $1 Series of 1928E $1 silver certificate that went through a September 2005 Heritage Long Beach sale, lot 17866, and was given to the same recipient as Lee’s 1935 note.
Lee’s interest in Morgenthau runs deep growing out of his seminal research on the rare $10 1933 and $1 1928E silver certificates bearing Morgenthau’s signature, as well as his work on how the FDR-Morgenthau New Deal Treasury reorganized the currency system of the United States during the Great Depression and the role played by the Series of 1929 Federal Reserve Bank Notes in helping to relieve the currency stringency at the start of World War II.
Henry Morgenthau Jr. (1891–1967) was FDR’s long-serving Secretary of the Treasury (1934–1945). He ranks among the most remarkable and gifted Secretaries of the Treasury, having guided the New Deal Treasury through the Great Depression and World War II. Morgenthau never earned a high school or college diploma, but studied agriculture and architecture, not economics or finance. He had a managerial gift for recognizing and assembling a team of exceptionally competent subordinates, as well as the confidence to delegate to them the important work of the Treasury. He thus served as the brilliant symphony leader who, with innovation, orchestrated a script largely formulated by the president.
Morgenthau was a neighbor and became a friend of FDR in the 1920s through a shared interest in growing Christmas trees, but more importantly, also in farm economics and land stewardship policy. It was prescient of FDR to recognize his abilities and engage his services in government, beginning when Roosevelt was governor of New York. Morgenthau not only steered the U.S. Treasury but also served as a confidant and advisor to the president.
His style was to implement Roosevelt’s grand design for the Treasury’s role in the nation’s economic recovery from the Great Depression. This was accomplished through meetings and the exchange of memos, wherein they formulated policy. Once cast, Morgenthau would prepare an explicit policy memo that served as a record of decision, send it to Roosevelt for his signature, and then implement it.
These memos now stand as a terrific, unambiguous historical record. In addition, Morgenthau was a meticulous diarist who wrote volumes that provide an invaluable insider’s view of the people he encountered and the workings of government as he lived them. His diaries are now housed in the Roosevelt Presidential Library at Hyde Park, New York.
Morgenthau’s historical legacy as Secretary of the U.S. Treasury was that he supervised, without scandal, the spending of $450 billion, three times more than had passed through the hands of his 50 predecessors combined.
Personalized, autographed, and dated $1 Series of 1928E silver certificate to Eugene S. Duffield that was hand cut from the upper left corner of the 4th presentation sheet prepared by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to launch the issue. Courtesy of the author.
A second note presented to Eugene S. Duffield. This is from the second pack of the newly released Series of 1935 $1 silver certificates designed by FDR. Duffield was a reporter with the Chicago Tribune’s Washington bureau from 1933 to 1935, when this note was given to him. He moved on to the Wall Street Journal’s Washington bureau from 1935 to 1938. He was then hired as a special assistant to Morgenthau on October 31, 1938, later to become assistant to the Secretary of the Navy before resuming a career in the private sector.
A courtesy autographed note near the end of Morgenthau’s tenure in 1945, with the last serial number block in the Series of 1935A to bear his signature. He served briefly at the beginning of President Truman’s administration. The weight of his responsibilities is evident in his signature, which lacks the flair evident in the earlier Duffield notes.
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