Draft ALS, one page, 6 x 9, no date. Letter of thanks to Mrs. Spivey. In full: “Thanks for the material. It will be of great help. Like U. S. Grant I’ve decided to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer and maybe more than one summer.” In fine condition.
Likely written after taking office as California’s governor, this correspondence reflects some of the ideological fervor that fueled Reagan’s early political methods. His paraphrase of Grant’s dispatch to Washington, D.C., during the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House in 1864—’I propose to fight it out on this line, if it takes all summer’—turned out rather prophetic. Just as Grant’s campaign turned out to be a bloody and tactically inconclusive venture, Governor Reagan soon found that he, too, was unable to create a favorable environment for every battle. The pressures of politics quickly forced the new administration to compromise, turning his gubernatorial tenure into one considered symbolically radical but substantively conventional. However, the statement shows the determination that would also one day take Reagan to the White House.
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