After suffering a sprained ankle after a day of golf in the midst of the Election of 1912 against Wilson and Roosevelt’s Bull Moose, Taft assures his correspondent, “A few more days of rest, and I’ll be out on the links again.”

William H. Taft ALS as PresidentTyped Letter Signed, “Wm H Taft” as President, 1 page, 6″ x 6.5″ (sight) on White House letterhead, Beverly, Massachusetts, September 7, 1912, to Charles A. Ricks in Collinwood, Ohio. Matted and framed with a photograph.

Taft writes, in full: “Thank you for your kind letter of September 7th. It won’t be necessary for me to try Doctor Phillips’ remedy this time, for, I am glad to say, my ankle is very greatly improved. A few more days of rest, and I’ll be out on the links again. I appreciate your thoughtfulness, old man!”

What exactly constituted the doctor’s “remedy” is anyone’s guess. Taft was the target of a good deal of ridicule in the press due to his penchant to hit the links during the bitter campaign against Theodore Roosevelt’s breakaway Progressive Party, which split the Republican vote and cost him the Presidency. Ironically, he sprained his ankle while playing golf over the weekend before he returned to Washington on September 4, 1912.1

William H. Taft ALS as President
The recipient, Charles A. Ricks (1869-1914) was a manger for Standard Oil in Cleveland when he organized the G. C. Kuhlman Car Company, serving as the electric railroad car manufacturer’s secretary and treasurer until his death in 1914.2

Fine condition.

(EXA 6003) $1,200
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1 “Taft Suffers from Sprained Ankle,” The New Orleans Item, 4 Sept. 1912, 5.
2 Samuel Peter Orth, A History of Cleveland, Ohio: Biographical (1910), 819; Electric Railway Journal, 29 Aug. 1914, 44:409.