SOURCE: "The Pragmatic Hero," in Partisan Review, Vol. 18, No. 4, July/Aug., 1951, pp. 466-71.

Schlesinger is a prominent American historian and an influential figure in liberal politics. As a special assistant to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, he was instrumental in formulating the "New Frontier" and the "Great Society," the two major social reform movements of the 1960s, which promoted Medicare, the war on poverty, and extensive civil rights legislation. Schlesinger has twice been the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize: the first for The Age of Jackson (1945), an examination of Jacksonian democracy as the genesis of American liberalism, and the second for A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (1965), an overview of the Kennedy administration. In the following essay, Schlesinger reviews a two-volume edition of Roosevelt's collected letters for the years preceding his term as president.

"These, then, are my last words to you...