Beschreibung:

KENNEDY, John Fitzgerald (1917-1963). Autograph manuscript [aboard the Caroline en route from Palm Beach to Washington], 17 January 1961. One page, 64 x 197 mm (visible), on yellow, lined paper, matted with a portrait. Three days before he was to deliver his inaugural address, Kennedy composes a "demonstration draft" for the benefit of a journalist in an effort to prove his authorship . An amazing document, written in part for the benefit of Time magazine reporter Hugh Sidey, written aboard his private plane, the Caroline , on the afternoon of 17 January 1961. For many years, the present document had been presumed to be one of only two known handwritten drafts of his inaugural address. However, in interviews with Theodore Sorensen and Hugh Sidey done in the last decade, it has been determined that the present manuscript, as well as a nine-page holograph copy now housed at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, were in fact fair copies of a draft that Kennedy had dictated to Evelyn Lincoln a week earlier, on 10 January 1961. On 16 January, Theodore Sorensen flew to Palm Beach where he and Kennedy spent the morning revising the 10 January draft. Sorensen spent the afternoon, assembling Kennedy's notes and typing a clean draft. The next morning, on 17 January, Kennedy reworked the draft further. That afternoon, Sorensen, Kennedy, and secretary Evelyn Lincoln boarded the Caroline for a trip back to Washington. During the early portion of the flight, Kennedy dictated what is considered the close-to-final version of the inaugural address to Lincoln. At some point soon afterward, Kennedy asked Evelyn Lincoln for a yellow legal pad and began jotting down his iconic closing invocation, "ask not what you can do..." Sorensen recalled that Kennedy had wryly observed afterward that he had heard that a holograph draft from one of Franklin Roosevelt's inaugural addresses had recently been discovered and sold for $200,000 (Sorensen, Kennedy , 243; Tofel, Sounding the Trumpet, p. 68-69). Then Kennedy invited Hugh Sidey, who was also traveling aboard the Caroline, into his compartment. Pushing aside his breakfast, Kennedy pulled out a legal pad and began jotting the line: "The Inaugural is a beginning an end is", but then stopped, ripped the page from the legal pad and discarded the page. He then started again, with a better approximation of the opening line of the 10 January draft and wrote for three pages. He then placed his pad down and commented to Sidey, "It's tough. The speech to the Massachusetts Legislature went so well. It's going to be hard to meet that standard." He told Sidey that he was unhappy with the opening passages. He continued to write some more and then threw his pen down in frustration. Sidey was flummoxed. He recalled thinking to himself "My God! it's three days before the inauguration, and he hasn't progressed beyond a first draft?" (Clarke, Ask Not , p. 194-195). When their meeting ended, Kennedy drafted five additional pages which also corresponded to the 10 January dictated draft, and together with the page bearing his iconic closing invocation, became what was touted as his "early draft". Thurston Clarke described the affair as "a performance [...] a charade, but an honorable one, performed to reinforce the truth: that Kennedy was the author of the passages he had dictated [on 10 January]". It was very much a repeat performance he did from his hospital bed in 1955 for the benefit of reporter Evan Thomas to demonstrate that he was indeed the true author of Profiles in Courage. Drew Pearson's accusation that Kennedy was not the author of his 1956 book still stung, and Kennedy was determined to demonstrate that in this case of his inaugural address, he was the true author (Clarke, 194). While the nine page draft became the oft-touted "early draft," Evelyn Lincoln retrieved the present discarded manuscript and added it to her growing collection of Kennedy memorabilia. Provenance: Evelyn Lincoln – Robert L. White (h