On Saturday, September 23, 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt traveled from the White House to the nearby Hotel Statler. In its banquet hall, he attended a large dinner, hosted by the Teamsters union—the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers of America.
The dinner was a political event, supporting President Roosevelt as he sought election to a fourth term. After the dining concluded, the President gave, from a seated position on the dais, a lengthy political speech. To access its full text, click this link:
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-union-dinner-washington-dc
The speech had many virtues. Judge Samuel Rosenman, who was a key Roosevelt speechwriter for many years, collaborated with him on this one, and was present to hear the President deliver it, ranked it as Roosevelt’s finest political speech.
History remembers the speech for one passage, a paragraph that Roosevelt himself drafted. In it, the President, with humor and superb delivery, responded to the allegation—completely false—that he had, on a recent trip to Alaska, sent a U.S. Navy destroyer back to an island to retrieve his dog Fala, who had been left behind.
Here is President Roosevelt’s “Fala” paragraph:
These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, or my wife, or on my sons. No, not content with that, they now include my little dog, Fala. Well, of course, I don’t resent attacks, and my family don’t resent attacks. But Fala does resent them. You know, Fala is Scotch, and being a Scottie, as soon as he learned that the Republican fiction writers, in Congress and out, had concocted a story that I had left him behind on an Aleutian Island and had sent a destroyer back to find him—at a cost to the taxpayers of two or three or eight or twenty million dollars—his Scotch soul was furious. He has not been the same dog since. I am accustomed to hearing malicious falsehoods about myself—such as that old, worm-eaten chestnut that I have represented myself as indispensable. But I think I have a right to resent, to object, to libelous statements about my dog.
Click this link for newsreel footage of President Roosevelt defending Fala:
he “Fala speech” became a news sensation. It showed President Roosevelt’s charm, his honesty, and, allaying some public concerns, his continuing vigor. It might well have clinched his victory, that November, over the Republican presidential nominee, New York governor Thomas E. Dewey.
And what about Robert H. Jackson? He was not at this Teamsters dinner. As a Supreme Court justice, he avoided political campaign events.
Justice Jackson was not even in Washington on that evening. He was in New York, preparing to be best man the next day at his son’s wedding.
