Vintage “Attorney General" J. Howard McGrath Signed TLS Dated 1947 For Sale

Up for sale "Attorney General" J. Howard McGrath Hand Signed TLS Dated 1947.

ES-4654

James

Howard McGrath (November

28, 1903 – September 2, 1966) was an American politician and attorney from the U.S. state of Rhode Island. McGrath, a Democrat,

served as U.S. Attorney for

Rhode Island before General, U.S. Senator, chairman of

the Democratic National

Committee, and Attorney General of the

United States. Born in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. McGrath was the son of James J.

McGrath and the former Ida E. May. He graduated from the La Salle Academy in

1922, attended Providence College, and

went to the Boston University Law

School in 1929. McGrath married Estelle A. Cadorette on November 28, 1929;

that adopted a son. From 1930 to 1934, he was the city solicitor of Central Falls, Rhode

Island. During this time he was also interested in the real estate, insurance, and banking industries. He served as United States Attorney for

the District of Rhode Island from

1934 to 1940. Truman appointed McGrath Attorney

General of the United States on August 24, 1949. After McGrath

had refused to co-operate in a corruption investigation initiated by his own

department. Truman asked for and received McGrath's resignation on April 3,

1952. Alternative accounts have contradictorily suggested that after

a meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at

Truman's "Little White House" in Key West, the Secretary of the Navy,

along with other members, had threatened to resign if they, too, were forced to

comply with Special Assistant Attorney General Newbold Morris's request for the personal records of all

members who might have received gifts under the scope of the corruption

investigation. Under pressure to follow through with the Justice Department

corruption investigation, along with the threats of resignation, McGrath agreed

that Morris's request was asking too much and that the best thing to do was to

clean up the department from that point forward and leave the past alone.

Truman had been backed into a corner, and the only way out was to ask for

McGrath's resignation. That account was corroborated by a letter from Truman to

McGrath, which hung in the hallway of McGrath's summer home in Narragansett, Rhode Island up

to the time of his death in 1966. McGrath entered the private practice of law

in Washington, D.C. and

Providence. In 1960, he was an unsuccessful candidate to succeed the retiring

U.S. Sen. Theodore Francis Green (Democrat

of Rhode Island), losing the Democratic primary (also contested by former

Governor Dennis J. Roberts)

to Claiborne Pell. McGrath

died of a heart attack in Narragansett, Rhode Island on

September 2, 1966, at the age of 62. His body was buried at the St. Francis Cemetery in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. There

is a bust of Senator McGrath outside the House chamber in the Rhode Island State House.