Correspondence, 1910-1972

This series contains James Bruce's personal and professional correspondence. Correspondents primarily include individuals from business and politics. Significant correspondents include Harry Truman and members of his administration, such as Dean Acheson, Tom C. Clark, Clark Clifford, Matthew Connelly, James Forrestal, W. Averell Harriman, Louis Johnson, George C. Marshall, John W. Snyder, Edward R. Stettinius, Stuart Symington, and James E. Webb. Prominent Maryland correspondents include Daniel Brewster, Harry C. Byrd, Thomas D'Alesandro, Millard Tawes, and Millard Tydings. Other correspondents of note include New York Times General Manager Julius Ochs Adler, Bernard Baruch, Allan and John Foster Dulles, Herbert Hoover, John F. Kennedy, Stephen Mitchell, and Juan Peron, and journalists Arthur Krock, Drew Pearson, Joseph and Stewart Alsop, Milton Bracker, and Virginia Lee Warren.

Correspondence with individuals involved in business and politics consists primarily of thank-you notes or congratulatory letters. Much of the correspondence reflects social life and events in New York, Washington, and Baltimore. Political topics documented in the series include Bruce's ambassadorship to Argentina and his campaign for United States Senate. Bruce's ambassadorship is documented primarily in the correspondence with President Truman and Secretaries of State George Marshall and Dean Acheson. Also of note is Bruce's correspondence with Undersecretary of State James Webb concerning Argentine political issues, including freedom of the Argentinean press, the attempt by the United States to win Argentina's participation in the European Recovery Program and to obtain President Peron's promise to sell grain under the program, and Bruce's as well as official United States relations with Argentinean officials. Additional information regarding Argentina and Bruce's ambassadorship may be found in the clippings in Series V and in Bruce's Memoirs, located in Series VI.

Bruce's views on the Democratic Party in the 1940s and 1950s are documented in exchanges with Democratic State Committee Chairman Paul Fitzpatrick, Democratic National Committee Chairman Stephen Mitchell, and Adlai Stevenson. Correspondence with Mitchell details Bruce's decision to decline Mitchell's offer to serve as Treasurer of the Democratic Party. The Mitchell correspondence, along with a 1961 letter to William Hillman, also reveals Bruce's continuing disappointment over what he saw as Truman's betrayal and the loss of the London ambassadorship.

Arrangement is alphabetical by correspondent or subject and chronological therein.