Scope and Content Note
The papers of Robert Porter Patterson (1891-1952) span the years 1909-1956, with the bulk of the material concentrated between 1930 and 1952. The papers are organized into eight series: Correspondence, Legal File, Speech File, Miscellany, Scrapbooks, Under Secretary of War Files, 2023 Addition and Classified. The Correspondence series is further arranged into seven subseries differentiated mostly by chronological spans as compiled and maintained by Patterson before being received by the Library. Additional correspondence can be found in the 2023 Addition series.
The Legal File consists of briefs and memoranda on cases in which Patterson presided as a judge, correspondence concerning the cases, and notes taken or collected by him. Patterson served on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, 1930-1939, and on the United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, 1939-1940. The case material from his judgeships is filed alphabetically according to the type of case and therein alphabetically by name. The collection also contains a file of legal note by Patterson on a variety of subjects. These notes, along with Patterson's law school notebooks, illustrate the intensity of preparation and the care that went into his study of the law. In the Legal File as well is an index to Patterson's legal cases from 1930 to 1939 and memoranda concerning his legal cases from 1939 to 1940.
The Speech File, Scrapbooks, Miscellany, and Under Secretary of War Files are primarily concerned with Patterson's career as a government official. Also present are materials relating to his estate and to Margaret Patterson's donation of the collection to the Library.
The 2023 Addition series consists of outgoing correspondence documenting Patterson's professional activities in the latter years of his career, and speeches and statements given during and after his tenure as secretary of war.
Patterson's career covered a wide variety of interests and activities. His early years, 1891 to 1930, are represented by general correspondence covering the years, 1919-1927, his law school notebooks, 1912-1915, and a diary, 1925. There is no personal material prior to 1919 and none between 1927 and 1930. The only other pre-1930 material is correspondence and other material concerning the Harvard Law School Association that was given to Patterson during his presidency of the organization, 1937-1949.
The files for the years 1930-1940 are primarily concerned with legal matters and Patterson's judicial career. The only personal material from the period is correspondence pertaining principally to New York city and state politics.
The period 1940-1947, when Patterson served in the War Department, is well documented in the collection. As assistant secretary, then under secretary of war, 1940-1945, Patterson's primary responsibility was procurement and supply. Subjects covered in the correspondence, memoranda, and reports for the period include civilian versus military control of the wartime economy, military strategy, projected problems of the postwar world, and the difficulties involved in regulating and controlling a wartime economy. Of special interest is a file on wartime cabinet meetings that Patterson attended as a representative of the War Department.
Patterson's tenure as secretary of war, 1945-1947, is also well documented. Photocopies of his appointment books record in detail his daily activities for the period. Important subjects include cabinet meetings, the postwar settlement in Europe, switching from a wartime economy to a peacetime economy, the demobilization of the American military, and the projected merger of two cabinet departments into the Department of Defense. Patterson was an ardent believer in universal military training. Files on the issue can be found throughout the correspondence and the reports of the 1940s.
After his resignation as secretary of war in 1947, Patterson formed the legal firm of Patterson, Belknap, Webb and Tyler. Topics from the period include, the Marshall Plan, the United Nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and the embryonic European Common Market. Patterson served actively on such organizations as the American Association for the United Nations, the American Committee on United Europe, the Atlantic Union Committee, the United States Committee for a United Nations Genocide Convention, the Committee on the Permanent Court of Arbitration, and the United States Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government (1947-1953, the first Hoover Commission). Also covered is Patterson's chairmanship of the Long Island Rail Road Commission and his chairmanship of the American Bar Association Commission on Organized Crime. Of interest as well is a file concerning Francis Joseph Cardinal Spellman and the war claims of the Vatican in the late 1940s. Patterson was a strong supporter of civil rights as evidenced by the file on Freedom House and correspondence with Walter Francis White, executive secretary of the NAACP.
Correspondents in the collection include Henry Harley Arnold, Thurman Wesley Arnold, Bernard M. Baruch, Francis Biddle, Chester Bowles, Nicholas Murray Butler, James F. Byrnes, Benjamin N. Cardozo, Bennett Champ Clark, Mark W. Clark, Lucius D. Clay, James Bryant Conant, Homer S. Cummings, Elmer Holmes Davis, Thomas E. Dewey, James Harold Doolittle, Paul H. Douglas, Hugh Aloysius Drum, David Dubinsky, Allen Dulles, Dwight D. Eisenhower, James A. Farley, James Forrestal, Felix Frankfurter, Philip L. Graham, Erwin N. Griswold, Ernest Gruening, Augustus Noble Hand, Learned Hand, Alger Hiss, Anna Rosenberg Hoffman, Herbert Hoover, Charles Evans Hughes, Philip C. Jessup, Jesse H. Jones, Louis Arthur Johnson, Lyndon B. Johnson, Estes Kefauver, Ernest Joseph King, Julius Klein, Alfred A. Knopf, William S. Knudsen, James McCauley Landis, Herbert H. Lehman, David Eli Lilienthal, Robert A. Lovett, W. G. McAdoo, Douglas MacArthur, Patton Pat McCarran, J. Howard McGrath, George C. Marshall, Sherman Minton, Robert Moses, Donald Marr Nelson, Louis Nizer, William O'Dwyer, George S. Patton (1885-1945), Philip B. Perlman, Howard C. Peterson, Roscoe Pound, Owen J. Roberts, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Kenneth C. Royall, Samuel I. Rosenman, Leverett Saltonstall, Arthur M. Schlesinger (1917-2007), Alexander P. de Seversky, Robert E. Sherwood, Spyros Panagiotes Skouras, H. Alexander Smith, Lawrence E. Spivak, Brehon Burke Somervell, Francis Spellman, Henry L Stimson, Herbert Bayard Swope, Stuart Symington, Harry S. Truman, Millard E. Tydings, Arthur T. Vanderbilt, Tracy S. Voorhees, Robert F. Wagner (1877-1953), Walter Francis White, and Charles Edward Wilson.