The Magna Carta at Fort Knox: A Forgotten WWII Story

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. If you ask most Americans to name the three most important documents in our country, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Gettysburg Address would likely top their lists. It certainly topped Franklin Roosevelt’s, Secret Service agent Harry Neal’s, and Archibald MacLeish, the Librarian of Congress. All three of these men played a critical role in moving America’s most important documents out of Washington, D.C. as the world geared up for war. Here to share the story is Steve Pulio, author of American Treasures. Let’s get into the story.

These documents are artifacts. These documents are symbols. These documents are today blueprints by which we operate. They’re all of those gathered into one. And, guess what, Roosevelt and MacLeish and Harry Neal were thinking about that during the Second World War. I want you to think about this. After Pearl Harbor is attacked on December 7th, 1941, Washington goes into lockdown, gun emplacements on the roofs, sentries at the War Department. The White House goes dark. There’s debate on whether to paint the White House black. Bulletproof glass is installed at the Oval Office. Secret Service gives gas masks to the White House staff. FDR kept his on his wheelchair arm. Secret Service builds a 750-foot zigzag tunnel that links the White House with the Treasury Department in case FDR and his staff needed to get over there for safety. Food down there, clothing down there, toilet facilities, office space down there. FDR said to Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, “Henry, I’m not going down there unless I can play poker with all the gold in your vaults.” Never does go down there, but that tunnel’s still classified. But Washington is in lockdown. There is real fear of German bombers, real fear of sabotage. There’s even talk, folks, about rerouting the flow of the Potomac and Anacostia rivers. Why is that? Because at the confluence of those rivers, pilots could get a fix on the White House.

So there’s even talk about that.

FDR says, during a press conference in February of 1942, during a press conference: “The Germans can probably come in and bomb New York City or Washington, D.C. tonight. Under certain circumstances, they might even be able to reach Detroit and bomb it.” Wow, pretty stunning what FDR knew, and only some people along the coast of the United States knew, but certainly not all Americans knew. And so the other thing that was going on is that German U-boats were sinking American merchant ships up and down the East Coast with impunity. They sink about 600 of them from January to August of 1942, six hundred of them. Cape May, Cape Hatteras, Virginia Beach, the Outer Banks, Jacksonville—killing grounds for U-boats. There is palpable fear, palpable fear. And one of the great fears—and FDR feels himself a tremendous steward of these documents—one of the great fears is that these documents would be destroyed by bombs or by sabotage, and the hit to the national psyche would be devastating. So we need to get those documents out of Washington now. Plans had begun about a year earlier, even more than a year earlier, in the fall of 1940, Roosevelt, MacLeish huddle.

They see what’s happening in England.

The British lose thousands of documents when libraries are hit: books, manuscripts, mostly by Jewish writers, but others too, in archives.

So that’s when the planning begins.

Archibald MacLeish, Librarian of Congress, says to his staff, “I want you to put together what we have that is utterly irreplaceable and unique, and then we’re gonna triage them: Level One, Level Two, all the way down to Level Six. Level Six, still very important documents, but.”

“That’s how we’re going to do it.”

Seven months or so before Pearl Harbor, about 700 Library of Congress volunteers spend about 10,000 hours assessing, cataloging, and packing critical documents: 5,000 boxes of documents, the President’s papers, Washington’s Diaries, notes of the Continental Congress, the Constitutional Convention Notes, Samuel Morse’s first telegraph message, “What hath God wrought?” A letter from Queen Victoria to Mary Todd Lincoln after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, where Queen Victoria says how much she feels for Mary Lincoln because she has barely gotten over the death of Prince Albert just a few months earlier. So this incredible collection of Americana gets packed up, and when America finally goes to war, the ball starts to roll to get these out of Washington. Starts on December 26th, the day after America’s Pearl Harbor.

Christmas—a very eerie Christmas for Americans.

Many Americans are wondering whether their family members would be there the next Christmas, so it’s a very kind of eerie Christmas. The day after that, the Library of Congress and the Secret Service pack up the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Gettysburg Address, and a few other documents. A few other what they call first-tier documents: the Articles of Confederation, the Gutenberg Bible, Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, and one other non-American document, the Magna Carta from 1215, which is in the United States because it was on display at the 1939 New York City World’s Fair. And when war breaks out in Europe, the Brits ask.

us to hold onto it for safekeeping.

Archibald MacLeish made this joke that he thought Jefferson would find it kind of interesting and ironic that the Magna Carta was right next to the Declaration of Independence. And the Secret Service transports it from the Library of Congress to Union Station, puts it on a train under heavy guard and complete secrecy. In the train rumbles out to Louisville, Kentucky. The documents according to the Gold Bullion Depository at Fort Knox.

And you’ve been listening to author Steve Pulio telling one heck of a story about not only our most precious documents, but also the Magna Carta, which had been in America on loan. When we come back, more of the story of saving America’s most important documents during World War Two. Here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here. As we approach our nation’s two hundred-fiftieth anniversary, I’d like to remind you that all the history stories you hear on this show are brought to you by the great folks at Hillsdale College. And Hillsdale isn’t just a great school for your kids or grandkids to attend, but for you as well. Go to Hillsdale.edu to find out about their terrific free online courses. Their series on Communism is one of the finest I’ve ever seen. Again, go to Hillsdale.edu and sign up for their free and terrific online courses. And we return to Our American Stories. When we last left off, Roosevelt, Harry Neal, and Archibald MacLeish had decided to move America’s most important documents to Fort Knox, Kentucky. There were fears that Germany could fly bombers into the United States to strike Washington, D.C. After all, the seas around Cape Hatteras, Cape May, and Cape Cod had become killing grounds for German U-boats. These three men would be presented with a slight problem, though. Let’s return to the story. Here again is Steve Pulio.

Now, MacLeish had asked Morgenthau for room at Fort Knox. He wanted some space to put a lot more. Morgenthau says, “Because there’s tons of gold here, right, already.” Morgenthau says, “You could have about sixty cubic feet.” It’s about the size of freezer, folks. I mean, do your math. Sixty cubic feet? Not much. So MacLeish has to make do with Fort Knox. But then the question becomes, where do we take the rest of these incredibly important documents? Library of staffers go on a road trip because here’s what they’re looking for.

They’re looking for places that are…

pretty far inland, or at least maybe fifty to one hundred miles inland. They’re looking for places that maybe have mountains around them that bombers can’t get to. They’re looking for places that are waterproof, fireproof, humidity-proof.

So they go on these…

sojourn, looking all around, “Where can we put these documents?” And they end up with college repositories: the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Washington and Lee in Lexington, VMI (Virginia Military Institute) in Lexington. But then they realize they still don’t have enough space, so they pick Denison University in Granville, Ohio, about four hundred miles from Washington. Later on, they realize that VMI has some humidity. They have to get them out of there, and they take them all to Denison. So the University of Virginia, Washington and Lee, and Denison become the repository for these documents.

They looked at many.

places—over sixty places. Bowling Green, Kentucky had termites; couldn’t put them there. Roanoke College had a fireproof basement, but it was near a swimming pool—too much humidity.

Couldn’t put them there. So that’s the kind of thing that went into the decision. This is all done in complete secrecy, folks.

The National Gallery of Art relocates some of its most valuable paintings: Goya’s, Rembrandts, or Raphael’s, Botticelli’s to the Biltmore House in North Carolina. New York Public Library looks for caves. That was one of the things that MacLeish looked at too. But then there were some real concerns because caves have leakage; caves have water.

problems; caves have back entrances.

Sometimes, these documents—these critical documents—the Declaration, the Constitution, the Gettysburg Address…

They remain in Fort Knox, along with these…

5,000 other boxes until September of 1944, three months or so after D-Day. Allies moving to Berlin from the west, the Russians coming from the east, not too much concerned about an attack on the U.S. mainland. At that point, military intelligence says it’s time to move these documents and bring them east over the Alleghenies and the Blue Ridge and bring them home.

And that’s what happens.

By the way, there was one exception prior to this that took place on April 13th, 1943, the 200th anniversary of Thomas Jefferson’s birth, during the dedication of the Jefferson Memorial. FDR is really concerned about American morale. Been at war for sixteen, seventeen months. It’s a slog in April of ’43. He thinks the dedication of the Jefferson Memorial and the display of the original Declaration of Independence will really help boost American spirits. And so the document has taken out of Fort Knox, nobody knows where it came from, and put on display at the Jefferson Memorial for one week under 24-hour Marine guard. Thousands of Americans come to see it, and then it goes back to Fort Knox. One other part of this story I need to tell you, and that is in 1952, December 13th, 1952—a huge day, a huge parade down Pennsylvania Avenue. On Avenue that’s seen many parades, military bands, military vehicles, military personnel accompanying the original Declaration and the original Constitution from the Library of Congress to the National Archives. After many years of wrangling and infighting in some turf battles between the Library of Congress and the National Archives, decision finally gets made and President Truman driving it to make it happen. But these documents need to be put on display for all Americans to see. And two days later, on December 15th, 1952, Bill of Rights Day, President Harry Truman presides over the ceremony: the Enshrinement—great word, right?

The Enshrinement Ceremony at the National.

Archives, one of Truman’s last official acts as president. Ike had just been elected in ’52, November, but this was an important moment for him because he loved these documents too.

He knew the value of these documents, and he says to the assembled crowd:

“The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States are more than historical relics. They are a living force in our life today. We may have some difficulty in preserving the parchment on which these two documents have been written. The ideas they set forth will never perish. These documents express the highest principles of political life, that all men have certain unalienable rights, and that the rule of law stands above government and citizens alike. In our own lifetime, we have learned anew the human misery that an absolute power-mad government can create. The death cramps of Hitler, Germany are the modern Siberia demonstrate that the unrestrained power of the government can be a greater evil in our modern civilization than it ever was in ancient times. They own a guarantee against such a society of fear and cruelty, is the principle that the government is not above the law. On this occasion, we ought to pray to Almighty God that the American people will remain faithful to the spirit of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.”

That if these documents are simply enshrined in these cases, the ideas contained in them will die. That in order for them to live on, and for the ideas embodied in them to live on, they must be enshrined…

Quote, “in our hearts and minds.” I think intrinsically, inherently.

Most Americans know this. I think the one million people that file through that rotunda every year know it. They may not express it in those words, but I think they know it, just like Adams and Jefferson and Dolly Madison knew it. Just like Stephen Pleasant knew it, just like Abraham Lincoln knew it, just like FDR and MacLeish and Harry Neal knew it. These documents and the ideas contained in them have been protected and preserved by others.

Harry Truman said to this crowd:

“That needs to continue to happen with this generation and future generations”—that would be us.

Let us hope we get it right.

And a terrific job by the production and editing by our own Monty Montgomery. And a special thanks to Steve Pulio, he’s the author of American Treasures. And a special thanks to the U.S. National Archives for allowing us access to this audio. It’s a terrific resource for anyone who wants to know anything about American life and American history. And what a story we’re told here, shuttling these documents over mountains, trying to find humidity-free zones where they could be protected, and the big ones. Well, they found their home in Fort Knox, but countless others found their homes at the University of Virginia—where I went to law school—and Denison University. And then came the removal in 1943. Had to be very dramatic, bringing the Declaration of Independence back to the dedication of the Jefferson Memorial, and then right back to Fort Knox. Absolutely loved the way Steve ended things. In the end, the ideas encapsulated in the Declaration and the Constitution should not merely be enshrined behind cases in Washington for visitors to view, but have to be in our hearts and in our minds, protected and preserved by each other for future generations. That’s what we try and do here at this show, each and every day: the story of America’s effort to preserve our most important documents during World War Two, here on Our American Stories.