Did you know that on Labor Day, September 5, 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt came to Maryland’s Eastern Shore where he delivered a nationally broadcast speech from Denton, Caroline County.
Newspaper accounts said that were 5000 to 10,000 people in attendance to watch Roosevelt deliver his speech from a podium across the street from the Caroline County Court House.
1938 was a mid-term election for Roosevelt and his trip was a political one. He was supporting Representative David Lewis from Cumberland, who was running against incumbent Senator Millard Tydings. Tydings hadn’t supported Roosevelt’s New Deal. The Eastern Shore was very much pro Tydings and the President encountered many Tydings signs.
Roosevelt’s day on the Eastern Shore began that morning when he arrived in Crisfield on the presidential yacht, the Potomac. The Mayor of Crisfield William Ward did not greet the president. Baltimore News-Post reported that he said, “If Mr. Roosevelt was coming to Crisfield as President of the United States of America, I would be only too glad to meet him and extend the hospitality of the city due to the occupant of that great office. But Mr. Roosevelt is coming to the Eastern Shore as a politician, and so I am not going to pay any attention to him.”
He then traveled by car to Denton with David Lewis and Representative T. Alan Goldsborough, of Denton. They arrived in Denton after noon and had lunch at Goldsborough’s home before delivering the speech at 2pm.
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The speech’s Text can be found at visitcaroline.org – Caroline County’s Tourism Website.
After the speech the President traveled to Matapeake, where he took a ferry across the Chesapeake Bay to Annapolis.
Senator Tydings was re-elected to the Senate in November.