[RICHARD M. NIXON],.
The Holy Bible Containing the Old and New Testaments: Translated Out of the Original Tongues and with the Former Translations Diligently Compared. Commonly Known as the Authorized (King James) Version.
Nashville, TN: The Gideons International , 1974.
$50,000.00
In Stock
Item Number: RRB-152050
+$450
Deposition Bible Used to Swear in President Richard M. Nixon During His Testimony of the Watergate Scandal; Inscribed by Him to Judge Edward J. Schwartz
The 1974 edition of the Gideon Bible used to swear in President Richard M. Nixon before his voluntary deposition to the Watergate Special Prosecution Force on June 23, 1975, the only sworn testimony Nixon provided in connection with the Watergate proceedings. Octavo, original publisher's cloth, pictorial endpapers. Presentation copy, inscribed by Nixon on the front pastedown to the judge who presided over the deposition and dated June 23, 1975, "To Judge Edward J. Schwartz with best wishes President Richard Nixon."
The deposition, totaling approximately eleven hours across two days, took place at a United States Coast Guard facility near Nixon's San Clemente estate in California, and concerned the Watergate break-in and cover-up that had forced his resignation from the presidency on August 9, 1974. The proceedings were conducted in connection with the January 9, 1974 Grand Jury of the District of Columbia.
The presiding judge, the Honorable Edward J. Schwartz of the United States District Court for the Southern District of California, arrived for the deposition without a Bible, a circumstance that triggered a remarkable episode: Nixon and his staff were unable to produce one, and the Secret Service was dispatched to locate a copy at a nearby hotel, returning with this Gideon Bible, which was then used for the swearing-in. The federal building in downtown San Diego now bears Judge Schwartz's name, a lasting institutional tribute to a distinguished judicial career.
Laid into the Bible are Judge Schwartz's own manuscript notes, dated June 18, 1975 and June 23, 1975, providing directions from San Diego to the Nixon estate, instructions for meeting the Secret Service, directions for announcing himself by name into the squawk box upon arrival at the compound, and instructions to park near the heliport. The reverse of the note states the formal purpose of the proceedings: "In their deposition providing ancillary to the proceedings before the January 9, 1974 Grand Jury of the District of Columbia." In near fine condition. The Bible descended directly from Judge Schwartz to his son Steve Schwartz, in whose possession it has remained until now, an unbroken and fully documented chain of custody that places the provenance of this extraordinary artifact beyond any reasonable question.
Richard Milhous Nixon (1913–1994), the thirty-seventh President of the United States, remains one of the most complex and consequential figures in modern American political history. A man of formidable intellect and strategic vision whose presidency produced genuine achievements of the first order alongside one of the most catastrophic failures of political judgment the office has ever witnessed. Born in Yorba Linda, California, and educated at Whittier College and Duke University School of Law, Nixon served as a Naval officer in the Pacific, rose through the House and Senate on the strength of his aggressive anti-communist credentials, and served two terms as Eisenhower's Vice President before losing narrowly to Kennedy in 1960 and engineering one of the most remarkable political comebacks in American history with his election to the presidency in 1968. His foreign policy record was substantial — the opening of China, détente with the Soviet Union, the withdrawal from Vietnam, and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency among his lasting contributions — but everything was ultimately consumed by Watergate, the cover-up of a burglary at Democratic National Committee headquarters that led to his resignation on August 9, 1974, the only presidential resignation in American history. Pardoned by Gerald Ford, Nixon spent his final two decades writing prolifically on foreign policy and partially rehabilitating his public standing. He died in April 1994 at the age of eighty-one, and his funeral was attended by all five living former presidents, a gesture of institutional respect for a man whose gifts and flaws were each, in their different ways, outsized.
The Holy Bible Containing the Old and New Testaments: Translated Out of the Original Tongues and with the Former Translations Diligently Compared. Commonly Known as the Authorized (King James) Version.
$50,000.00
In Stock