Jonathan W. Daniels

Jonathan W. Daniels
4th White House Press Secretary
In office March 29, 1945 – May 15, 1945
President	Franklin Roosevelt Harry Truman
Preceded by	Stephen Early
Succeeded by	Charlie Ross
Personal details
Born	Jonathan Worth Daniels April 26, 1902 Raleigh, North Carolina, U.S.
Died	November 6, 1981 (aged 79) Hilton Head, South Carolina, U.S.
Political party	Democratic
Spouse(s)	Elizabeth Bridgers Lucy Billing Cathcart
Children	Elizabeth Lucy Adelaide Mary Cleves
Alma mater	University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Columbia University
Religion	Episcopalianism

Jonathan Worth Daniels (April 26, 1902 – November 6, 1981) was an American author, editor, and White House Press Secretary. He was a founding member of the Peabody Awards Board of Jurors, serving from 1940 until 1950.^[1] For most of his life, he worked at The News & Observer, and later founded The Island Packet.

Education

Jonathan Worth Daniels was the son of Josephus Daniels and Addie Worth Bagley Daniels. He attended Centennial School in Raleigh from 1908 to 1913. When his father became United States Secretary of the Navy in 1913, the family moved to Washington, D.C., where he studied at the John Eaton School from 1913 to 1915, and St. Albans School from 1915 to 1918. Daniels attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and graduated in 1921 with a B.A. He continued at UNC for graduate school, earning an M.A. in English in 1921. As a student in Chapel Hill, he edited The Daily Tar Heel and participated in the Carolina Playmakers.^[2] Daniels passed the North Carolina bar exam despite failing out of Columbia University Law School, but never practiced law.^[3]

White House Press Secretary

Daniels' term serving as White House Press Secretary was the shortest since the inception of the position in 1937.^[2] He held the position in 1945 under Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman.^[4][5][3]

Later life

In 1966, he revealed the affair between Roosevelt and Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd in his book The Time Between the Wars.^[6] He died in 1981.

Books

• Clash of Angels

New York: Brewer and Warren (1930)

• The Devil's Backbone: The Story of the Natchez Trace

New York: McGraw-Hill (1962) (Also published in later editions)

• The End of Innocence

Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. (1954) (Also published in later editions)

• Frontier on the Potomac

New York: Macmillan (1946) (Also published in a later edition)

• The Gentlemanly Serpent and Other Columns from a Newspaperman in Paradise: From the Pages of the Hilton Head Island Packet, 1970-73

Columbia: University of South Carolina Press (1974)

• The Man of Independence

Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. (1950) (Also published in a later editions)

• Mosby: Gray Ghost of the Confederacy

Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. (1959)

• Ordeal of Ambition: Jefferson, Hamilton, Burr

Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday (1970)

• Prince of Carpetbaggers

Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. (1958)

• The Randolphs of Virginia

Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday (1972)

• Robert E. Lee

Boston: Houghton, Mifflin (1960)

• A Southerner Discovers New England

New York: Macmillan (1940)

• A Southerner Discovers the South

New York: Macmillan, (1938) (Also published in a later edition)

• Stonewall Jackson

New York: Random House (1959)

• Tar Heels: A Portrait of North Carolina

New York: Dodd, Mead (1941) (Also published in a later edition)

• They Will Be Heard: America's Crusading Newspaper Editors

New York: McGraw-Hill (1965)

• The Times Between the Wars: Armistice to Pearl Harbor

Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday (1966) (Also published in a later edition)

• Washington Quadrille: The Dance beside the Documents

Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday (1968)

• White House Witness, 1942-1945

Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday (1975)

Notes

1. George Foster Peabody Awards Board Members
2. "Inventory of the Jonathan Daniels Papers, 1865-1982". Retrieved 2007-04-26.
3. "Jonathan Worth Daniels". North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame. Retrieved 11 August 2016.
4. "News Article". Lincoln (Neb.) State Journal. 30 March 1945. p. 9. Jonathan Daniels, who succeeded Stephen T. Early as the man who handles presidential press relations, took the oath of office Thursday.
5. Oral History Interview with Jonathan Daniels Truman Library. 1963. Retrieved 11 August 2016.
6. "New light on the revelations of Franklin Roosevelt's 30-year affection for Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd". Life. September 2, 1966. Archived from the original on January 28, 2013. Retrieved January 28, 2013.

References

• North Carolina Award citation

External links

• Oral Interview with Jonathan Daniels at Truman Library
• Inventory of the Jonathan Daniels Papers, 1865-1982, in the Southern Historical Collection, UNC-Chapel Hill
• Oral History Interview with Jonathan Worth Daniels at Oral Histories of the American South
• Jennifer Ritterhouse, "Dixie Destinations: Rereading Jonathan Daniels' A Southerner Discovers the South", Southern Spaces, 20 May 2010.