Julia Sand and Chester Arthur: How A Random American Woman Influenced A President, with Destry Edwards

This American President

Society & Culture, Education, History

4.6 • 698 Ratings

🗓️ 6 May 2025

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Few presidents entered office more distrusted than America's 21st chief executive, Chester A. Arthur. But one American, Julia Sand, believed that he could rise to the occasion. What ensued was one of the most surprising and unlikely episodes in presidential history -- one that is the basis of a new documentary from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, titled Dear Mr. President: The Letters of Julia Sand. In this episode, I interview the producer of the documentary, Destry Edwards.

Dear Mr. President: The Letters of Julia Sand

https://cei.org/letters-of-julia-sand/

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CREDITS
Host: Richard Lim
Producer: Michael Neal
Artist: Nip Rogers, www.NipRogers.com

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The
0:07.0	The President, So last year, I was able to participate in a very cool project highlighting one of America's most obscure presidents, Chester Arthur, the nation's 21st chief executive.
0:40.3	Now, Arthur has one of the most unlikely stories of all of our presidents.
0:45.4	And my friend Destri Edwards of the Competitive Enterprise Institute has just completed a documentary
0:51.3	on Arthur, specifically on his friendship with a woman named Julius Sand.
0:56.5	It's a wonderful project, and I recommend it to all of our listeners.
1:00.3	The documentary is titled, Dear Mr. President, The Letters of Julius Sand.
1:04.7	And we're happy to have Destry on our show today.
1:07.5	Hey, good to be with you, Richard.
1:08.7	So why a documentary on Chester Arthur? Yeah, so I mean,
1:12.9	like most Americans, I went most of my life, never expecting to make a documentary about
1:17.6	President Chester Arthur. But several years ago, I first heard the initial story about what happened
1:24.1	with him and Julius Sands letters. And that was interesting. I didn't look into it too far,
1:29.5	but just kind of interesting story that I knew existed. And then two, three years ago, I was working
1:35.1	on a different video project, an explainer video that had to do with bureaucracy and the Pendleton
1:40.7	Act and kind of ran through that. And doing research for that video, came across again, the story of Act and, you know, kind of ran through that and doing research for that video,
1:45.0	came across, again, the story of Arthur and Sand.
1:48.8	And that was beyond the scope of what I was doing for that video, but I just got so interested in my research on that topic during that time.
1:56.8	And was just fascinated with the story about, you know, in the middle of this huge political upheaval of the president being assassinated with, you know, James Garfield being assassinated before Arthur comes into office.
2:08.5	And just these very real people, these very real stories of what Arthur was going through, what Julius Sand was going through and trying to reach out to him.
2:16.9	And just saw this, you know, this fascinating people, this going through and trying to reach out to him and just saw this,
2:18.8	you know, this fascinating people, this fascinating story and wanted to, if the opportunity
	...

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