Richard Nixon’s Resignation Letter and Gerald Ford’s Pardon

During the night of June 17, 1972, five burglars broke into the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate office complex in Washington, DC. Investigation into the break-in exposed a trail of abuses that led to the highest levels of the Nixon administration and ultimately to the President himself.

On the evening of August 8, 1974, President Nixon addressed the nation and announced his intention to resign. The next morning, White House Chief of Staff Alexander Haig presented this letter to President Nixon to sign. The President’s resignation letter is addressed to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who initialed it at 11:35 a.m.

On September 8, 1974, the new President, Gerald Ford, issued a full pardon to the former President for any offenses he “has committed or may have committed.” Even before President Nixon’s resignation, speculation had swirled around the possibility that the new President might pardon him, but at the time and later in his memoirs, President Ford strongly denied that there was any “deal” to trade a pardon for a Presidential resignation. In his televised address announcing the pardon, President Ford said that trying President Nixon would only further inflame political passions and prevent the country from moving forward. He also said that Nixon and his family had suffered enough, that he might not be able to receive a fair trial, and that a trial might prove inconclusive.

The resignation and pardon mark the conclusion of the events we know as Watergate. For two years, public revelations of wrongdoing inside the White House had convulsed the nation in a series of confrontations that pitted the President against the media, executive agencies, the Congress, and the Supreme Court. The Watergate affair was a national trauma—a constitutional crisis that tested and affirmed the rule of law.

These documents were on display in the “Featured Documents” exhibit in the Rotunda Galleries of the National Archives in Washington, DC, August 8 through August 11, 2014.

The National Archives Museum’s “Featured Documents” exhibit is made possible in part by the Foundation for the National Archives through the generous support of Toyota.

Download a high-resolution version of Nixon’s resignation letter and Ford’s pardon from the National Archives’ Online Public Access Database.

Past Featured Records

Mr. Santa Claus: Romance of the Postal Service
On Display 12/5/2024 – 1/8/2025 This holiday featured film is one of a series of silent movies produced by the Post Office Department in 1921. The mini melodrama shows how the postal service helps make a happy Christmas for a boy and his sister when their “Dere Sandy Claws” letter is answered by a young married couple. https://catalog.archives....
Bring Them Home, Uncle Sam
Soldiers arrive home aboard the S.S. Haverford as the transport ship pulls into Philadelphia, 1918. Records of War Department General and Special Staffs On Display 10/31/2024 – 12/4/2024 More than two million American service members were overseas with the American Expeditionary Forces when the guns fell silent on November 11, 1918, ending World War I. Americans would continue to ...
Betty Ford: Raising Breast Cancer Awareness
On Display 10/03/2024 - 10/30/2024 Just weeks after she became First Lady, Betty Ford was diagnosed with breast cancer. On September 26, 1974, doctors discovered a lump in her breast during a routine medical examination. She underwent a mastectomy two days later. Breaking with social conventions of the time, Betty Ford shared her cancer diagnosis with the public. This ...
Title IX
An Act of June 23, 1972, Public Law 92-318, 86 STAT 235, to Amend the Higher Education Act of 1965, the Vocational Educational Act of 1963, the General Education Provisions Act (Creating a National Foundation for Postsecondary Education and a National Institute of Education), the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, Public Law 874, Eighty-First Congress, and Related Acts, ...
Court-Martial record of Lieutenant Frederick Gotthold Enslin, March 10, 1778.
On March 10, 1778, Lieutenant Frederick Gotthold Enslin became the first U.S. soldier court-martialed for “attempting to commit sodomy” with another soldier. His sentence was to be literally drummed out of the Continental Army by its regiments’ fifes and drums. Enslin was told “never to return.” More than 230 years after Enslin’s court martial, gay men, lesbians, ...