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

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, ...
Indictment for illegal voting, 1872
Susan B. Anthony devoted more than fifty years of her life to the cause of woman suffrage. After casting her ballot in the 1872 Presidential election in her hometown of Rochester, New York, she was arrested, indicted, tried, and convicted for voting illegally. At her two-day trial in June 1873, which she later described as "the greatest judicial outrage ...
Sylvia Mendez and the Struggle for Mexican American Civil Rights
Friday, September 13, 2024 - Wednesday, October 2, 2024East Rotunda Gallery Gonzalo and Felicitas Mendez moved to Orange County, California, with their children Sylvia, Gonzalo Jr., and Jerome in 1944. When they tried to enroll in the majority-white school near their home, they were instead sent to a segregated school for Hispanic students. The Mendez family filed a ...
A President Resigns – 50 Years Later
Thursday, August 1, 2024 - Thursday, September 12, 2024East Rotunda Gallery “I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. But as President, I must put the interest of America first.” –Richard M. Nixon, August 8, 1974 During the night of June 17, 1972, five ...