Harry Truman Read online

  You don’t know how very much I appreciate the very great honor which has come to the state of Missouri. It is also a great responsibility which I am perfectly willing to assume.

  Nine years and five months ago I came to the Senate. I expect to continue the efforts I have made there to help shorten the war and to win the peace under the great leader, Franklin D. Roosevelt.

  I don’t know what else I can say except that I accept this great honor with all humility.

  I thank you.

  Everyone yelled some more, and the chairman recessed the convention. My father fought his way off the platform and, aided by another phalanx of police, soon reached the box where we were sitting. There we were practically besieged by a horde of shouting, sweating photographers, who begged us ad infinitum for “just one more” until Dad had to call a very firm halt and concentrate on getting us out of the stadium alive. The crowd was still frantic with excitement, and he was genuinely concerned for our safety.

  It was a thoroughly justified concern. People in crowds do things which they would never dream of doing if they were alone with you. One woman who shall out of charity remain nameless - she was the wife of one of Dad’s close friends - threw herself practically on top of me in a hysterical hug and I felt - I swear I even heard in that cauldron of sound - my neck crack. Everyone wanted to touch us. We were pushed and pounded and battered until I thought for a moment I would collapse with sheer fright. To this day, the sight of a large crowd terrifies me (except across the footlights).

  Thank goodness, there were enough police to form a defensive ring around us. Otherwise, I am sure one of us would have been seriously hurt. As we got to the street and the waiting car, Mother turned to Dad and said, “Are we going to have to go through this for all the rest of our lives?”

  Dad wisely declined to answer her. I don’t remember much else of what happened that night. It took hours for the fear I felt in the middle of that crowd to wear off.

  The next morning, Saturday, July 22, Mother held a press conference and answered as patiently as she could all sorts of silly questions about Dad’s eating habits, clothing styles, work routines, and the like. I stood beside her, hoping no one was going to ask me anything. Suddenly, into the room charged Dad, saying, “Where’s my baby? I have a telegram for her.” That was the beginning of my real antipathy for the word “baby.”

  Dad soothed my wrath by giving me as a souvenir a telegram from President Roosevelt:

  I SEND YOU MY HEARTIEST CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR VICTORY. I AM OF COURSE VERY HAPPY TO HAVE YOU RUN WITH ME. LET ME KNOW YOUR PLANS. I SHALL SEE YOU SOON. FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT

  That same day, we started back to Independence, and Dad stayed with us until August 1, primary day in Missouri. Roger Sermon, the mayor of Independence, was running for governor, and Bennett Clark was up for reelection. Dad did some politicking for them, but they both lost. Bennett Clark stubbornly refused to abandon his isolationist views, and by 1944, they were hopelessly out of date.

  Dad went back to Washington immediately after the election, and from there he wrote me an interesting letter about a meeting with the Republican nominee and his forecast of the campaign: “I was going into the Union Station (in St. Louis) to take the B&O as Dewey came out. There were not ten people there to meet him. More people came and spoke to your dad accidentally than came to meet Dewey on purpose. That can’t be so good and I just now happened to think of its significance. . . . This is going to be a tough, dirty campaign and you’ve got to help your dad, protect your good mamma. Nothing can be said of me that isn’t old and unproven - so this little “deestric attorney” will try to hit me by being nasty to my family. You must remember that I never wanted or went after the nomination - but now we have it, (to save the Democratic Party - so the Southerners and the AF of L and the RR Labor say) we must win and make ‘em like it. Maybe your dad can make a job out of the fifth wheel office. . . .”

  On August 18, my father met President Roosevelt at the White House, and wrote me a letter about it later in the day. It tells the story in somewhat circular fashion, but I think it is best to print it exactly as he wrote it.

  Washington, D.C.

  Aug. 18, 44.

  My dear Margie - Today may be one in history. Your dad had a most informal luncheon with Mr. Roosevelt on the terrace behind the White House, under a tree set out by old Andy Jackson. Mrs. Boettiger [the President’s daughter, Anna] was also present. She expected your mother to come with me. When I went to leave the Pres. gave me a rose out of the vase in the center of the small round table at which we ate for your mother and Mrs. B. gave me one for you. You should have seen your Pa walking down Connecticut Ave. to the Mayflower Hotel, where a date with Mr. Hannegan was in prospect with his hat blown up by the wind (so he looked like a college boy - gray hair and all) and two rose buds in his hand. He should have been arrested as a screwball but wasn’t.

  I told the President how very grateful ? I was for his putting the finger on me for V.P. and how I appreciated the honor ? etc., etc. ad. lib. and then we discussed “sealing wax and many things” to make the country run for the Democrats.

  You should have been with me at the press conference in the front room of the White House Offices. Hope I made no hits, no runs, no errors - particularly no errors.

  We had roast sardines (think they were Maine baby halibut) on toast, peas, beans, tomatoes, asparagus all mixed up in a salad - very nice when you left out the peas & carrots, and lots of good brown toast, then pickled clingstone peaches and a teaspoon full of coffee all served on beautiful White House china and with lovely silver and butlers etc. galore.

  When we first sat down there were movie cameras set up all around. We were in our shirt sleeves. The Pres took his coat off and I had told him if I’d known that was what he intended to do I’d have put on a clean shirt and he said he had that very morning. Well so had I. Then the flash light newspaper picture boys had an inning equal almost to the box at Chicago. The President got tired or hungry and said “Now boys one more that’s enough” and it ended.

  You’ll see it all in the movies and in the papers. Hope to see you Monday. Keep up those music lessons and I’m anxious to know what the surprise is. Chopin’s Ab Opus 42? Rigaudon? Polacca Brilliante? What?

  Kiss mamma. Here’s some expenses.

  Lots & lots of love,

  Dad

  Mother and I were in Independence, but President Roosevelt was not aware of this fact, and that is why he gave Dad the roses. The purpose of this letter was mainly to give me a thrill. My father did not set down here what he really thought after he left the luncheon with the President. Nor did he tell the whole truth to the reporters who were waiting for him outside the White House. “He’s still the leader he’s always been and don’t let anybody kid you about it. He’s keen as a briar,” Dad said.

  In private, he was appalled by Roosevelt’s physical condition. The President had just returned from a Pacific inspection trip. It had been an exhausting ordeal for him, and he had suffered, we now know, at least one cardiac seizure during the journey. My father later told close friends how the President’s hands shook so badly at the luncheon he could not get the cream from the pitcher into his coffee. He spilled most of it into the saucer. He talked with difficulty. “It doesn’t seem to be any mental lapse of any kind, but physically he’s just going to pieces,” Dad said. “I’m very much concerned about him.” The President alluded only once, and then obliquely, to the seriousness of his condition. He asked Dad how he planned to campaign, and Dad said he was thinking of using an airplane. The President vetoed the idea. “One of us has to stay alive,” he said.

  My father saw President Roosevelt only two more times between that August date and the inauguration. On September 6, he went to the White House with Governor Coke Stevenson of Texas to discuss the problem of keeping rebellious Texas Democrats in the party. After the election, he attended a White House reception with Eddie McKim at which there was no chance to discuss pol
itics or anything else with the President.

  My father kicked off his campaign with a rally at his Missouri birthplace, Lamar. That was a day to remember - or forget - depending on your point of view. Missourians were enormously proud to have one of their own on the national ticket. There had only been two previous nominations, both for vice president in 1868 and 1872, and both had lost. Everyone who had a few spare gallons of gas for dozens of miles around poured into the little town. No less than nine U.S. senators escorted Dad to the rally. Estimates on the size of the crowd varied wildly, from a low of 12,000 to a high of 35,000. One thing was certain, it was too big for Lamar. Toilet facilities and the sewage system broke down. The parking field was turned into a huge mud hole by a heavy rainstorm the previous day. Poor Harry Easley, who was the chairman in charge of the day, almost went crazy. “All I can say,” he muttered, summing it up, “is never have a big affair in a small town.”

  But everyone was good-natured about the inconveniences, and Tom Connally gave one of his old-fashioned, oratorical-fireworks-style speeches that had everybody ready to parboil Republicans, or eat them raw if necessary, before it was over. Dad made no attempt to top that untoppable Texas flamboyance. He simply stated the basic issue of the campaign - Thomas E. Dewey was not qualified either to direct a global war or to win the peace.

  As my father had predicted, the campaign was dirty, and a lot of the dirt was thrown at him. The Republicans knew they had no real issues. To attack President Roosevelt’s conduct of the war sounded unpatriotic. So they concentrated on Dad and a few other people in the White House circle, especially poor Sidney Hillman. As one magazine writer noted, “The competence of Mr. Roosevelt’s current running mate is the nearest thing the country has to a burning issue.” Some of the stories were just plain silly. Time magazine described how Dad had supposedly broken down and wept, pleading his incompetence, when he was nominated for vice president. Other tales were more on the ugly side. The Republicans revived the 1940 canard that Dad was one-fourth Jewish, and his middle initial stood for Solomon. “I’m not Jewish, but if I were I would not be ashamed of it,” Dad said to the delight of his many Jewish friends. But one attack Dad did not dismiss lightly was the snide remarks Clare Booth Luce made about Mother.

  For the seven and three-quarters years the Trumans were in the White House, Mrs. Luce was never invited to attend a single social function there. One day, about in the middle of that long freeze, her husband, Henry Luce, the publisher of Time, visited Dad and asked him for an explanation, obviously hoping to negotiate a truce. Dad pointed to the picture of Mother he always keeps on his desk and gave Luce a brief history of its travels to France and back with him during World War I. Mrs. Luce stayed uninvited.

  In the closing hours of the campaign, the Hearst papers unleashed the biggest smear of them all: Harry S. Truman was an ex-member of the Ku Klux Klan. They based their stories on obvious lies told by a few of Dad’s enemies in Jackson County - especially one whom he had helped to send to jail for embezzlement. This story was quickly refuted by on-the-spot testimony from other friends back home.

  Dad received the following telegram from his brother Vivian on October 27, 1944, while he was staying at the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago. It shows how the smear artists were operating - and how Harry Truman’s friends remained faithful to him:

  STATEMENT OF O L CHRISMA. MY NAME IS O L CHRISMAN. I AM 77 YEARS OLD AND HAVE LIVED IN JACKSON COUNTY MISSOURI SEVENTY FIVE YEARS. I HAVE KNOWN SENATOR HARRY S TRUMAN SINCE HE WAS A BOY OF TWELVE TO FIFTEEN YEARS OLD. . . . ON OR ABOUT OCTOBER 11TH 1944 BRUCE TRIMBLE CAME TO MY HOME WITH ANOTHER MAN WHO HE INTRODUCED AS A REPRESENTATIVE OF A NEW YORK NEWSPAPER. MR TIMBLE AND THE NEWSPAPER MAN INTERROGATED ME AT GRAT LENGTH RELATIVE TO MY KNOWLEDGE OF SENATOR TRUMAN’S RELATIONSHIP WITH THE KLAN. I TOLD THEM THAT I HAD SEEN HIM AT A MEETING OF THE KLAN IN CRANDALLS PASTURE MORE THAN TWENTY YEARS AGO. I TOLD THEM THAT THERE WERE MORE THAN FIVE THOUSAND MEN AT THIS MEETING AND THAT THERE WERE HUNDREDS OF THEM WHO WERE NOT MEMBERS OF THE KLAN. I TOLD THEM THAT I DID NOT KNOW OF SENATOR TRUMAN EVER HAVING BEEN A MEMBER AND THAT I NEVER KNEW OF ANYONE THAT CLAIMED TO KNOW THAT HE HAD BEEN A MEMBER OF THE KLAN. TRIMBLE AND THE NEWSPAPER MAN TRIED REPEATEDLY TO GET ME TO SAY THAT I KNEW THAT HARRY TRUMAN HAD BEEN A MEMBER. THESE MEN CAME TO MY HOUSE AT SEVEN OCLOCK IN THE EVENING JUST AS I WAS ABOUT TO GO OUT TO MILK MY COW. AFTER TWO HOURS OF QUESTIONING I SIGNED A STATEMENT TO THE EFFECT THAT I HAD SEEN HARRY S TRUMAN AT A KLAN MEETING AS STATED ABOVE AND THAT IF HE EVER BECAME A MEMBER OF THE KLAN I DID NOT KNOW IT . . . THE NEWSPAPER MAN TRIED REPEATEDLY TO GET ME TO SAY THAT TRUMAN HAD APPEARED ON THE PLATFORM AND HAD MADE SPEECHES AT KLAN MEETINGS. THIS WAS NOT TRUE AND I HAVE NEVER HEARD OF HIM MAKING SPEECHES OR APPEARING ON THE PLATFORM AT ANY KLAN MEETING. SIGNED O L CHRISMAN SENT BY J V TRUMAN

  My father did his campaigning aboard a special car, the Henry Stanley. Mother stayed in Washington with me because I had a few dozen courses in college to pass. My first contact with the campaign was a late October trip to New York with Mother to hear Dad speak in Madison Square Garden. By accident, we happened to be on the scene for the most dramatic episode of his campaign.

  In a show of Democratic unity, Harry Truman and Henry Wallace were to occupy the same platform. New York had numerous Wallace sympathizers, and there was good reason for suspecting they would make up a heavy percentage of the audience. My father and his entourage arrived, already worried about this problem. The crowd was large and restless. They waited several minutes, and there was still no sign of Wallace. Several eager pro-Wallace Democrats urged Dad to go onstage and let Wallace arrive late. But George Allen, who was handling the political arrangements for Dad’s tour, immediately saw what the Wallace men were planning to do. Dad would get the bare minimum of applause - or perhaps a few boos - when he appeared. Then, when Wallace came down the center aisle, they would tear the roof off the Garden, and the story would make headlines.

  “Mr. Truman goes on when Mr. Wallace goes on,” said George Allen grimly.

  Meanwhile, desperate efforts were being made to locate Wallace. Word reached them that he had left his hotel, and then they were told he had returned to his hotel because he forgot his glasses. Then he had left his hotel once more but was walking to the Garden, a strange performance if there ever was one. Eddie McKim, who was there with Dad, later said, “When Wallace came in and was shown back into the Garden offices [where Dad was waiting], he was mad as a wet hen. The only one he spoke to was Truman and he [Wallace] was in a very sour mood. Finally, they walked out through the entrance onto the platform arm in arm and smiling at each other, but I think they were about ready to cut each other’s throats.”

  It was an ominous sign of things to come, but my father, who hates to think the worst of anyone, hesitated to pass judgment on the incident.

  “Do you think that thing was planned, staged deliberately?” he asked Eddie McKim on the way back to the hotel.

  “I think it was,” Eddie said.

  “Well,” Dad said, “that’s a funny deal, but it didn’t work.”

  We joined Dad for the last leg of his tour. It was my introduction to whistle-stop campaigning, and I loved it. We paused for an exciting torchlight parade at Parkersburg, West Virginia. At Pittsburgh, we had a twenty-six-man motorcycle escort for a dash to nearby McKeesport for lunch. I was awed by the crowds, who were very well behaved, and even more impressed by meeting Orson Welles, who had dinner with us and spoke on the same platform with Dad that night.

  In Missouri, instead of going home to Independence, we took a suite at the Muehlebach Hotel in Kansas City. My father yielded to the pleas of his Battery D boys and other Missouri friends who journeyed to Kansas City to be on hand for the victory celebration. This was one election where he did not pull his early-to-bed routine. Instead, he stayed up with his friends and played the piano for them while they huddled around the radio, nervously listening to the returns, which gave the Republicans an early lead. Dewey did not concede until 3:45 a.m. By that ti
me, I was completely exhausted and much too excited to sleep. I was up for the rest of the night.

  My father finally got rid of his friends and threw himself down on a bed in the suite where they had been celebrating. His old friend from southwest Missouri, Harry Easley, stayed with him. For the first time, the full reality of what he was facing struck Dad. “He told me that the last time that he saw Mr. Roosevelt he had the pallor of death on his face and he knew that he would be President before the term was out,” Easley recalled. “He said he was going to have to depend on his friends. He was talking about people like me, he said. We sat there and had quite a long deal.”

  Whenever I think of this moment in my father’s life, I am always profoundly touched by it. There is something intensely American about it, this picture of a man close to assuming the most awesome responsibility in the world’s history, talking it over with a man not unlike himself, from a small Missouri city, a friend who had stood loyally by him whenever he needed help. If there is a more lonesome feeling in the world than being President, it must be facing the near inevitability of getting the job in the worst possible way - coming in through the back door, as Dad put it. That night his mind was obviously filled with the history of the other men who had reached the White House that way. Would he end as most of them had ended, beaten men, physically, spiritually, and politically?

  While other Democrats - including his daughter - celebrated on that election night in 1944, Vice President-elect Harry S. Truman lay awake in Kansas City, worrying.