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Harry S. Truman

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: USA Presidents

   Harry S. Truman
   Harry S. Truman
     __________________________________________________________________

   33rd President of the United States
   In office
   April 12, 1945 –  January 20, 1953
   Vice President(s)   None (1945–1949),
   Alben W. Barkley (1949–1953)
   Preceded by Franklin D. Roosevelt
   Succeeded by Dwight D. Eisenhower
     __________________________________________________________________

   34th Vice President of the United States
   In office
   January 20, 1945 –  April 12, 1945
   President Franklin D. Roosevelt
   Preceded by Henry A. Wallace
   Succeeded by Alben W. Barkley
     __________________________________________________________________

   Born May 8, 1884
   Lamar, Missouri
   Died December 26, 1972
   Kansas City, Missouri
   Political party Democratic
   Spouse Bess Wallace Truman
   Religion Baptist
   Signature

   Harry S Truman ( May 8, 1884– December 26, 1972) was the thirty-third
   President of the United States (1945–1953); as Vice President, he
   succeeded to the office upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

   In domestic affairs, Truman faced challenge after challenge: a
   tumultuous reconversion of the economy marked by severe shortages,
   numerous strikes and the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act over his veto.
   After confounding all predictions to win re-election in 1948, he was
   able to pass almost none of his Fair Deal program. He used executive
   orders to begin desegregation of the U.S. armed forces and to launch a
   system of loyalty checks to remove thousands of Communist sympathizers
   from government office; he was nevertheless under continuous assault
   for much of his term for supposedly being "soft on Communism." Another
   ongoing domestic political problem was the perception of corruption
   among members of his administration: hundreds of his appointees were
   forced to resign in a series of financial scandals.

   Truman's presidency was eventful in foreign affairs, starting with
   victory over Germany, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
   the surrender of Japan and the end of World War II, the founding of the
   United Nations, the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe, the Truman
   Doctrine to contain Communism, the beginning of the Cold War, the
   creation of NATO, and the Korean War. The war became a frustrating
   stalemate, with over 30,000 Americans killed. Highlighting what he
   considered to be Truman's failures ("Korea! Communism! Corruption!"),
   Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower ended 20 years of Democratic rule in
   1952. In retirement, Truman wrote his well-regarded Memoirs.

   Truman, whose personal style contrasted sharply with that of the
   patrician Roosevelt, was a folksy, unassuming president; he popularized
   such phrases as "The buck stops here" and "If you can't stand the heat,
   get out of the kitchen." He overcame the low expectations of many
   political observers who compared him (unfavorably) to his highly
   regarded predecessor. Truman was forced out of his re-election campaign
   in 1952 after losing the first primary. His public opinion ratings were
   the lowest on record, but scholars today rank him among the top ten
   Presidents. His honesty and integrity, his political courage, and his
   firm stand for Western democracy after World War II have earned him
   high praise from all political corners, including, among others,
   conservative Senator Barry Goldwater. His legendary upset victory in
   1948 is routinely invoked by underdog presidential candidates.

Early life

   Truman in c. 1908
   Enlarge
   Truman in c. 1908

   Truman was born on May 8, 1884, in Lamar, Missouri, the eldest child of
   John Anderson Truman and Martha Ellen Young Truman. Martha and John
   could not agree on the middle name for Harry apart from the inital S. A
   brother, John Vivian (1886–1965), soon followed, along with sister Mary
   Jane Truman (1889–1978).

   Harry's father, John Truman was a farmer and livestock dealer. Truman
   lived in Lamar until he was 11 months old. The family then moved to his
   grandparent's 600-acre (240 ha) farm in Grandview, Missouri. When
   Truman was six years old, his parents moved the family to Independence,
   Missouri, so he could attend the Presbyterian Church Sunday School.
   Truman did not attend an actual school until he was eight.

   As a young boy, he had two main interests, which were music and
   reading. He got up at 5 AM every morning to practice the piano and he
   went to a local music teacher twice a week until he was fifteen. Truman
   read four or five histories or biographies a week and also acquired an
   exhaustive knowledge on military battles and the world's greatest
   leaders. After graduating from high school in 1901, Truman worked at a
   series of clerical jobs. He returned to the Grandview farm in 1906 and
   stayed there for the next decade.

   For the rest of his life, Truman would hearken back nostalgically to
   the years he spent as a farmer, often for theatrical effect. The ten
   years of physically demanding work he put in at Grandview were real,
   however, and they were a formative experience. During this period he
   courted Bess Wallace and even proposed to her in 1911; she turned him
   down. Truman said he wanted to make more money than a farmer before he
   proposed again. (He did propose to her again, successfully, in 1918
   after coming back as a Captain from World War I.)

   He was the only president after 1870 not to earn a college degree,
   although he studied for two years toward a law degree at the Kansas
   City Law School (now the University of Missouri–Kansas City School of
   Law) in the early 1920s.

World War I

   Truman in uniform ca. 1918
   Enlarge
   Truman in uniform ca. 1918

   With the onset of American participation in World War I, Truman
   enlisted in the Missouri National Guard. At his physical, his eyesight
   had been an unacceptable 20/50 in the right eye and 20/400 in the left
   eye; he passed by secretly memorizing the eye chart.

   Before heading to France, he was sent for training at Fort Sill in
   Oklahoma. He ran the camp canteen, selling candy, cigarettes,
   shoelaces, sodas, tobacco, and writing paper to the soldiers. To help
   run the canteen, he enlisted the help of his Jewish friend Sergeant
   Edward Jacobson, who had experience in a Kansas City clothing store as
   a clerk. Another man he met at Ft. Sill who would help him after the
   war was Lieutenant James M. Pendergast, the nephew of Thomas Joseph
   (T.J.) Pendergast, a Kansas City politician.

   Truman was chosen to be an officer, and then battery commander in an
   artillery regiment in France. His unit was Battery D, 129^th Field
   Artillery, 60^th Brigade, 35^th Infantry Division. Under Captain
   Truman's command in France, the battery performed bravely under fire in
   the Vosges Mountains and did not lose a single man. Truman later rose
   to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the National Guard. Always proud
   of his Army artillery service, Truman was indignant at contemporary
   press accounts that appeared to him to exalt the battle exploits of the
   U.S. Marines during the war, instilling in him an intense dislike of
   the Marine Corps that would have ramifications later in life.

Marriage and early business career

   The Trumans' wedding day June 28, 1919
   Enlarge
   The Trumans' wedding day
   June 28, 1919

   At the war's conclusion, Truman returned to Independence and married
   his longtime love interest, Bess Wallace, on June 28, 1919. The couple
   had one child, Margaret (born February 17, 1924).

   A month before the wedding, banking on the success they had at Ft. Sill
   and overseas, the men's clothing store of Truman & Jacobson opened at
   104 West 12^th Street in downtown Kansas City. After a few successful
   years, the store went bankrupt during a downturn in the farm economy in
   1922; lower prices for wheat and corn meant fewer sales of silk shirts.
   In 1919 wheat had been selling for $2.15 a bushel, but in 1922 it was
   down to a catastrophic 88 cents a bushel. Truman blamed the fall in
   farm prices on the policies of the Republicans and Secretary of the
   Treasury Andrew Mellon. Truman worked for years to pay off the debts.
   He and his former business partner, Eddie Jacobson, were accepted
   together at Washington College in 1923. They would remain friends for
   the rest of their lives, and Jacobson's advice to Truman on the subject
   of Zionism would, decades later, play a critical role in the US
   government's decision to recognize the state of Israel.

Politics

Jackson County judge

   In 1922, with the help of the Kansas City Democratic machine led by
   boss Tom Pendergast, Truman was elected as a judge of the County Court
   of Jackson County, Missouri — an administrative, not judicial, position
   similar to county commissioners elsewhere. Although he was defeated for
   reelection in 1924, he was elected in 1926 as the presiding judge for
   the court and reelected in 1930. Truman performed his duties in this
   office diligently and won personal acclaim for several popular public
   works projects, including an extensive series of roads for growing
   automobile traffic, the construction of a new County Court building,
   and the dedication of a series of 12 Madonna of the Trail monuments
   honoring pioneer women.

   In 1922, Truman gave a friend $10 for an initiation fee for the Ku Klux
   Klan but later asked to get his money back; he was never initiated,
   never attended a meeting, and never claimed membership. Though Truman
   at times expressed anger towards Jews in his diaries, his business
   partner and close friend Edward Jacobson was Jewish. Truman's attitudes
   toward blacks were typical of white Missourians of his era, and were
   expressed in his casual use of terms like "nigger". Years later,
   another measure of his racial attitudes would come to the forefront:
   tales of the abuse, violence, and persecution suffered by many
   African-American veterans upon their return from World War II
   infuriated Truman, and were a major factor in his decision to back
   civil rights initiatives and desegregate the armed forces.

U.S. Senator

   Senator Truman seeks election during this July 1940 speech.
   Enlarge
   Senator Truman seeks election during this July 1940 speech.

   In the 1934 election Pendergast's machine selected Truman to run for
   Missouri's open United States Senate seat, and he campaigned
   successfully as a New Deal Democrat in support of President Franklin D.
   Roosevelt. During the Democratic primary, Truman defeated Tuck
   Milligan, the brother of federal prosecutor Maurice M. Milligan, who
   would eventually topple the Pendergast machine -- and run against
   Truman in the 1940 primary election. Truman then defeated the incumbent
   Republican Roscoe C. Patterson by nearly 20%.

   Widely considered a puppet of the big Kansas City political boss,
   Truman assumed office under a cloud as "the senator from Pendergast."
   (Adding to the air of distrust was the disquieting fact that three
   people had been killed at the polls in Kansas City.) In the tradition
   of machine politicians before and since, Truman did indeed direct New
   Deal political patronage through Boss Pendergast -- but he insisted
   that he was independent on his votes. Truman did have his standards,
   historian David McCullough later concluded, and he was willing to stand
   by them, even when pressured by the man who had emerged as the kingpin
   of Missouri politics.

   Milligan began a massive investigation into the 1936 Missouri
   gubernatorial election that elected Lloyd C. Stark; 258 convictions
   resulted. More importantly, Milligan discovered that Pendergast had not
   paid federal taxes between 1927 and 1937 and had conducted a fraudulent
   insurance scam. He went after Senator Truman's political patron. In
   1939, Pendergast pled guilty and received a $10,000 fine and a 15-month
   sentence. Stark, who had received Pendergast's blessing in the 1936
   election, turned against him in the investigation and eventually took
   control of federal New Deal funds from Truman and Pendergast.

   In 1940, both Stark and Milligan challenged Truman in the Democratic
   primary for the U.S. Senate. Robert E. Hannegan, who controlled St.
   Louis Democratic politics, threw his support in the election to Truman.
   Truman campaigned tirelessly and combatively. In the end, Stark and
   Milligan split the anti-Pendergast vote, and Truman won the election by
   a narrow margin. (Hannegan would go on to broker the 1944 deal that put
   Truman on the Vice Presidential ticket for Franklin Roosevelt.)

   Truman always defended his decisions to offer patronage to Pendergast
   by saying that by offering a little, he saved a lot. Truman also said
   that Pendergast had given him this advice when he first went to the
   Senate:

          Keep your mouth shut and answer your mail.

Truman Committee

   On June 23, 1941, the day after Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union,
   Senator Truman declared: "If we see that Germany is winning we ought to
   help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that
   way let them kill as many as possible, although I don't want to see
   Hitler victorious under any circumstances. Neither of them thinks
   anything of their pledged word." Liberals and conservatives alike were
   disturbed by his seeming suggestion of the possibility of America
   backing Nazi Germany, and he quickly backtracked.

   He gained fame and respect when his preparedness committee (popularly
   known as the " Truman Committee") investigated the scandal of military
   wastefulness by exposing fraud and mismanagement. His advocacy of
   common-sense cost-saving measures for the military attracted much
   attention. Although some feared the Committee would hurt war morale, it
   was considered a success and is reported to have saved at least $11
   billion. In 1943, his work as chairman earned Truman his first
   appearance on the cover of Time Magazine. (He would eventually appear
   on nine Time covers and be named the magazine's Man of the Year in 1945
   and 1949.)

   Truman's diligent, fair-minded, and notably nonpartisan work on the
   Senate committee that came to bear his name turned him into a national
   figure. It is unlikely that Roosevelt would have considered him for the
   vice-presidential spot in 1944 had the former "Senator from Pendergast"
   not earned a new reputation in the Senate -- one for probity, hard
   work, and a willingness to ask powerful people tough questions.

Vice President

        Order:      34th Vice President
   Term of Office:  January 20, 1945 – April 12, 1945
     Preceded by:   Henry A. Wallace
    Succeeded by:   Alben Barkley
      President:    Franklin D. Roosevelt
   Political party: Democratic

   After months of uncertainty over the President's preference for a
   running mate, Truman was selected as Roosevelt's vice presidential
   candidate in 1944 as the result of a deal worked out by Hannegan, who
   was Democratic National Chairman that year.

   Roosevelt, increasingly frail, agreed to replace Henry Wallace as Vice
   President because he was considered too liberal by the party
   establishment. The surviving evidence suggests that Roosevelt chose to
   leave the selection of a running mate unresolved well into the summer
   of 1944. James F. Byrnes of South Carolina was initially favored, but
   as a segregationist he was considered too conservative. Roosevelt
   apparently favored Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas for
   vice-president, but in a meeting with party leaders, Hannegan proposed
   Truman. Before the convention began, Roosevelt wrote a note saying he
   would accept either Truman or Douglas, and party operatives were able
   to get Truman the nomination. Truman himself appears not to have
   campaigned directly or indirectly that summer for the number two spot
   on the ticket, and in years to come he would always maintain that he
   had not wanted the job of Vice President.

   Truman's candidacy was humorously dubbed the Second " Missouri
   Compromise" at the 1944 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, as
   his appeal to the party centre contrasted with the liberal Wallace and
   the too conservative Byrnes. The nomination was well received, and the
   Roosevelt-Truman team went on to score a moderate victory in the United
   States presidential election, 1944 by defeating Governor Thomas E.
   Dewey of New York. Truman was sworn in as Vice President on 20 January
   1945, and served less than three months.

   Truman shocked many when, as Vice President, he attended his disgraced
   patron Pendergast's funeral a few days after being sworn in. Truman was
   reportedly the only elected official of any level who attended the
   funeral.

   On April 12, 1945, Truman was urgently called to the White House, where
   Eleanor Roosevelt informed him that the President was dead. Truman,
   thunderstruck, could initially think of nothing to say. He then asked
   if there was anything he could do for her, to which the former First
   Lady replied, "Is there anything we can do for you? For you are the one
   in trouble now."

Presidency 1945–1953

First Term (1945-1949)

End of World War II

   Presidential portrait of Truman, painted by Greta Kempton.
   Enlarge
   Presidential portrait of Truman, painted by Greta Kempton.

   Truman had been Vice President for only 82 days when President
   Roosevelt died. He had very little meaningful communication with
   Roosevelt about world affairs or domestic politics since being sworn in
   as Vice President, and was completely unbriefed about major initiatives
   relating to the successful prosecution of the war -- notably the top
   secret Manhattan Project, which was, at the time of FDR's passing, on
   the cusp of testing the world's first atomic bomb. (Truman was quickly
   briefed and eventually authorized its use against the Japanese).

   Shortly after taking the oath of office, Truman said to reporters:

          "Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now. I don't know if you
          fellas ever had a load of hay fall on you, but when they told me
          what happened yesterday, I felt like the moon, the stars, and
          all the planets had fallen on me."

   Momentous events were to occur in Truman's first five months in office:
     * April 25 - Nations meet in San Francisco, California to create the
       United Nations
     * April 28 - Benito Mussolini of Italy killed
     * May 1 - Announcement of the suicide of Adolf Hitler
     * May 2 - Berlin falls
     * May 7 - Germany surrenders
     * May 8 - Victory in Europe Day
     * July 17-August 2 - Truman, Josef Stalin, and Winston Churchill meet
       at the Potsdam Conference to establish political landscape of
       post-war world
     * August 6 - Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima
     * August 8 - USSR declares war on Japan
     * August 9 - Atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki
     * August 14 - Japan agrees to surrender ( Victory over Japan Day)
     * September 2 - Japan formally surrenders aboard the USS Missouri

United Nations and Marshall Plan

   Truman signs U.N. charter as Secretary of State James F. Byrnes looks
   on
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   Truman signs U.N. charter as Secretary of State James F. Byrnes looks
   on

   As a Wilsonian internationalist, Truman strongly supported the creation
   of the United Nations, and included former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt
   on the delegation to the U.N.'s first General Assembly in order to meet
   the public desire for peace after the carnage of the Second World War.
   Faced with Communist abandonment of commitments to democracy made at
   the Potsdam Conference, and with Communist advances in Greece and
   Turkey that suggested a hunger for global domination, Truman and his
   foreign policy advisors concluded that the interests of the Soviet
   Union were quickly becoming incompatible with the interests of the
   United States. The Truman administration articulated an increasingly
   hard line against the Soviets.

   Although he claimed no personal expertise on foreign matters, and the
   opposition Republicans controlled Congress, Truman was able to win
   bipartisan support for both the Truman Doctrine, which formalized a
   policy of containment, and the Marshall Plan, which aimed to help
   rebuild postwar Europe. To get Congress to spend the vast sums
   necessary to restart the moribund European economy, Truman used an
   ideological argument, arguing forcefully that Communism flourishes in
   economically deprived areas. He later admitted that his goal had been
   to "scare the hell out of Congress." To strengthen the U.S during the
   cold war against Communism, Truman signed the National Security Act of
   1947 and reorganized military forces by creating the Department of
   Defense, the CIA, U.S. Air Force (separate from the U.S. Army), and the
   National Security Council.

Fair Deal

   After many years of Democratic majorities in Congress and two
   Democratic presidents, voter fatigue with the Democrats delivered a new
   Republican majority in the 1946 midterm elections, with the Republicans
   picking up 55 seats in the House of Representatives and several seats
   in the Senate. Although Truman cooperated closely with the Republican
   leaders on foreign policy, he fought them on domestic issues. He failed
   to prevent tax cuts and the removal of price controls. The power of the
   labor unions was significantly curtailed by the Taft-Hartley Act, which
   was enacted by over-riding Truman's veto.

   As he readied for the approaching 1948 election, Truman made clear his
   identity as a Democrat in the New Deal tradition, advocating universal
   health insurance, the repeal of the anti-union Taft-Hartley Act, and an
   aggressive civil rights program. Taken together, it all constituted a
   broad legislative program that he called the " Fair Deal."

   Truman's Fair Deal proposals made for potent campaign rhetoric, but
   they were not well received by Congress, even after Democratic gains in
   the 1948 election. Only one of the major Fair Deal bills, an initiative
   to expand unemployment benefits, was ever enacted.

Recognition of Israel

   Truman, who had been a supporter of the Zionist movement as early as
   1939, was a key figure in the establishment of a Jewish state in
   Palestine.

   In 1946, an Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry recommended the gradual
   establishment of two states in Palestine, with neither Jews nor Arabs
   dominating. However, there was little public support for the two-state
   proposal, and Britain, its empire in rapid decline, was under pressure
   to withdraw from Palestine quickly because of attacks on British forces
   by armed Zionist groups. At the urging of the British, a special U.N.
   committee recommended the immediate partitioning of Palestine into two
   states, and with Truman's support, this initiative was approved by the
   General Assembly in 1947.

   The British announced that they would leave Palestine by May 15, 1948,
   and the Arab League Council nations began moving troops to Palestine's
   borders. The idea of a Jewish state in the Middle East was popular in
   the U.S., and particularly so among one of Truman's key constituencies,
   urban Jewish voters.
   Truman and Chaim Weizmann, May 25, 1948
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   Truman and Chaim Weizmann, May 25, 1948

   The State Department, however, was another matter. Secretary of State
   George Marshall, and most of the foreign service experts, strongly
   opposed the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. Thus, when Truman
   agreed to meet with Chaim Weizmann he found himself overruling his own
   Secretary of State. In the end, Marshall did not publicly dispute the
   President's decision, as Truman feared he might. Truman recognized the
   State of Israel 11 minutes after it declared itself a nation on May 14,
   1948.

Berlin Airlift

   On June 24, 1948, the Soviet Union blocked access to the three
   Western-held sectors of Berlin. The Allies had never negotiated a deal
   to guarantee supply of the sectors deep within the Soviet-occupied
   zone. The commander of the American occupation zone in Germany, General
   Lucius D. Clay, proposed sending a large armored column driving
   peacefully, as a moral right, down the Autobahn across the Soviet zone
   to West Berlin, with instructions to defend itself if it were stopped
   or attacked. Truman, however, following the consensus in Washington,
   believed this entailed an unacceptable risk of war. He endorsed an
   unprecedented plan to supply the city by air. On June 25, the Allies
   initiated the Berlin Airlift. The airlift continued until May 11, 1949
   when access was again granted, and for several months after that. The
   Berlin Airlift is considered one of Truman's great foreign policy
   successes as president, and aided his election in 1948.

Defense Cutbacks

   In order to cut taxes Congress and the Pentagon demobilized after the
   war, mothballing ships and sending the veterans home (many complained
   that they were released too slowly.) In order to fund domestic spending
   requirements, Truman had advocated a policy of defense program cuts for
   the U.S. armed forces at the end of the war. The Republican majority in
   Congress, anxious to enact numerous tax cuts, approved of Truman's plan
   to "hold the line" on defense spending. In 1949, Truman appointed a
   political supporter, Louis A. Johnson as Secretary of Defense.
   Impressed by U.S. advances in atomic bomb development, Truman and
   Johnson believed that the atomic bomb rendered conventional forces
   irrelevant to the modern battlefield. This complacency received a rude
   shock when the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic weapon in the
   same year. Nevertheless, reductions in force continued, affecting U.S.
   conventional defense readiness.

   Both Truman and Johnson had a particular antipathy to Navy and Marine
   Corps budget requests. Truman had a well-known dislike of the Marines
   dating back to his service in World War I, and famously said "The
   Marine Corps is the Navy's police force and as long as I am President
   that is what it will remain. They have a propaganda machine that is
   almost equal to Stalin's." Indeed, Truman had proposed disbanding the
   Marine Corps entirely as part of the 1948 defense reorganization plan,
   and that service was possibly saved only after a letter-writing
   campaign and the intervention of influential congressmen who were
   Marine veterans

   Under Truman defense budgets through FY 1950, many navy ships were
   mothballed, sold to other countries, or scrapped. The U.S. Army, faced
   with high turnover of experienced personnel, cut back on training
   exercises, and eased recruitment standards. Usable equipment was
   scrapped or sold off instead of stored, and even ammunition stockpiles
   were cut. The Marine Corps began to hoard surplus inventories of World
   War II era weapons and equipment.

Civil Rights and desegregation of the military

   A 1947 report by the Truman administration entitled To Secure These
   Rights opened the civil rights issue for the first time since 1890. The
   report presented a detailed ten-point agenda of civil rights reforms.
   In February 1948, the President submitted a civil rights agenda to
   Congress that proposed creating several federal offices devoted to
   issues such as voting rights and fair employment practices. This
   provoked a firestorm of criticism from Southern Democrats in the time
   leading up to the national nominating convention, but Truman refused to
   compromise, saying "My forbears were Confederates... But my very
   stomach turned over when I had learned that Negro soldiers, just back
   from overseas, were being dumped out of Army trucks in Mississippi and
   beaten." Later that year -- in the middle of a presidential election
   campaign -- he signed the landmark Executive Order 9981 to desegregate
   the U.S. military.

1948 election

   The United States presidential election, 1948 is best remembered for
   Truman's stunning come-from-behind victory.

   At the 1948 Democratic National Convention, Truman attempted to place a
   tepid civil rights plank in the party platform so as to assuage the
   internal conflicts between the northern and southern wings of his
   party. A sharp address, however, given by Mayor Hubert H. Humphrey, Jr.
   of Minneapolis, Minnesota, and candidate for the United States
   Senate—as well as the local political interests of a number of urban
   bosses—convinced the party to adopt a strong civil rights plank, which
   Truman endorsed wholeheartedly. Within two weeks he issued Executive
   Order 9981, racially integrating the U.S. Armed Services following
   World War II. Truman took considerable political risk in backing civil
   rights, and was very concerned that the loss of Dixiecrat support might
   destroy the Democratic Party.

   Truman's " whistlestop" tactic of giving brief speeches from the rear
   platform of the observation car Ferdinand Magellan became iconic of the
   entire campaign. His combative appearances captured the popular
   imagination and drew huge crowds. The massive, mostly spontaneous
   gatherings at Truman's depot events were an important sign of a
   critical change in momentum in the campaign -- but this shift went
   virtually unnoticed by the national press corps, which simply continued
   reporting Dewey's (supposedly) impending victory as a certainty. It was
   a campaign tactic that would be most notably repeated by George H. W.
   Bush in 1992, who as another trailing incumbent who fought constantly
   with Congress, compared himself with Truman.

   The defining image of the campaign came after Election Day, when Truman
   held aloft the erroneous front page of the Chicago Tribune that
   featured a huge headline proclaiming "Dewey Defeats Truman".

   Truman did not have a vice president in his first term. His running
   mate, and eventual Vice President for the term that began January 20,
   1949, was Alben W. Barkley.

Second term (1949-1953)

   With information provided by its espionage networks in the United
   States, the Soviet Union developed an atomic bomb much faster than was
   expected and exploded its first atomic bomb on August 29, 1949. On
   January 7, 1953, Truman announced the detonation of the first U.S.
   hydrogen bomb.

People's Republic of China

   On December 21, 1949, Chiang Kai-shek and his nationalist forces left
   the mainland for Taiwan in the face of successful attacks by Mao
   Zedong's Communists. In June 1950, Truman ordered the Seventh Fleet of
   the United States Navy into the Taiwan Strait to prevent further
   conflict between the PRC and the Republic of China on Taiwan. Truman
   also called for Taiwan to cease any further attacks on the mainland.

Soviet espionage and the rise of McCarthyism

   In August 1945, fearful of Soviet surveillance of her movements in
   Washington D.C. and New York, Elizabeth Bentley, an American and a
   Soviet intelligence agent, defected to the FBI. She provided
   information on the Golos and Greg Silvermaster spy rings operated by
   Soviet intelligence. Two counterintelligence debriefing memoranda with
   outlines of Soviet espionage in the United States were passed to the
   White House, the initial debriefing with code name "Gregory" disclosing
   the networks, together with an extensive memo with Bentley's real name
   attached. The memos included the names of high level administration
   officials accused of complicity in passing classified information to
   Soviet agents. A patriotic man with a strongly regional viewpoint,
   Truman disbelieved reports of potential Communist or Soviet penetration
   of the U.S. government, and the official White House response was to
   dismiss the Bentley allegations as a "red herring."

   On August 3, 1948, former Soviet NKVD agent and senior Time Magazine
   editor Whittaker Chambers testified before the House Un-American
   Activities Committee (HUAC) and presented a list of what he said were
   members of an underground Communist network working within the United
   States government in the 1930s and 1940s. One of the names on that list
   was Alger Hiss, a State Department official who had participated in the
   creation of the United Nations. Hiss confronted Chambers on August 17,
   1948.

   Chamber's revelations led to a sensational trial. On February 9, 1950,
   Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy in a speech at the Republican
   Women's Club of Wheeling, West Virginia accused the State Department of
   being riddled with Communists. McCarthy and HUAC received considerable
   public support in the wake of the Soviet Union nuclear explosion, the
   loss of U.S. atom bomb secrets, the fall of China and new revelations
   of Soviet intelligence penetration of other U.S. agencies, including
   the Treasury Department.

Korean conflict

   On June 25, 1950 the North Korean People's Army under the command of
   dictator Kim Il Sung invaded South Korea, precipitating the outbreak of
   the Korean War. Poorly trained and equipped, without tanks or air
   support, the South Korean Army was rapidly pushed backwards, quickly
   losing the capital, Seoul.

   Stunned, Truman called for a naval blockade of Korea, which went into
   effect; while the U.S. Navy no longer possessed sufficient surface
   ships with which to enforce such a measure, no ships tried to challenge
   it. Truman promptly urged the United Nations to intervene; it did,
   authorizing armed defense for the first time in its history (the Soviet
   Union was not in attendance at the Security Council vote). Truman sent
   in the full military resources based in Japan. United Nations
   (primarily U.S.) forces under U.S. General Douglas MacArthur crushed
   the North Korean invasion in 90 days. However, Truman decided not to
   consult with Congress, a decisive error that greatly weakened his
   position.

   In the first four weeks the American infantry forces hastily deployed
   to Korea proved too few and were underequipped. The Eighth Army in
   Japan was forced to recondition World War II Sherman tanks from depots
   and monuments for use in Korea. By 60 days into the war Truman had sent
   a massive amount of military supplies into Korea, and UN forces
   outnumbered the invaders and had far more supplies, munitions, air
   supremacy and naval supremacy.

   Responding to a firestorm of criticism over readiness, Truman fired his
   Secretary of Defense, Louis A. Johnson, replacing him with retired
   general George C. Marshall. Truman (with UN approval) decided on a
   roll-back policy—that is, conquest of North Korea. UN forces led by
   General Douglas MacArthur led the counterattack, scoring a stunning
   surprise victory with an amphibious landing at the Battle of Inchon
   that nearly trapped the invaders. UN forces then marched north, toward
   the Yalu River boundary with China, with the goal of reuniting Korea
   under UN auspices.

   China surprised the UN forces by a large-scale invasion in November.
   The UN forces, heavily outnumbered in severe winter weather, were
   forced back to below the 38th parallel, then recovered and in early
   1951 the war became a fierce stalemate at about the 38th parallel where
   it began. UN and U.S. casualties were heavy. Truman rejected
   MacArthur's request to attack Chinese supply bases north of the Yalu,
   but MacArthur promoted his plan to Republican House leader Joseph
   Martin. Truman was gravely concerned that further escalation of the war
   might draw the Soviet Union further into the conflict—it was already
   supplying weapons and providing warplanes (with Korean markings and
   Soviet fliers). On April 11, 1951, Truman fired MacArthur from all his
   commands in Korea and Japan. Fierce criticism hit Truman accusing him
   of refusing to shoulder the blame for a war gone sour and blaming his
   generals instead. The war remained a stalemate until President Dwight
   D. Eisenhower threatened to use nuclear weapons and the Chinese agreed
   to a cease-fire and exchange of prisoners in July 1953.

   The war, and the dismissal of MacArthur, helped to make Truman so
   unpopular that he was defeated in the New Hampshire primary and was
   forced to cancel his reelection campaign. In February 1952, Truman's
   approval mark stood at at 22% according to Gallup polls, the all-time
   lowest approval mark for an active American President. Truman thus
   inherited a war already in process and left office while an entirely
   different war was still underway.

Vietnam

   United States' involvement in Vietnam began during the Truman
   administration. On V-J Day 1945, Vietnamese Communist leader Ho Chi
   Minh declared independence, but the US announced its support of
   restoring French power. In 1950, Ho again declared Vietnamese
   independence and was recognized by Communist China and the Soviet
   Union. He controlled some remote territory along the Chinese border,
   while France controlled the remainder. Truman's "containment policy",
   (calling for opposition to Communist expansion), led the U.S. to
   continue to recognize French rule and the French client government. In
   1950, Truman authorized $10 million in aid to the French, sending 123
   non-combat soldiers to help with supplies. In 1951, the amount
   escalated to $150 million. By 1953, the amount had risen to $1 billion
   (one third of U.S. foreign aid and 80 percent of the French cost). A
   basic dispute emerged: the Americans wanted a strong and independent
   Vietnam, the French cared little about containing China but instead
   wanted to suppress local nationalism and integrate Vietnam into the
   French system.

White House renovations

   View of the interior shell of the White House during reconstruction in
   1950.
   Enlarge
   View of the interior shell of the White House during reconstruction in
   1950.

   In 1948 Truman ordered a controversial addition to the exterior of the
   White House: a second-floor balcony in the south portico that came to
   be known as the "Truman Balcony."

   But at the same time it was becoming clear that the building, much of
   it over 130 years old, was in a dangerously dilapidated condition. That
   August a section of floor actually collapsed and Truman's own bedroom
   and bathroom were closed as unsafe. No public announcement was made
   until the election had been won, by which time Truman had been informed
   that his new balcony was the only part of the building that was sound.
   The Truman family moved into nearby Blair House; as the newer West
   Wing, including the Oval Office, remained open, Truman found himself
   walking to work across the street each morning and afternoon. In due
   course the decision was made to demolish and rebuild the whole interior
   of the main White House, as well as excavating new basement levels and
   underpinning the foundations. The work lasted from December 1949 until
   March 1952.

Assassination attempt

   On November 1, 1950, Puerto Rican nationalists Griselio Torresola and
   Oscar Collazo attempted to assassinate Truman at the Blair House.
   Torresola mortally wounded a White House policeman, Leslie Coffelt, who
   shot Torresola to death before expiring himself. Collazo, as a
   co-conspirator in a felony that turned into a homicide, was found
   guilty of murder and was sentenced to death in 1952. Truman later
   commuted his sentence to life in prison.

   Acknowledging the importance of the question of Puerto Rican
   independence, Truman allowed for a genuinely democratic plebiscite in
   Puerto Rico to determine the status of its relationship to the United
   States.

Scandals

   In 1950, the Senate, led by Estes Kefauver, investigated numerous
   charges of corruption among senior administration officials, some of
   whom received fur coats and deep freezers for favors. The Internal
   Revenue Service (IRS) was involved. In 1950, 166 IRS employees either
   resigned or were fired, and many were facing indictments from the
   Department of Justice on a variety of tax-fixing and bribery charges,
   including the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Tax Division.
   When Attorney General Howard McGrath fired the special prosecutor for
   being too zealous, Truman fired McGrath. Historians agree that Truman
   himself was innocent and unaware—with one exception. In 1945, Mrs.
   Truman became the recipient of a new, expensive, hard-to-get deep
   freezer. The businessman who provided the gift was the president of a
   perfume company and, thanks to Truman's aide and confidante General
   Harry Vaughan, received priority to fly to Europe days after the war
   ended, where he bought new perfumes. On the way back he "bumped" a
   wounded veteran being flown home. Disclosure of the episode in 1949
   humiliated Truman, and he responded by vigorously defending Vaughan,
   who was involved in multiple influence peddling scandals from his White
   House office. [Donovan 1982, 116-17].

   Charges that Soviet agents had infiltrated the government bedeviled the
   Truman administration and became a major campaign issue for Eisenhower
   in 1952. In 1947, Truman set up loyalty boards to investigate espionage
   among federal employees. Between 1947 and 1952, "about 20,000
   government employees were investigated, some 2500 resigned
   “voluntarily,” and 400 were fired". From 1945 to 1946, J. Edgar Hoover
   repeatedly warned Truman that Harry Dexter White, assistant secretary
   of the Treasury Department, was a Soviet spy. The Prime Minister of
   Canada warned the FBI about White, and the information was confirmed by
   Soviet defector Igor Gouzenko. Truman responded by making White the
   U.S. representative to the International Monetary Fund. Truman himself
   later asserted that the loyalty program was the biggest single mistake
   of his presidency.

Major legislation signed

     * National Security Act – July 26, 1947
     * Truman Doctrine – March 12, 1947
     * Marshall Plan/ European Recovery Plan – April 3, 1948

Important executive orders

     * Executive Order 9981

Administration and Cabinet

   (All of the cabinet members when Truman became president in 1945 had
   been previously serving under Franklin D. Roosevelt.)
   President Truman signing a proclamation declaring a national emergency
   that initiates U.S. involvement in the Korean War.
   Enlarge
   President Truman signing a proclamation declaring a national emergency
   that initiates U.S. involvement in the Korean War.
   OFFICE             NAME                      TERM
   President          Harry S. Truman           1945–1953
   Vice President     None                      1945–1949
                      Alben W. Barkley          1949–1953
   State              Edward R. Stettinius, Jr. 1945
                      James F. Byrnes           1945–1947
                      George C. Marshall        1947–1949
                      Dean G. Acheson           1949–1953
   Treasury           Henry Morgenthau, Jr.     1945
                      Fred M. Vinson            1945–1946
                      John W. Snyder            1946–1953
   War                Henry L. Stimson          1945
                      Robert P. Patterson       1945–1947
                      Kenneth C. Royall         1947
   Defense            James V. Forrestal        1947–1949
                      Louis A. Johnson          1949–1950
                      George C. Marshall        1950–1951
                      Robert A. Lovett          1951–1953
   Attorney General   Francis Biddle            1945
                      Tom C. Clark              1945–1949
                      J. Howard McGrath         1949–1952
                      James P. McGranery        1952–1953
   Postmaster General Frank C. Walker           1945
                      Robert E. Hannegan        1945–1947
                      Jesse M. Donaldson        1947–1953
   Navy               James V. Forrestal        1945–1947
   Interior           Harold L. Ickes           1945–1946
                      Julius A. Krug            1946–1949
                      Oscar L. Chapman          1949–1953
   Agriculture        Claude R. Wickard         1945
                      Clinton P. Anderson       1945–1948
                      Charles F. Brannan        1948–1953
   Commerce           Henry A. Wallace          1945–1946
                      W. Averell Harriman       1946–1948
                      Charles W. Sawyer         1948–1953
   Labor              Frances Perkins           1945
                      Lewis B. Schwellenbach    1945–1948
                      Maurice J. Tobin          1948–1953

Supreme Court appointments

   Truman appointed the following Justices to the Supreme Court of the
   United States:
     * Harold Hitz Burton – 1945
     * Fred M. Vinson ( Chief Justice) – 1946
     * Tom Campbell Clark – 1949
     * Sherman Minton – 1949

1952 election

   In 1951, the U.S. ratified the 22nd Amendment, making a president
   ineligible to be elected a third time, or to be elected a second time
   after also having succeeded to the presidency and served more than two
   years. The latter clause would have applied to Truman in 1952, but he
   was still eligible to run for a third term since a grandfather clause
   in the amendment explicitly excluded the current president from its
   provisions.

   At the time of the 1952 New Hampshire primary, no candidate had won
   Truman's backing. His first choice, Chief Justice Fred Vinson said no;
   Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson repeatedly said no; Vice President
   Barkley was considered too old; and Truman distrusted and disliked
   Senator Estes Kefauver, whom he privately called "Cowfever."

   Truman's name was on the New Hampshire primary ballot, but Kefauver
   won, so Truman announced his decision not to run on March 29.
   Stevenson, having reconsidered his presidential ambitions, received
   Truman's backing and won the Democratic nomination. Eisenhower crusaded
   against what he denounced as Truman's failures regarding "Korea,
   Communism and Corruption" -- and won in a landslide.

Post-presidency

Truman Library, Memoirs, and life as a private citizen

   Truman (seated right) and his wife Bess (behind him) attend the signing
   of the Medicare Bill on July 30, 1965, by President Lyndon Johnson.
   Enlarge
   Truman (seated right) and his wife Bess (behind him) attend the signing
   of the Medicare Bill on July 30, 1965, by President Lyndon Johnson.

   Truman returned home to take up residence at his mother-in-law's house
   in Independence, Missouri. His predecessor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, had
   organized his own presidential library, but legislation to enable
   future Presidents to do something similar still remained to be enacted.
   Truman worked to garner private donations to build a presidential
   library, which he then donated to the federal government to maintain
   and operate -- a practice adopted by all his successors.

   Former members of Congress and the federal courts received a federal
   retirement package, and it was President Truman who had ensured that
   servants of the other branches of government received similar
   privileges. The benefit did not, however, apply to former presidents.
   Once out of office, Truman quickly decided that he did not wish to be
   on any corporate payroll, a choice that reflected his view that to take
   advantage of such financial opportunities would diminish the integrity
   of the nation's highest office. He also turned down numerous offers for
   commercial endorsements. As a result, he faced an interesting set of
   financial challenges, having no private fortune to support him after
   his time as president, and no federal pension.

   He took out a personal loan from a Missouri bank shortly after leaving
   office, and then set about establishing another precedent for future
   former chief executives: a hefty book deal for his memoirs of his time
   in office. (Ulysses S. Grant had overcome similar financial issues with
   a similar book, but had declined to write about life in the White House
   in any detail.) Truman received a record sum of $600,000 as an advance
   on the publication of his memoirs, though much of that sum went to
   taxes and expenses of maintaining a staff to assist in writing.

   Truman's memoirs were a commercial and critical success; they were
   published in two volumes in 1955-56:
     * Memoirs by Harry S. Truman: Year of Decisions (vol. 1) (ASIN
       B000BC81YE)
     * Memoirs by Harry S. Truman: Years of Trial and Hope (vol. 2) (ASIN
       B000CQXZWM)

   In 1958, Congress passed the Former Presidents Act, offering a $25,000
   yearly pension to each former President, primarily because of Truman's
   financial status. The one other living former President at the time,
   Herbert Hoover, also took the pension, even though he did not need the
   money; reportedly, he did so to avoid embarrassing Truman.

Later life and death

   In 1956, Truman took a trip to Europe with his wife, and was a
   sensation. In Britain he received an honorary degree in Civic Law from
   Oxford University, an event that moved him to tears. He met with his
   friend Winston Churchill for the last time, and on returning to the
   U.S., he gave his full support to Adlai Stevenson's second bid for the
   White House, although he had initially favored Democratic Governor W.
   Averell Harriman of New York for the nomination.

   In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Medicare bill at the
   Truman Library and gave the first two Medicare cards to Truman and his
   wife Bess. Truman had fought for government health care during his
   tenure.

   He was also honored in 1975 by the establishment of the Truman
   Scholarship, a federal program launched in his honor that sought to
   honour U.S. college students who exemplified dedication to public
   service and leadership in public policy.

   Upon turning 80, Truman was feted in Washington and asked to address
   the United States Senate. He was so emotionally overcome by his
   reception that he was unable to deliver his speech. He also campaigned
   for senatorial candidates. A bad fall in the bathroom of his home in
   1964 severely limited his physical capabilities, and he was unable to
   maintain his daily presence at his presidential library. On December 5,
   1972, he was admitted to Kansas City's Research Hospital and Medical
   Centre with lung congestion from pneumonia. He subsequently developed
   multiple organ failure and died at 7:50 a.m. on December 26, at age 88.
   He and Bess are buried at the Truman Library.

Legacy

   When he left office in 1953, Truman was one of the most unpopular chief
   executives in history. Public feeling toward him grew steadily warmer
   with the passing years, however, and the period shortly after his death
   consolidated a partial rehabilitation among both historians and members
   of the general public. However, his policy of defense reductions and
   reluctance to address potential Soviet intelligence penetration of the
   U.S. government remain a continuing source of criticism. After a review
   of information available to Truman on the presence of espionage
   activities in the U.S. government, Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick
   Moynihan concluded that Truman was "almost wilfully obtuse" concerning
   the danger of American Communism.

   Despite his imperfections, Truman has always fared well in polls
   ranking the Presidents. He has never been listed lower than ninth, and
   most recently seventh in a Wall Street Journal poll from 2005.
   Historical rankings of United States Presidents

   By coincidence, Truman died during a time when the nation was consumed
   with crises in Vietnam and Watergate. Truman's death brought a new wave
   of attention to his political career at a time when the presidency
   itself happened to be in crisis.

   In the early and middle Seventies, Truman captured the popular
   imagination much as he had in 1948, this time emerging (posthumously)
   as a kind of political folk hero, a president who was thought to
   exemplify an integrity and accountability lacking in the Nixon White
   House. James Whitmore was nominated for an Academy Award for his
   portrayal of Truman in the one-man show "Give 'em Hell, Harry!" and
   even the pop band Chicago wrote a song about the nation's former
   president. Among the lyrics:

          We’d love to hear you speak your mind
          In plain and simple ways
          Call a spade a spade
          Like you did back in the days
          You would play piano
          Each morning walk a mile
          Speak of what was going down
          With honesty and style
          America’s calling
          Harry Truman

   Years later, Truman was the first figure mentioned in Billy Joel's
   history-themed stream-of-consciousness song " We Didn't Start the
   Fire". The bestselling David McCullough biography Truman further
   popularized the late President, as did the HBO miniseries loosely based
   upon it (and starring Gary Sinise).

   The USS Harry S. Truman is named after the President. The ship is the
   eighth Nimitz-class supercarrier of the United States Navy. The keel
   was laid by Newport News Shipbuilding on November 29, 1993 and the ship
   was christened on September 7, 1996. HST was authorized as USS United
   States but her name was changed before the keel laying.

   On July 1, 1996, Northeast Missouri State University, marking its
   transformation from a regional state teachers' college to a highly
   selective liberal arts university, became Truman State University, in
   honour of the only Missourian to become president.

Historic sites

     * Harry S. Truman National Historic Site includes the Wallace House
       at 219 Delaware in Independence and the family farmhouse at
       Grandview, Missouri (Truman sold most of the farm for Kansas City
       suburban development including the Truman Corners Shopping Centre)
     * Harry S Truman Birthplace State Historic Site is the house where
       Truman was born and spent 11 months in Lamar, Missouri
     * Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum - The Presidential
       Library in Independence
     * Harry S. Truman Little White House - Truman's winter getaway at Key
       West, Florida

Truman's middle initial

   Truman did not have a middle name, only a middle initial. It was a
   common practice in southern states, including Missouri, to use initials
   rather than names. In Truman's autobiography, he stated, "I was named
   for...Harrison Young. I was given the diminutive Harry and, so that I
   could have two initials in my given name, the letter S. was added. My
   Grandfather Truman's name was Anderson Shippe Truman and my Grandfather
   Young's name was Solomon Young, so I received the S for both of them."
   (Anderson's name was also spelled Shipp.) He once joked that the S was
   a name, not an initial, and it should not have a period, but official
   documents and his presidential library all use a period. Furthermore,
   the Harry S. Truman Library has numerous examples of the signature
   written at various times throughout Truman's lifetime where his own use
   of a period after the "S" is conspicuous. The Associated Press
   Stylebook has called for a period after the S since the early 1960s,
   when Truman indicated he had no preference. The use of a period after
   his middle initial is not universal, however; the official White House
   biography does not use a period after his name.

   Truman's bare initial caused an unusual slip when he first became
   President and had to take the oath of office. At a meeting in the
   Cabinet Room, Chief Justice Harlan Stone began reading the oath by
   saying "I, Harry Shipp Truman, ..."! (Truman responded using his actual
   name: "I, Harry S. Truman, ...")

Trivia

     * Bess Truman, Harry's wife, is thus far the longest living first
       lady. She died on the 18th of October 1982 at the age of 97.

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