MT3196 and MT3197 - Presidential Lecture Series, Harry S Truman - 28 July 1992

ladies and gentlemen the president of the united states and mrs bush accompanied by mr and mrs david mccullough well this is a very very special day for the white house and uh may i salute the members of congress here members of our cabinet that are here lynn chaney the chairman of the national endowment for the humanities and our special guests the former and present members of the white house staff some of whom first reported for work during the truman era and you were part of the history of this house and i told mr mrs mccullough that they had us had the bush family outnumbered we have a wonderful delegation from their family that makes this very very special for for all of us and all of the distinguished guests here may i salute you and welcome you and it is a pleasure to welcome you to what is now the fifth in our series of presidential lectures tonight our subject is the man from missouri harry truman and it's hard to believe but when he came to congress he seemed destined for anything but a place on center stage of one of the world's epic dramas coming up through the kansas political machine he was ridiculed as a senator from pendergast and uh legend has it he was sent to washington with this instruction and maybe david can tell us whether it's true work hard keep your mouth shut and answer your mail he took that advice and a decade later as vice president he was anything but a member at first of fdr's inner circle he first learned about the manhattan project on his 12th day as president but he grasped immediately the immense importance of the atomic bomb and new america must have it first common sense was his philosophy if you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen i just told the truth and they thought it was hell those are the words of a fighter someone you could never count out and you're looking at someone who learned that the hard way back in 1948 i bet 10 on president dewey back then when barbara and i were living out in odessa texas and i'm reminded of all this by the work and words of our guest lecturer's fascinating new biography biography of harry s truman as i confessed i have two copies of this enormous treatise one by my bed here and one up at camp david and as i make make my way through this portrait i uh confessed i started i got into it early and then i skipped guess what to the campaign of 48. uh i can't tell you exactly what page it was on but it's about 650 or somewhere in there for those who have yet to enjoy this wonderful work and there was this battle against the do-nothing congress now wait that's truman speaking and and the wonderful come from behind victory uh nothing like a story with a happy ending and something else strikes me about that pivotal year 48 was the year the marshall plan uh the berlin blockade the year stalin's actions turned the soviet union from ally to enemy and once again uh this man rose to the occasion took a nation weary of war and ready for peace and rallied it to lead the crusade for a free world the victory we celebrate today freedom's triumph and the death of imperial communism brings us closer to the kind of peace american presidents and the american people have longed for since truman's time and tonight our guide to the life and times of harry truman is the renowned david mccullough one of america's premier historians he's the author of six books a repeat winner of the national book award and no stranger we're all blessed by this to the presidential lecture series now one more visit sir and we may simply rename this event the mccullough lecture over the next hour he'll take us as far as we have time to go into the man from small town america whose critics scorned him as the son of a haberdasher the man of whom churchill wrote and i quote more than any other man has saved western civilization and now ladies and gentlemen the fifth presidential lecture on our 33rd president harry s truman mr mccullough welcome sir and the floor is yours what an exceptional honor to be introduced by the president of the united states thank you mr president and mrs bush ladies and gentlemen campaigning across texas in 1948 in september of 1948 mr truman president harry truman showed almost no sign whatsoever of being a winner in fact he was thought to be a certain loser but he also showed every sign as was plain for everyone who saw him of a man who was enjoying himself to the hilt it was perfect weather blue skies sunshine and big crowds and mr truman adored crowds he adored people he loved to be out in the country he loved to get down and shake hands with the folks sam rayburn said once that he didn't mr truman didn't smile at the people he smiled with them he didn't laugh at them he laughed with them on the fourth day in texas and this by the way was the first time that a democratic president had ever found it necessary to court texas to go there and really campaign because of his stand on civil rights it was expected that he might lose texas to governor dewey and as he was supposed to lose everything else to governor dewey but in this on this fourth day the crowds got bigger and bigger it started in austin and it wound up in bonham texas which was sam rayburn's hometown and on board the train with the president were sam rayburn then speaker of the house and the new uh candidate for the senate congressman lyndon johnson who had just won in the primary by a resounding 87 votes and was henceforth known as landslide linden and governor buford jester none of whom by the way was at all pleased about mr truman's stand on civil rights but this was a a gesture of solidarity so there they all were on the train and when they got to bonham which was rayburn's hometown there was a party given out at rayburn's little frame house west of town for the people that were on the train and as they arrived at the house there was a great crowd of well-wishers standing out on the lawn and mr rayburn said that they were all to come in and meet the president well the secret service were very upset about that and they told the president and they told mr rayburn that unless they had a list of everyone that was on the lawn they wouldn't be allowed to come through well rayburn exploded he was very upset because he said i know every man woman and child in that line by name and i can vouch for them all so while the governor stood by the door and the president stood just inside uh sipping a surreptitious bourbon the line started through and as they came up to the door sam rayburn would give the name of the person coming through and this went on for quite a while until finally ravens shouted to the governor close the door buford they're coming through twice now he had two reasons for really wanting to be away from washington wanting to be with the people and one of them one of the major reasons was the way he felt about this house this house for president truman was in many ways a symbol a subject of worry and sorrow and he never quite got over that he he called it the great white jail he called it the fishbowl he spoke of feeling walled in when he was here and of course he associated it very definitely with the death of franklin roosevelt it was right here in this room that franklin roosevelt's body uh was lying in state uh the day that uh his casket came back with the body from warm springs on except on april 14th 1945 two days after roosevelt's death and when president and mrs truman walked into this room at the funeral services the memorial services really for the president no one in the room even thought to stand up and and it's almost certain that neither the president nor mrs truman even noticed that this had happened because everyone was so grief stricken this house you could do a play about harry truman every scene of which would take place in this house it was up in the oval study above the great oval blue room i'm not sure it's the yellow room i think now which was then franklin roosevelt study it was in that room on a very steamy hot night in july 1944 july 11 1944 that the president franklin roosevelt with the big political bosses of the day the big democratic bosses of the day people like ed flynn of the bronx and kelly of chicago and bob hennigan who was the chairman of the democratic party met to really convince the president the that he had not to uh choose henry wallace again as his running mate nor should he choose they said jimmy burns who the president was very fond of and who was here in the white house as an assistant president jimmy burns was from south carolina he was very conservative and he was an avowed segregationist so these big city northern bosses said that this was at ri we were risking the black vote if they picked if the president picked burns and they felt that henry wallace was too far to the left and too eccentric and they didn't want him they said the man is truman one of the most common misconceptions about harry truman is that he was an accidental president he was nothing of the kind he was chosen by the powers that were in the democratic party who almost convinced franklin roosevelt that that was his own choice roosevelt said i hardly know truman roosevelt also told later told his son jimmy that he really didn't care roosevelt was a very tired a very sick and a dying man and one of the surprises about studying that summer and that convention of 1944 is to see how commonly this was said among the people who were close to the president or important in the democratic party now in that room they told the president it should be truman and that's what happens at chicago but not before the president told both henry wallace and jimmy burns you're my man the nomination was in july and in early august the president franklin roosevelt and harry truman really met for what we would call a photo opportunity out in the rose garden and it was at that point that harry truman who had not wanted the nomination who was determined not to get the nomination first saw with his own eyes the really bad shape the president was in his hand was shaking so that he could barely pour the cream in his coffee they sat out there and had lunch under the old so-called jackson magnolia and one of the photographers who was there taking that famous picture of the two presidents together is with us today mr george thames there are many people here who are here today who figure in our story and i hope as time goes on i'll remember to mention them because they're all important and they were all uh eyewitnesses to history in a way that for an historian is an exciting thing just to know them and to to talk with them at length about what they remember and what they saw truman was shattered by his first realization of the president's health and it was only a short time later within an hour that he was up on the hill confiding to his staff how worried he was inauguration that year 1945 rather after the election of 44 took place right out on the back porch here it was the first wartime inauguration inaugural ceremony since the time of lincoln and the only one at the white house and again the president franklin roosevelt looked very bad indeed and it was a cold bleak raw day and truman wrapped in a dark blue overcoat against the cold stood out there and took the oath of office from henry wallace what a scene what a what a moment wallace of course feeling that he belonged where truman was standing and each of them looking at franklin roosevelt had little misunderstanding about what lay ahead but it was only 82 days later uh less than uh three months that on april 12 roosevelt died and suddenly this vice president from missouri who hadn't wanted the job who had not wanted to be president because as he said he didn't feel up to it he didn't feel adequate found himself in a position where for the next three four months he faced more far-reaching momentous decisions than any president prior to him or any since not lincoln not roosevelt in the first hundred days had to face such immense decisions and with so little preparation in the usual way he didn't even know the secretary of state cetinus for example he had no foreign policy codery he had no friends in the establishment of of the new deal other than his fellow new deal senators now harry truman had been a very good senator a very hard-working senator a very conscientious senator uh and the quote from boss pendergast about how he was supposed to conduct himself when he arrived here is quite accurate and for the first uh for the first several years he did keep his mouth shut and answer his mail but in order to come out from under that shadow of the pendergast reputation he worked harder than other people did and he turned in superb work uh particularly with his truman committee which was set up to root out corruption and graft in the war effort at the pentagon and was immensely successful and superbly run as attested by people on both sides of the aisle it's what brought him to the attention of the other politicians in the party he had no he had no enemies in the senate and he had a great many friends and it was felt that as vice president he would be particularly effective after the war was over in helping to solve the kind of problems that woodrow wilson had faced with the senate after the first world war was over now truman then went on to not only decide about the atomic bomb which by the way he he did not know much of anything but it wasn't just that he hadn't been told about the bomb he hadn't been told about anything that very touching moment when he is summoned from the white house from the capitol to come down to the white house the afternoon of april 12 and rides up to the second floor on the old creaking elevator that theodore roosevelt had installed this little sort of ornate cage that just creaked slowly and he got to the second floor of the family quarters and mrs roosevelt stepped forward and put her hand gently on his arm and said harry the president is dead and he couldn't speak for a few moments and then to his great credit he said is there anything that i can do for you and she said to him and it if you read it it sounds almost like a comic line but of course it wasn't comic at all she said to him no is there anything we can do for you because you're the one who is in trouble now and she knew you see how much he hadn't been told he'd been told nothing about yalta he knew nothing about any of the arrangements that may have been made or agreements that have been made with stalin he he was plunged in cold and he had to first go to hyde park and bury the president he had to assure his cabinet none of whom he really knew very well that he was going to carry on as the president had he then decided in his very first cabinet meeting to go ahead with the united nations he had a two front war going on and he had to to address himself to all the immense problems that that involved as the war was coming to a conclusion and he made the decision about the bomb he said he never regretted it he said he went upstairs and went to sleep which really isn't quite true and it wasn't here by the way as many people imagine that was at a place called number two kaiser strassa which is in what used to be east berlin it's uh it's a part of potsdam where which was the little white house when he was at potsdam he had to go to potsdam he had to go on stage with churchill and stalin this man who had never been overseas in his life except as a soldier in the first world war and in the years after he launched the truman doctrine 0.4 marshall plan nato which he thought maybe was the most important accomplishment of his presidency he sent the first civil rights message ever to congress he was the president who desegregated the armed services and made civil rights practice within the federal government he is the president who first president to campaign in harlem the first president to address the naacp the president who recognized the new state of israel and the president who decided to go ahead with a hydrogen bomb who set up the atomic energy commission who made the momentous decision he felt the most difficult decision of his presidency to go into korea and who then of course as we all know uh brought the whole wrath that seemed to the entire country down on him by firing general macarthur it was a very eventful presidency and a very important presidency but i really think that everything considered the most important gift of harry truman to his country was harry truman was himself was the kind of person he was and the kind of person he remained despite what had happened to him now harry truman didn't suddenly become transformed by some magic metamorphosis into a decisive world leader by simply becoming president most of the qualities that he is known for as president were in him all along and the boyhood in in the small town agrarian america of the 19th century this almost jeffersonian world of of western missouri uh right on up through his time on the farm during the golden age of agriculture before the first world war when he was a real farmer working with his father he knew what it was to get up at 5 30 in the morning he knew what it was to work all day every day and he knew what was to have the burden of heavy debt hanging over the whole family not just over him personally his father died literally overworked himself worked himself to death and harry was left with the responsibility of his mother and his sister and of the farm but then along came world war one and like so many of his generation he went to war and it changed him decisively dramatically he found as many have in the horrors of war that he was both courageous and a good leader and liked to lead people like to lead men and he came back absolutely certain that he wasn't going back to the farm and he got into politics and uh rose through the pendergast machine and all the way along the line again and again and again he is the man who seems not quite capable of the job he's thrust into he seems an ordinary fellow who is being asked to do the extraordinary and more than rises to the occasion again and again whether it's as a soldier or a farmer or as a county judge or really a city councilman uh in missouri in jackson county or as a or as a senator or as a vice president very briefly and then as president he knew who he was he was centered he said later after he left the white house i tried never to forget who i was and where i came from and where i would go back to he believed in plain speaking plain food the plain truth he believed in the democratic with a lower case d process and that citizenship involves a social contract by everyone which means you vote you take part in city government local government you get into politics and you might even make a career of politics because it can be a noble profession even if you rise through a system as unsavory as the pendergast machine i've asked several people that i've known and that i've worked with over the years who knew president truman what they thought his greatest fault was because he did have faults there are shadows on his life and he made mistakes and the most common answer to that question and by people here in this room uh was that he was too loyal too often to people whose loyalty uh was no longer deserved by the president of the united states that some of his associates were second or third rate and he should have cut loose from them but that same kind of loyalty of course is what makes it possible for truman to stand up and and defend uh dean atchison when he is being attacked by joe mccarthy as a traitor and worse lindy boggs a congresswoman lindy boggs who came to washington first as the wife of congressman then congressman hale boggs said something else she said i think it's his in it was his inability this is his greatest flaw his reluctance to tell us to let us know how much more there was there than met the eye and what she meant is this harry truman who we remember we know and and love as plain harry uh kind of salty uh missouri will rogers direct um down to earth quick with an answer and always to the point is only a part of the story the real man was keenly intelligent he wasn't educated in the formal sense he's the only president of this century who did not go to college but he was widely read he read in particular he was very fond of history and biography he was quite sensitive quite sentimental he was easily the most thoughtful boss that i've ever studied anything about or experienced myself give him hell harry never gave anybody hell on the job never chewed anyone out never uh lamb basted a an underling either in person uh in in privacy or in front of other people he wouldn't even buzz somebody into his office he didn't think that was the right thing to do he would get up and go to his door and ask them to please come in he would go to the hospital to see people from the white house staff who were ill or whose wife was having a child let's say not for a photo opportunity there wouldn't be a photographer along because but because that's the way he was and he was always cheerful no matter how bleak things were and please remember how bleak things did get for harry truman how rough it was for him you know the old jokes to error is truman i'm i'm just mild about harry if if harry truman can be president so can my next door neighbor or anybody you go out and pull off the street a reporter once said to him mr president you're just sort of an average of man aren't you and he said yes that's right and i don't see anything wrong with that an average american was just fine as far as he was concerned but he um he he attended to the to the lives of his workers his staff his his own office staff and the domestic staff here in this building uh they all adored him when he would bring guests into the white house for dinner he would introduce the guests to the servants by name name of the servants and the name of the guests one of his favorite of all employees at the white house and one of the most important of employees was mr alonso fields who was here today and alonzo fields has said in his wonderful book about his time in the white house that uh he never saw mr truman out of sorts never he said if if he ever had a problem he never let it show and he's also said that of all the presidents he that he worked with and he first came here in the hoover administration uh that he that mr truman was the most democratic of them all with a lower case d again another person who saw him very close up and spent a great deal of time with him was greta kempton and greta kempton was the first woman ever to paint a presidential portrait a presidential official portrait and here it is the painting was done in the cabinet room and miss kempton uh told the president that he wasn't allowed to look at the painting and the wonderful recollections where she describes how at times she would go out of the room and she'd come back in and she'd find him sort of sneaking around trying to get a peek but kept insisting until it was finished and then the day came and she uh called him to told him to come around he came around looked at it and he said he thought it looked just fine but that he would have to get the boss's view of it so bess was called from over here in the white house and she came into the west wing and she looked at it and she said it's exactly as i picture him as president and there you see a rather stormy sky this was 1947 and uh it was at indeed a stormy time but it's also the time that the truman administration turned around it's the year it's the year of the marshall plan and the year of the truman doctrine and the policies that the president established in that year are the policies that have come down to us to this very day to the end of the cold war and now that the cold war is over we know as nobody knew then how it came out and very interestingly we can now read truman's farewell address to the congress into the nation in a completely different way because in that address there is a paragraph or two which if we'd read it five years ago wouldn't jump off the page but it now does and here's what he said he said i am sure that i will be remembered as the man who was in office as president united states at the time the cold war began but i hope very much that i will also be remembered as the president who set in motion the policies that made victory in the cold war possible then he said i don't know how it's when it's going to end but if we remain strong and free and patient the soviet union will break up of its own accord i can't say whether it will be in moscow or in the satellite nations to the east but it is bound to happen if we keep the faith and of course that prediction is an expression of faith his faith his um picture him as president and there you see a rather stormy sky this was 1947 and uh it was at indeed a stormy time but it's also the time that the truman administration turned around it's the earth it's the year of the marshall plan and the year of the truman doctrine and the policies that the president established in that year are the policies that have come down to us to this very day to the end of the cold war and now that the cold war is over we know as nobody knew then how it came out and very interestingly we can now read truman's farewell address to the congress and to the nation in a completely different way because in that address there is a paragraph or two which if we'd read it five years ago wouldn't jump off the page but it now does and here's what he said he said i am sure that i will be remembered as the man who is in office as president united states at the time the cold war began but i hope very much that i will also be remembered as the president who set in motion the policies that made victory in the cold war possible then he said i don't know how it's when it's going to end but if we remain strong and free and patient the soviet union will break up of its own accord i can't say whether it will be in moscow or in the satellite nations to the east but it is bound to happen if we keep the faith and of course that prediction is an expression of faith his faith his um knights here were often made quite restless we don't many of us think of harry truman as a necessarily imaginative president but he had a very imaginative mind about this house after dark he was quite sure it was haunted and you see he had good reason to think it was haunted because in effect it wasn't just that franklin roosevelt had died the house was dying on him too it was falling down it was coming apart its days were numbered more more so even than he realized this is june 12th 1945 in other words uh only two months after uh he's become president he writes a letter to beth he's always writing letters to bess there are over a thousand letters to bess in the truman library and they're wonderful letters very revealing in one month in 1947 the same year as this painting when she was back in independence with her mother he wrote to her 22 times and they're long letters and full of his own uh worries and his emotions and his sensitivity this this part of him that he wasn't willing to let us know about he all pl he played the piano as we all know for example and he would say well i just uh tickled the ivories it's something i learned as a boy but in fact he was a very serious aspiring young piano player he wanted to be a concert performer as a youngster and he took music very seriously he is one of the few presidents who has attended the national symphony regularly and if they were playing uh composers that he particularly liked such as mozart or chopin he would take the score with him but on this particular night this active imagination produces the following letter dear best just two months ago today i was a reasonably happy and contented vice president maybe you can remember that far back too but things have changed so much it hardly seems real this idea that it hardly seems real comes up again and again i sit here in this old house and work on foreign affairs read reports and work on speeches all the while listening to the ghosts walk up and down the hallway and even right in here in the study this is the same room upstairs where roosevelt and the henchmen had all decided that he was to be by harry truman to be vice president the floors pop and the drapes move back and forth i can just imagine old andy that's andy jackson i can just imagine old andy and teddy roosevelt having an argument over franklin and indeed they would have or james buchanan and franklin pierce deciding which was the more useless to the country and then millard fillmore and chester arthur join in for place and show and the din is almost unbearable his imagination was very much tied in with history his um wonderful cousin ethel noland who probably knew him better than anyone once said that for harry history isn't something in a book it's part of life and this is very true all the way through he would talk about former presidents as though he knew them and particularly his favorites uh john quincy adams he was very interested in john quincy adams and andrew jackson who was one of his great heroes and abraham lincoln now one year later 1946 this is in the heat of summer again he's alone he hated to be alone he was so devoted to his wife and to his daughter who was the apple of his eye and when they weren't here he really was miserable he would walk around upstairs in these rooms and uh look in the closets and uh and uh wind the clocks uh he he he loved to wind the clocks at night the night before last he reported to bess i went to bed at nine o'clock after shutting my doors at four o'clock i was awakened by three distinct knocks on my bedroom door i jumped up and put on my bathrobe opened the door and no one there went out looked up and down the hall looked into your room and margie's still no one went back to bed after locking the doors and there were footsteps in your room whose door i'd left open jumped up and looked no one there damn this place is haunted sure is shooting secret service said not even a watchman was up here at that hour well what happened was that in 1946 uh at a gathering not unlike this one the president was in here and uh the head usher howell krim came in with the jim rowley who was the head of the secret service detail and they told him that the chain holding this chandelier was stretching well he decided as he said to let the show go on because the customers were already here and the next day it was ordered taken down uh then the plaster began to come down and margaret's piano went through the floor up in the sitting room outside of her of her bedroom across the hall from the president's bedroom uh the place was literally collapsing they said these ceilings were staying up out of force of habit and uh during the 48 campaign i going through the letters and and dispatches and so forth that would come to the president by white house pouch he had to carry on being president while he was on the campaign train uh there are notes in there for mr krim the head usher about how the descent of plaster from this particular room is getting quite worrisome by the time he got back from the 48 campaign they told him you really have to get out it's going to collapse in fact the the architect lorenzo winslow had calculated mathematically that it was impossible for the house to be standing uh so out they went and uh moved across the street as i'm sure you know to blair house where mr and mrs truman were much happier than they had been in here and blair house was a very difficult place in which to live keep in mind what a different time it was president truman used to walk out of this building every morning right out the gate over here on pennsylvania avenue with one or two secret service men and take a two or three mile walk around around the town starting about 6 30 and nobody thought much of that and often people would walk right by him and not not recognize him and so that the security precautions as we know them were minimal his bedroom at uh at blair house was right above the sidewalk right above the uh canopy that comes out from the front door and he would put his bedroom window up at night he didn't like air conditioning he really didn't like a lot about the 20th century he didn't like daylight saving time he didn't he didn't like to use the telephone ever which is why he wrote so many letters and he didn't like air conditioning the emergency hospital for the city was also right around the corner on f street and the sirens would go by right under the president's window four five six times a night the house was very um fragile very old and there were streetcars on pennsylvania avenue then and every time the streetcars went by the whole house trembled and as rex scouten who is now the curator of the white house who was then one of mr truman's secret service men has told me that the rat the cellar was a basement was full of rats over at blair house and that they used to dread having to go down there in fact the rex told me that only president truman would have been willing to have lived in blair house but he and mrs truman felt more comfortable there they felt more at home and they'd never had a house of their own they'd always lived in mrs truman's mother's house what we know of as the truman house in independence was really the wallace house they'd had small apartments a very small apartments when the president had been a senator and of course when they moved in here they felt very ill at ease and and concerned about the house so over in blair house things improved by their standards still the president had these awful times of loneliness and of um wishing that he could be anything but president of the united states and one of my favorite of all entries in the wonderful diaries that he kept it wasn't just that he wrote hundreds really thousands of letters but wonderful diaries is a sketch that he did himself about an evening when bess was again back in independence with her mother and the president is having dinner alone at blair house he's come over from the leave house which is the adjoining house it's really two houses and this is what he wrote had dinner by myself tonight worked in the lee house office until dinner time butler came in very formally and said mr president dinner is served i walk into the dining room in the blair house barnett in tails and white tie pulls out my chair pushes me up to the table john in tails and white tie brings me a fruit cup barnett takes away the empty cup john brings me a plate barnett brings me a tenderloin john brings me asparagus john brings me carrots and beets i have to eat alone and in silence in the candle lit room i ring barnett takes the plate and butter plates john comes in with a napkin and a silver crumb tray there are no crumbs but john has to brush them off the table anyway barnett brings me a plate with a finger bowl and doily on it i remove finger bowl and doily and john puts a glass saucer and little bowl on the plate barnett brings me some chocolate custard john brings me a demi-toss at home a little cup of coffee coffee about two good gulps and my dinner is over i take a hand bath in the finger bowl and go back to work what a life he was really an immensely lovable man uh i've interviewed well over 125 people who knew him or worked with him and i've never found one that didn't feel total affection and devotion to him and the closer they were the more they worked with him the better they liked him and the more they respected him the more that they saw how much there was to the man how much substance and the 48 campaign if there ever was a test of that devotion was it the president traveled 22 000 miles by train in 1948 that's almost the distance around the world he was in the old ferdinand magellan which was franklin roosevelt's armored railroad car roosevelt because of his infirmities had like to go at about 35 miles an hour truman liked to go about 80. and young men like george elsie who was here today and clark clifford who were on the president's white house staff who were in great physical condition and had all the strength of their youth found themselves being utterly worn to a pulp so tired so exhausted that they wondered if they could possibly do it and as clark clifford said in one of our conversations if you're winning if you know that victory is in store it's not too hard to keep your motivation up to keep your energy going to keep going no matter what but if you know you're losing if you know you haven't got a chance in the world and everybody is laughing at your campaign and wondering why in the world you're bothering then it is extremely difficult and the miraculous thing was that the farther they went the better the president looked the more vigorous he seemed uh the greater his confidence the greater his energy and uh the more he he communicated that to his own people i have many favorite moments in my uh understanding of harry truman's life but one of them is what happens the night he wins he gets away he vote he goes to vote goes home to vote in independence and then he goes to the house and then he escapes out of the house it's the night it's election night and he goes with some secret service people across the river to a little town called excelsior springs to an old hotel there a little sort of spa hotel empty in november cold uh dark night checks into the hotel borrows a bathrobe and uh pajamas and slippers from the hotel manager because he's slipped out so fast from the house back in independence that he hasn't had any chance to pack goes downstairs has a steam bath and a rub down goes up and orders a ham and cheese sandwich and a glass of buttermilk i love the fact that he ordered a glass of something wonderful about that and uh and he turns on the radio to hear that of course he's going to lose but for some strange reason he appears to be ahead in the popular vote about nine o'clock he goes to sleep and tells the secret service men to wake him up if anything important happens they wake him up about midnight and he's ahead in the popular vote nearly two million votes but of course hp calton born and others are all saying that he's destined to lose because the country vote the farm vote hasn't come in yet and he's certain to lose the farm vote by early around four or five o'clock they hear the secret servicemen who are listening to radio all night it really does appear that he's going to carry ohio and illinois and maybe even california and lo and behold he's carrying iowa iowa for heaven's sakes republican stronghold and they decide maybe that's important so they go in and wake him up and he says get the car ready we're going to kansas city and they drive in it's still not quite mourning yet but it isn't the night isn't over it's it's still pretty dark and they pull up in front of the mule box hotel which was presidential headquarters and they go get out of the car empty streets the president goes up to the top of the hotel just three or four people walks in and a young attorney who's in at the standing at the door in lineman field congratulates him first man to congratulate the president for this victory and another fellow steps up and congratulates him and then they go around waking up all these people absolutely exhausted coffee cups and cigarettes all over the place and they haven't known where he was all night nobody knew except the immediate family and of course the press was angry as could be about that didn't even know where the president united states was and um he then truman proceeds to act in a way that nobody in the room would ever forget he sat down on the couch as if nothing unusual at all there was no exhilaration no tears no slapping people on the back no breaking out a bottle of whiskey no none of the emotional uh didn't i tell you so kind of exuberance or or celebration that one might expect because as they interpreted it it meant that he really had known all along that he was going to win just as he had said it's the proof and when lyman field told me that story i thought well maybe that's the way you'd like to remember but then i found a letter written by the other man who was at the door a man named walsh was written only a few days later in which he described the whole scene exactly as mr field had described it he knew he was going to win and he said he would and he said he knew why because he felt he was going to win the farm vote and the black vote and the people were going to vote for the new deal and mr dewey had run a very poor campaign a campaign that made no effort to say much of anything a campaign in which uh all of his advisers told him don't rock the boat don't be controversial it's it's yours and uh it's all settled ironically mr dewey was the first president to have a polling unit of his own and uh harry truman not only had no polling unit they couldn't have afforded it if they wanted it but he didn't believe in the polls didn't like them didn't think they were good for politics and didn't think they were good for the country there was no personal animosity or personal attacks doing this during this campaign whatsoever you never knew quite what dewey stood for because he didn't say much about that you always knew what truman stood for truman never even mentioned dewey's name he referred to him always as the other fellow and of course remember in the 48 campaign the democratic party was split three ways henry wallace was running as a progressive and strom thurmond was running as a dixiecraft truman had been told if you persist with your civil rights program the democrats from the south are going to bolt the party and it's going to cost you the election and to one of his friends back in missouri who wrote as a thought to a fellow southerner saying why don't you give up this civil rights thing play it down because you're going to lose the election if you do the president wrote back saying if i lose the election because of this i will have lost it for a good cause he was a principled man he was willing to do what he thought was right irrespective of what that might mean to his own political hide and the firing of macarthur of course was the great example of that he fired macarthur because he was upholding the constitution he said when people said it took a great deal of courage he said no it didn't take any courage i was just doing what was right but you see that means it was the courage of his convictions harry truman is one of the most interesting americans i know his his stock has gotten very high in recent years which has led to another misconception about the president and that is that he was thought ill of by everyone at the time that no one saw then that he was a man of stature and importance in a great and a good man and one of our most important presidents this is not true there were many people who saw at the time what was in him arthur crock wrote about it in the new york times the great uh american historian henry steele cumminger wrote a long essay for look magazine in which he specified why history would remember truman as one of our great presidents and then they're the then there are those very impressive people who were around him like mr churchill as the president said earlier who credited truman more than any other man of our time for saving western civilization more than franklin roosevelt more even than churchill and george marshall who was to truman the greatest american of them all the man the truman admired revered more than anybody marshall said it will not be the courage of his decisions that history will remember him for but the integrity of the man and others who wrote letters to him came in from all over the country people who knew him who worked with him people who knew him because he was a neighbor who walked with him in his old years in his time in retirement when he went out for his morning walks all attest to the essential decency of this very american man he came from the people he was of the people he was in my view exactly the kind of president that the founding fathers had in mind he'd been very well educated limited as his education was and he'd grown up with the great theme the great story of cincinnatus who leaves his plow to save his country is honored achieves power gives up power and returns to where he came from which is what truman did he teaches us a lot i think we can learn a lot from harry truman trust trust god work hard do your best tell the truth be yourself and don't underestimate anybody including yourself and never never ever underestimate the american people you

Channel: TheBushLibrary

Views: 2,638

Rating: 4.4074073 out of 5

Keywords: George Bush, George H.W. Bush, Bush 41, NARA, Presidential Library, 1992, White House, East Room, Truman, Lecture, McCullough, MT3196, MT3197

Id: tOEhlewFjwQ

Length: 55min 58sec (3358 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 11 2020