He was a man with much to be pleased about, and at age sixty-four, after nearly four years in office and the most arduous political campaign ever waged by a President, he looked as he said he felt, “fit as a fiddle.” His personal popularity, according to the latest polls, had bounced back up to 69 percent, as high as it had been in three years. Congress had raised his salary, from $75,000 to $100,000, and added an extra $50,000, tax-free, for expenses. Bess, all through the week before the inauguration, is said to have positively “bubbled” with good humor.
But there was also a strain of somber obligation in what he said to the crowd at the Mayflower. “I was not in any way elated over the election. In no sense did I feel anything unusual had happened to me. I felt only the responsibility, and that is what we are faced with now.” Privately he worried about the dangers of being in the midst of such immense power and influence as to be found in Washington. “Every once in a while I notice it in myself,” he confided to some of his staff, “and try to drag it out in the open.”
His inaugural day had begun at 6:45, when, having had four and a half hours sleep following the gala of the night before, he stepped out onto the front stoop at Blair House. It was still dark. Pennsylvania Avenue was quiet. A pale moon hung over the great granite confection of the Old State Department Building across the street.
“Happy Inauguration Day, Mr. President,” a reporter called from the sidewalk.
“Wonderful, wonderful,” Truman said, glancing at the sky. “Looks like old man weather is going to be with us again.”
He was wearing a dark overcoat, gray suit and gray fedora. He looked alert and rested. Secret Service men moved up and down the steps, or stood at the curb beside his waiting limousine. The move to Blair House was causing them increased concern, since the four-story building fronted directly on the busy avenue, nearly flush with the sidewalk, the front door only ten steps above street level. Scores of pedestrians passed by at all hours of the day. Every time the President came out the door he would be an easy mark. His bedroom, on the second floor, faced the street.
In minutes he was off in the car, again to the Mayflower for a reunion breakfast of Missouri ham and grits with “the boys” from Battery D, who, to the tune of “Tipperary,” sang: “You’re a great, great guy—Harry Truman, for you we’d march through hell.” He didn’t give a damn what they did after one o’clock that afternoon, he told them, but until then they were to stay sober.
“These boys are real,” he told reporters. “They have no axes to grind. They don’t want any jobs. They’re just here. They don’t call me Mr. President. They call me Captain Harry.” He wanted them with him today, as a “kind of honor guard.”
From the Mayflower the big car sped to the White House, flags snapping from the front fenders. Already crowds were converging on Lafayette Square. People waved as the car passed, or shielded their eyes against the morning sun, trying to catch a glimpse of him. From the West Wing, after perhaps fifteen minutes at his desk, he returned to Blair House to change. At ten on the dot, in inaugural attire, frock coat and striped trousers, and accompanied now by Bess and Margaret, he drove the two blocks to St. John’s Episcopal Church on Lafayette Square, the historic “Church of the Presidents,” for a prayer service. Only a small number attended—the Cabinet, a few friends, a few parishioners—since at Truman’s request there had been no prior announcements of the service. Sitting in pew 63, traditionally reserved for the President since the time of James Madison, he joined in the opening hymn, “O God, Our Help in Ages Past,” and read responsively from the 122nd Psalm: “Pray for peace…Peace be within thy walls…Peace be within thee…”During the prayers, as Bess and Margaret, both Episcopalians, knelt beside him, Truman sat with his head bowed. “With Thy favor…behold and bless Thy servant, Harry, the President of the United States, and all others in authority.”
It was a day in which he would fill many roles, from Captain Harry to Servant Harry to President of the United States. For a time, technically, he was not even President but plain Citizen Harry again, for by law his term of office expired at noon and as the morning wore on, things began falling behind schedule.
He rode to the Hill with Alben Barkley, the two of them now in white silk scarfs and top hats, sitting up for all to see in the back of the huge open Lincoln. At the Capitol, the ceremonial greetings inside the Rotunda took longer than expected. By the time everyone was in place outside on the inaugural platform, by the time the invocation had been delivered, by Dr. Edward Pruden of Washington’s First Baptist Church (Truman’s church), the national anthem sung by tenor Phil Regan, and Alben Barkley, looking like an old Roman, sworn in as Vice President by Justice Stanley Reed, and another prayer spoken by Rabbi Samuel Thurman of the United Hebrew Congregation of St. Louis, it was approaching 12:30.
Truman put aside his hat, scarf, and overcoat. He stood bareheaded in the wind, his right hand raised, a straight-backed, bespectacled figure with closely cropped gray hair, his expression deadly serious. Above him in the winter sun rose the immense white columns and dome of the Capitol. His wife and daughter and some fifteen members of his family sat nearby among the highest officials of the land, many of whom he had known since first coming to Washington. And it was Chief Justice Vinson, his mop of gray hair blowing in the wind, who administered the forty-three-word oath, which Truman repeated slowly and clearly, his left hand on two Bibles, a large facsimile of the Gutenberg Bible, a gift from the people of Independence, and, on top, the same small Gideon edition that had served under such different circumstances on April 12, 1945.
The oath completed, Truman, like Andrew Jackson at his inaugural, bent quickly and kissed the Bible.
It was 1:29, and for the first time as President in his own right, he turned to face the microphones and the expectant crowd.
I accept with humility the honor which the American people have conferred on me. I accept it with a resolve to do all I can for the welfare of this nation and for the peace of the world….
(“How strange the matter-of-fact Missouri twang had sounded in the spring of 1945 to a world familiar with another man’s phrase and another man’s diction,” wrote one reporter. “Today for listeners everywhere there was nothing strange about it. This simply was the President speaking.”)
Each period of our national history has had its special challenges. Those that confront us now are as momentous as any in the past. Today marks the beginning not only of a new administration, but of a period that will be eventful, perhaps decisive, for us and for the world.
He looked solemn and determined as he read from a looseleaf notebook. The voice was surprisingly strong. There was no hesitation, no stumbling over words. It was plain that he had worked on all of it, knew every line. Those close by on the platform could see his breath frosting the air.
The speech was devoted exclusively to foreign policy. Though a major statement of American aspirations, its focus was the world—the “peace of the world,” “world recovery,” “people all over the world.” He denounced communism as a false doctrine dependent on deceit and violence. The line between communism and democracy was clear:
Communism is based on the belief that man is so weak and inadequate that he is unable to govern himself, and therefore requires the rule of strong masters.
Democracy is based on the conviction that man has the moral and intellectual capacity, as well as the inalienable right, to govern himself with reason and fairness.
Communism subjects the individual to arrest without lawful cause, punishment without trial, and forced labor as the chattel of the state. It decrees what information he shall receive, what art he shall produce, what leaders he shall follow, and what thoughts he shall think.
Democracy maintains that government is established for the benefit of the individual, and is charged with the responsibility of protecting the rights of the individual and his freedom in the exercise of those abilities….
The future of mankind was at stake, and without naming the S
oviet Union, he stressed that “the actions resulting from the Communist philosophy are a threat to the efforts of free nations to bring about world recovery and lasting peace.”
Democracy was the “vitalizing force” in the world. The American people stood “firm in the faith” that had inspired the nation from the beginning. Americans were united in the belief “that all men have a right to equal justice under law and equal opportunity to share in the common good.”
He was affirmative in spirit, and characteristically he had specific proposals to make, four points, as he said. The United States would continue to support the United Nations; it would keep “full weight” behind the Marshall Plan; and the United States would join in a new “defense arrangement” among the freedom-loving nations of the North Atlantic, “to make it sufficiently clear…that any armed attack affecting our national security would be met with overwhelming force.”
But it was the final proposal, his fourth point, that caught everyone by surprise. He called for a “bold new program” for making the benefits of American science and industrial progress available to “underdeveloped” countries. It was the first mention of what would become known as the Point Four Program.
The old imperialism—exploitation for foreign profit—had no place in the plan, Truman said. Half the people in the world were living in conditions close to misery, and for the first time in history the knowledge and skill were available to relieve such suffering. The emphasis would be on the distribution of knowledge rather than money.
The material resources which we can afford to use for assistance of other peoples are limited. But our imponderable resources in technical knowledge are constantly growing and are inexhaustible…. Democracy alone can supply the vitalizing force to stir the peoples of the world into triumphant action, not only against their human oppressors, but also against their ancient enemies—hunger, misery, and despair.
The applause was immense and sustained. He was extending the promise of America beyond America. Poverty, he had said in his State of the Union address, was just as wasteful and just as unnecessary as preventable disease. Now he had extended that idea.
“Truman Proposes ‘Fair Deal’ Plan for the World,” said the headline in the Washington Post. Moreover, he had been eloquent and moving, as he had seldom ever been. Many thought it the finest speech he had ever made. Franklin Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln would all have approved and joined in the applause, said The New York Times.
Before the parade, in the interlude during which the President was to be received at lunch in the Capitol, a giant air armada like none ever seen over Washington roared across the sky, some seven hundred planes, including transports like those supplying Berlin and five gigantic new six-engined B-36 bombers that had flown, nonstop, 2,000 miles from Texas.
As the last of the planes passed, the grim President of the inaugural platform, the man with the weight of the world on him, became radiant Harry Truman once more, as he and Barkley, bundled again in overcoats and grinning broadly under their high silk hats, pulled away in the open Lincoln and started slowly back down Pennsylvania Avenue.
To either side now marched the Battery D honor guard, two lines of somewhat portly, gray-haired middle Americans swinging white ash walking canes, keeping pace with the big car rather smartly and all more or less in step as the delighted crowd cheered them on. (Only two would drop out in the mile-and-a-quarter route to the White House.)
The whole pageant struck countless viewers, including many who had witnessed numerous inaugurations, as profoundly stirring. It was a day of dedication for the democratic spirit, with all elements large and small momentarily in harmony.
The clear sunlight, the President’s evident high spirits [said The New York Times], the patience and cheerfulness of the great crowds, such moving episodes as the presence of a guard of honor of Mr. Truman’s comrades of the First World War…the slowly moving masses of men and vehicles coming down the Avenue from the seat of the national legislative power to the seat of its executive power, the booming of the Presidential salute, the planes overhead, the whole mood of the occasion—all these things seemed to speak of a confident and even exultant Americanism…. It was democracy looking homeward across a great continent, but also looking outward toward the world in which democracy will never again be impotent or ashamed or apologetic.
Behind the President, the procession stretched seven miles and would take, in all, three hours to pass. Truman, on reaching the White House, watched the show from a glass-enclosed reviewing stand and he missed none of it. West Point cadets, midshipmen from Annapolis, the Marine Band, the United States Army Band, all came swinging by, companies of WACS, WAVES, the Richmond Blues wearing white-plumed helmets, high school bands, police bands, drum majorettes, beauty queens, trick riders, state governors in open cars, a mounted posse of Kansas City “cowboys”—15,153 men, women, and children in costume, uniform, and civilian dress, more than 40 bands, 55 floats, trucks, jeeps, armored cars, more than 100 horses, 4 mules from Lamar, Missouri, and an old-time circus calliope tooting “I’m Just Wild About Harry.” With Barkley beside him, Truman clapped his gloved hands, waved, chatted, laughed out loud, beat time to the Marine Hymn, swayed his head to the strains of “Dixie,” bounced up and down on the balls of his feet to keep warm while sipping from a white paper cup of what was reportedly coffee but assuredly was not. “Like the honest Missouri extrovert that he is,” wrote Roger Butter-field for Life, “he did not try to hide his moods—the crowds and the cameras saw them all.”
Governor Adlai Stevenson passed by in advance of the Illinois float. General Eisenhower, in a spontaneous tribute that the crowd adored, stood in the back of his open car and saluted the President. Truman beamed and waved his top hat. When a Plymouth Rock float passed by, its cast of Pilgrims suddenly broke out cameras and began snapping pictures of him.
Every state, every size, shape, and color of American democracy, passed in review in the chilly afternoon sunshine. The last inaugural parade, eight years before, in 1941, when the country was arming for war, had been a grim procession of military might. The mood now was different. The crowd in the grandstand opposite the President, people in bright scarfs and winter coats, some wrapped in blankets, was a happy crowd; just as it was now a larger, more plentiful America by far. Harry Truman was President of a nation of 147 million people, an increase in population of more than 15 million since the census of 1940. No President in history had ever taken office at a time of such prosperity and power. Industrial production outstripped any previous time in the nation’s past, and all other nations of the world. The bumper harvest of the previous fall had been the biggest on record. “There never was a country more fabulous than America,” the British historian Robert Payne would write in 1949, after an extensive tour of the country:
She bestrides the world like a Colossus: no other power at any time in the world’s history has possessed so varied or so great an influence on other nations…. It is already an axiom that the decisions of the American government affect the lives and livelihood of the remotest people. Half the wealth of the world, more than half the productivity, nearly two-thirds of the world’s machines are concentrated in American hands….
“The parade was the most fun I have ever had at a parade,” wrote David Lilienthal. But the President, as the papers said, was “the fellow who was having the best time of anyone.”
Only twice did he seem to register disapproval. When the Dixiecrat candidate, Governor Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, rode by waving happily, Truman gave him a cold stare. Then as Governor Herman Talmadge of Georgia, another champion of white supremacy, approached, Truman turned his back. But the only real snub was of Thurmond. Truman had turned as Talmadge passed because an electric heater beneath his feet had short-circuited, sending up smoke, and he was trying to put out the fire.
As the sun fell behind the Old State Department Building and the afternoon grew colder, a Texas delegation appeared, l
ed by a car with a banner on its side: “Lieutenant Governor Shivers.” The crowd and the President roared.
Truman stayed to the end, and at the inaugural ball that night at the armory, he was still going strong at nearly two in the morning. No dancer, he watched and waved from a balcony to a crowd of some five thousand people. He was dressed in white tie and tails, while Bess, “smiling and vivacious,” wore a shimmering, full-length gown of silver lamé. With them were Mary Jane Truman, J. Vivian Truman and his daughter Martha Ann, Frank and Natalie Wallace, George and May Wallace, Nellie and Ethel Noland.
“Everybody looked wonderful,” wrote Margaret, who wore pink tulle and spent most of the night on the dance floor. Happiest of all was her father, “whose face was shining like a new moon.”
II
In contrast to his first years in office, and so much to follow, the first six months of the new term were a breather for Truman. Until midsummer 1949, things went well on the whole, the outlook remained hopeful. No calamitous domestic issues erupted. There were no sudden international crises to contend with. Greece and Turkey did not fall to Communist takeovers, nor would they. Nor would France or Italy. Best of all was a decided easing of tension over Berlin that began just days after the inauguration.
Realizing that the airlift was an established success, and that in fact the blockade had backfired on them, the Russians signaled “a change in attitude.” Stalin was backing down. For the first time since Potsdam, the tide seemed to be turning. Secret negotiations followed—“It can almost be stated as a principle that when the Soviets are serious about something they do it in secret,” Chip Bohlen observed—and on May 12, 1949, the blockade ended: The lights of Berlin came on again. The airlift was over, after a year and two months, 277,804 flights, and the delivery of 2,325,809 tons of food and supplies.
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