Bess Truman

by Margaret Truman

  Hope you’ll regard this communication as one from a fond father and keep it confidential. Only my “mad” letters are published!

  I had left Washington the day the Hume letter was mailed and was in Nashville, Tennessee, when the uproar exploded. Mother did not know what I thought of it all. She approached me warily on the telephone, as if I was a ticking bomb. “What are you going to do?” Mother asked.

  “There’s only one thing to do,” I said. “Hold a press conference.”

  By this time, I had developed a fair amount of expertise and some pretty good rapport with reporters. When they showed up in force later that day, I handled them, if I may brag a little, pretty coolly. They asked me what I thought of the letter. “I’m glad chivalry isn’t dead,” I replied.

  They asked me if the letter would hurt my career. “Not at all,” I said. “It will sell tickets.”

  Mother, who still considered a press conference on a par with a visit to a cage full of cobras, was impressed. She called me the next day and congratulated me. “I’m going to stop worrying about you,” she said.

  I think she did, for about a week, anyway.

  A tired, embattled president now faced a hostile Congress and a bitter, frustrating war. As 1951 began, Bess was concerned about Harry Truman’s health. That made her even more concerned about the issue that she thought they had resolved in early 1950: whether he would run for another term.

  Multiplying this agony of the Truman partnership was the sense of having a tremendous triumph snatched away by the unpredictability of men and events. It was hard to believe in the first months of 1951 that in October 1950, Americans had been celebrating the destruction of the North Korean Army and hailing President Truman as a wizard. In this book, I have described hindsight as the historian and biographer’s friend. But when politicians play the hindsight game, ugly feelings emerge. It is so easy to second-guess a president when things go wrong. Everyone from Joseph P. Kennedy to Herbert Hoover urged us to cut and run in Korea. Instead, Harry Truman declared we would fight the Chinese to a standstill and then negotiate.

  That is exactly what the UN Army did under the inspiring leadership of a new general, Matthew B. Ridgway. It was not easy. General Ridgway and his commander in chief faced the most difficult military task any American general and his president have confronted in the history of the United States. The general had to convince a shaken army full of drafted soldiers, who wondered what they were doing in Korea in the first place, that they could defeat an enemy who vastly outnumbered them. Ridgway did it by appealing to their honor, their pride in themselves as American soldiers.

  While this agonizing turnaround took place in Korea, Dad had to fight off a savage Republican onslaught in Congress against the dispatch of American troops to Europe to bolster NATO. The isolationists whom he thought he had helped Franklin Roosevelt defeat in 1944 were back in business with a vengeance. Dad finessed them by appointing an acclaimed advocate of international cooperation, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, to head NATO. The general appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and stoutly supported the president’s policy.

  Simultaneously, Dad grappled with the vastly unpopular issue of price controls and higher taxes to prevent inflation. As that specter receded, he had to referee a brawl between the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve Board about the nation's monetary policy. Simultaneously, Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas launched an investigation into the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which spread smear and innuendo over several members of the White House staff. As usual, there were no indictments, no proof of wrongdoing. Another ambitious senator, Estes Kefauver, made headlines with an investigation of the links between local politicians and organized crime. Once more the big loser was the Democratic Party, to which neither senator seemed to realize he belonged.

  The toll of these cumulative strains on the sixty-seven-year-old president was scary. Bess pressed him to vacation in Key West, and he took her advice, but the stays were brief and the rest did not restore him to his old “fighting trim.” That made Mother all the more anxious to get an answer from Chief Justice Fred Vinson about his willingness to run as Dad’s successor. Poppa Vin had kept Dad waiting a full two years by now, protesting that he would do whatever the president asked him for the good of the country but never quite committing himself as a candidate.

  April, which T. S. Eliot called the cruelest month, lived up to its reputation by producing the biggest crisis yet. General MacArthur was still the commander in the Far East. (General Ridgway commanded the army on the Korean battlefield.) In Tokyo, MacArthur was privately infuriated that his predictions of imminent disaster and calls for forty or fifty atomic bombs on China had been proven fatuous by the UN force’s stand against the Chinese. When General Ridgway went over to the offensive and chewed up thirty or forty Chinese divisions while fighting his way back to the thirty-eighth parallel dividing North and South Korea, MacArthur’s pique only grew nastier. Adding to his sulk was the general’s presidential ambitions. If anyone was going to get credit for winning peace with honor in Korea, his name had to be MacArthur. He began trying to sabotage Dad’s plan to negotiate with the Chinese.

  With the help of State Department experts on the Far East, Dad spent long hours drafting a proposal that would let the Chinese withdraw from Korea with a minimum loss of face. He sent MacArthur copies of various drafts of this proposal, so he would know exactly what was going on. On March 24, 1951, on the eve of the announcement of the president’s offer, MacArthur issued his own statement – an arrogant ultimatum calling on the Red Chinese to get out of Korea or risk the invasion and destruction in China itself. The threat was patently nonsensical. We did not have an army big enough to invade China if we scraped together every man in uniform from Europe and the United States. It also ignored an explicit order from the president to refrain from all policy statements.

  Later, Dad recalled his fury at this act of insubordination: “I couldn’t send a message to the Chinese after that. He prevented a ceasefire proposition right there. I was ready to kick him into the North China Sea at that time. I was never so put out in my life. It’s the lousiest trick a commander-in-chief can have done to him by an underling. MacArthur thought he was proconsul for the government of the United States and could do anything he damn pleased.”

  The moment Dad heard about this statement, he decided that General MacArthur had to be fired. He knew it would cause an uproar, and he did not want to endanger appropriations for the Marshall Plan and NATO, then before Congress. Biding his time, he ordered General Omar Bradley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to remind MacArthur of the presidential order against policy statements.

  MacArthur ignored this warning. When Joseph Martin, the Republican Minority Leader in the House, sent him a copy of a speech he had just made, attacking the Truman foreign policy, MacArthur responded with warm words of praise. Once more he revived the idea of using Chiang Kai-shek’s aging army on Formosa. “Your view with respect to the utilization of the Chinese forces on Formosa is in conflict with neither logic nor . . . tradition,” he wrote. He went on to imply that the diplomats and politicians in power did not understand the necessity of totally defeating communism in Asia.

  On April 5, Martin rose in the House of Representatives to heap more abuse on the president’s policy and quoted from MacArthur’s letter. Dad decided it was time to act. He called in four top advisers: General George C. Marshall, who had returned to the administration as secretary of defense; Secretary of State Dean Acheson; Secretary of State W. Averell Harriman, who had wide experience in foreign affairs; and General Omar Bradley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. On his calendar, Dad jotted the results of this meeting: “I call in Gen. Marshall, Dean Acheson, Averell Harriman and General Bradley and they come to the conclusion that our Big General in the Far East must be recalled. I don’t express any opinion or make known my decision.”

  There was one adviser in this crisis who already knew
the president’s decision. The MacArthur conflict was exactly the sort of problem Dad discussed with Mother. From her comments later, I am certain that the president had wholehearted backing from his political partner for this decision. If there was one thing Bess Truman valued, it was loyalty, and one thing she despised, it was disloyalty. General MacArthur had proven himself disloyal to a president who had supported him in spite of his horrendous mistakes in judgment that brought us to the brink of disaster in Korea.

  Dad ordered Secretary of the Army Frank Pace to go to Tokyo and inform the General of his dismissal in private, stressing the regret that everyone felt at being forced to make the decision. Dad did not want to wound or humiliate General MacArthur. Although he disliked his flamboyant, egocentric style, he recognized and valued MacArthur’s contributions to the army and the nation in two world wars. Before Mr. Pace, who was on an inspection tour of Korea, could obey this order, a reporter from the Chicago Tribune called the Pentagon and asked if “an important resignation” was brewing in Tokyo. The call was relayed to General Bradley at the White House. General Bradley warned Dad that news of the firing had apparently been leaked, and MacArthur might be planning to resign first and try to humiliate the president with a public denunciation.

  “He’s going to be fired,” Dad said. But the only choice, now, seemed to be a cable to the general and a public announcement in Washington. Dad ordered his advisers and staff to discuss the pros and cons of this decision. While they debated in the Cabinet Room, Dad returned to Blair House to have dinner with Mother. We can be sure that he discussed his continuing reluctance to hurt MacArthur’s feelings with his partner, and I am pretty certain what she told him. The hard side of Bess Wallace Truman’s personality was unquestionably in charge on the subject of Douglas MacArthur. She agreed with Assistant Press Secretary Roger Tubby, who was arguing in the Cabinet Room that there was no reason to spare MacArthur’s feelings when he had behaved in such an “unethical, insolent, insubordinate way” toward the president.

  At 10:00 p.m., Dad’s top advisers trooped into Blair House to inform him that a majority favored an immediate dispatch of the dismissal orders to Tokyo. Still Dad hesitated, although he authorized the White House press office to begin mimeographing his presidential orders firing MacArthur and appointing General Ridgway in his place. When it came to wounding the feelings of anyone, even a dangerous political antagonist, the tenderhearted side of Harry Truman’s personality held him back. He was still hoping to contact Secretary of the Army Pace, who remained out of reach in Korea.

  Then came word from the White House press office that the Mutual Broadcasting System was getting ready to carry a big story from Tokyo. Dad made the final decision. The mimeograph machines started working overtime to print dozens of background documents, and calls went out to all the reporters and photographers assigned to the White House. At 1:00 a.m., Dad went before reporters to announce Douglas MacArthur’s dismissal: “With deep regret, I have concluded that the General of the Army Douglas MacArthur is unable to give his wholehearted support to the policies of the United States government and of the United Nations in matters pertaining to his official duties. In view of the specific responsibilities imposed upon me by the Constitution of the United States and the added responsibility which has been entrusted to me by the United Nations, I have decided that I must make a change of command in the Far East. I have, therefore, relieved General MacArthur of his commands and have designated Lt. General Matthew B. Ridgway as his successor.”

  The next day, Dad jotted on his desk calendar a seemingly offhand comment.

  Quite an explosion. Was expected but I had to act.

  Telegrams and letters of abuse by the dozens.

  This is the Truman understatement to end them all. The national uproar was stupendous. All the pent-up frustration with the limited war Dad was fighting in Korea, the ugly suspicions of treason in high places stirred by Senator McCarthy and his followers, came to a boil over MacArthur’s dismissal. Dad was hanged in effigy, denounced by city councils and state legislatures. One-hundred-and-twenty-five-thousand outraged telegrams poured into the White House in the next two days. Threats on Dad’s life multiplied tenfold.

  In Congress, one of McCarthy’s imitators, Senator William E. Jenner of Indiana, declared that the country was “in the hands of a secret inner coterie which is directed by agents of the Soviet Union.” He called for President Truman’s immediate impeachment. The Chicago Tribune concurred. The paper called Dad “unfit, morally and mentally, for his high office.” Congressman Richard Nixon declared: “The happiest group in the country will be the communists and their stooges.”

  This incredible outpouring of vilification took a heavy toll on Bess’ nerves. It revived the fear that had troubled her at the beginning of the first term - that Dad would become as hated by approximately half the American people as Franklin D. Roosevelt had been. During the worst of the MacArthur frenzy, it looked as if all the people had turned against their president. He was even booed when he and Mother went to the opening day of the baseball season.

  Calmly, with magnificent poise, Dad responded to this frenzy with reason. He never lost faith in Thomas Jefferson’s dictum, “the people will come right in the end.” But to come right, the people must be given the facts. Dad went on television and talked honestly, plainly, to his fellow Americans. “I have thought long and hard about this question of extending the war in Asia. I have discussed it many times with the ablest military advisers in the country. I believe with all my heart that the course we are following is the best one.”

  With all this abuse burdening her mind, Bess had to continue smiling through her usual round of receptions and official dinners and teas. Early in the spring, her mother’s health went into another downward slide. Grandmother’s mind began to wander; she became forgetful and would wake up Bess in the middle of the night to ask her anxious questions about Fred and other members of the family. By the time Bess took her back to Independence for the summer, the First Lady was almost as exhausted as the president.

  Dad assumed the uncharacteristic role of family worrier after talking to her on the telephone one night early in June. “Your voice sounded as if you were very tired last night,” he wrote. “Please get some rest. That’s what you are home for. . . . Please take care of yourself I don’t think you fully understand that I can face the world and all its troubles if you and Margie are all right. I don’t think I can do it if you are not.”

  Meanwhile, General MacArthur as a boiling political issue was slowly evaporating. A special Senate committee headed by Richard Russell of Georgia launched a careful investigation of his dismissal. One after another, the top military men in the nation, from General Marshall and General Bradley to General Hoyt Vandenberg, the chief of the Air Force, supported the president’s decision and confirmed that General MacArthur had been insubordinate. They also took some rather large pieces out of the general’s military reputation. General Lawton Collins said that MacArthur had violated almost every basic rule of military strategy in his “home by Christmas” drive to the Yalu River in November 1950.

  When General MacArthur testified before the committee, it soon became clear that he was unable to prove his claim that he had a policy, and President Truman had no policy. He admitted that the United States would be insane to invade Manchuria and begin a war with China’s 400 million people. The senators - and the American public - gradually realized that MacArthur’s cry, “There is no substitute for victory,” was a hollow slogan.

  On June 25, 1951, a year to the day after the Korean War began, Dad wrote Mother an anniversary letter that reflected this major change in public opinion.

  I’m leaving for Tennessee shortly to speak at the dedication of an air research center, named for General Arnold. I’m going to tear the Russians and the Republicans apart - call a spade just what it is and tell Malik [Jacob Malik, Russian ambassador to the UN] if Russia wants peace, peace is available and has been since 1945. This is the
anniversary of the flight from Independence a year ago that has been quite a day in history. All the papers except the sabotage sheets gave me the best of it yesterday.

  This week contains another very important - most important - anniversary. Thursday will be thirty-two years. What a thirty-two years! I’ve never been anything but happy for that anniversary. Maybe I haven’t given you all you’re entitled to, but I’ve done my best, and I’m still in love with the prettiest girl in the world.

  Hope all are well. We’ll talk to Margie in Rome next Sunday.

  As you might gather from that last line, at this point I was adding to the Trumans’ worries. I was whirling around Europe in a six-week tour with my friend Annette Davis Wright and my secretary (and friend) Reathel Odum. It had started off as a vacation, with me proudly announcing I could and would pay my own and Reathel’s way. But I had forgotten that my name was Margaret Truman.

  The president and First Lady explained to me that politicians on both sides of the iron curtain would be asking their advisers and intelligence people what the visit meant. There was also the problem of security. Only two Secret Service men could be spared to go with me. That was not enough to protect us if we stayed in hotels and guest houses. By the time all the details were worked out, we were booked into nothing but embassies and legations.

  I still managed to have a wonderful time, dining with such lofty figures as Winston Churchill and the King and Queen of England, spending twenty minutes in a private audience with Pope Pius XII, and doing my best in many interviews to play goodwill ambassador in England, France, Holland, Luxembourg, and Italy.

  What was the First Lady of the United States doing while her daughter was making like a princess on parade? A letter that caught up to me in London brought me down to earth. The First Lady was painting the back stairway and steps at 219 North Delaware Street. “There’ll probably be some of it [painting] left for you to do in July!” she warned me. “Mr. Gregg [the carpenter] is making a cabinet for the pantry & that will require several coats.”