Affection and Trust: The Personal Correspondence of Harry S. Truman and Dean Acheson, 1953-1971

by David McCullough

  That $35.00 was per month—not per day.

  I expect to be in Washington the last week in April, probably some time on the 27th. The Boss and I are going to New York tomorrow because Cliff and Margie are going to Europe a couple of days after we arrive. Bess thinks she’ll baby sit while Margie’s gone. They have a wonderful nurse but I wonder how long that “baby sit” will last.

  I have a lecture date at Cornell on the 23rd and one at Syracuse U. on the 18th but after a trip home I’ll be in the Capital City, I hope, on the 27th.

  I’ve been having a grand time with “sit downs” and broadcasters, foreign policies and Presidential candidates. I want to see you.

  Sincerely,

  Harry

  Adele Lovett was the wife of Robert A. Lovett, Truman’s last Secretary of Defense. Felix was Justice Felix Frankfurter. When Truman heard news of sit-down strikes in segregated Southern eating places, he said publicly that if he owned a store he would throw anyone out who disrupted business. About two years later, he wrote to the head of the United Auto Workers union on this subject. “… I don’t like sit-down strikes.… When you destroy a man’s business, especially a little man, it just isn’t right and you know it as well as I do.”

  April 14, 1960

  Dear Mr. President,

  I shall look forward to April 27th. Would you have dinner with me on that night or the next one? Alice is away on a trip with Adele Lovett to Greece. But we still manage to eat pretty well. If you are free, shall we have a stag party or give the ladies a break?

  Your schedule sounds as though you were headed for trouble with the Boss. I have been running a pretty hard one myself and got pretty tired. While Alice is away I am going to ease up a bit and play a bit of hookey out at the farm to which spring has eventually come. One most interesting experience I had in March was a week of lecturing seminars and student consultations at Knox College in Galesburg Illinois, where—as you know—the fifth Lincoln[-]Douglass debate took place and where Carl Sandburg was born. It is a fine and gallant little place, though the town is pretty bad. There were all Republicans when I got there. But we certainly changed that.

  What is all this anti-sit-down attitude of yours. Felix was asking me the other day, saying that his brother Whittaker takes the same view. I told him that Missourians are Confederates at heart, and that while they—or some of them—accept the Constitution, and even defend it vigorously, they won’t go a step further. There’s nothing in the Constitution about how to run a drug store’s lunch counter. Only we New England abolitionists find that reasoning irrelevant. Am I about right in my diagnosis.

  Now for a prophecy. If Jack Kennedy stubs his toe in West Virginia or elsewhere, the candidate will be Stevenson. I hate to say this but I think the only possible alternative is Stu and I doubt very much, though I am for him, that he can make it. He just doesn’t seem to catch hold. Maybe we should all give Jack a run for his money—or rather for Joe’s.

  My warmest greetings to the Boss and to you.

  As ever,

  Dean

  Truman’s response to the question about his “anti-sit-down attitude” makes clear that he thought of himself as a Southerner. Truman spoke at Cornell University on April 18.

  April 20, 1960

  Dear Dean:

  I am also looking forward to April 27th. The dinner invitation is accepted for that night. I shall miss Alice but I’m betting on your cook! I envy her that trip to Greece. Bess is not coming to Washington. Grandma has to oversee and sometimes sit with a couple of obstreperous young men who want what they want when they want it and usually get it. So if you want to make the party stag that will be fine.

  Your lecture tour must be as interesting as can be. Wish I’d been in the audience at Knox College. I’m sure I could have cribbed a good lecture for future use. You tell his Honor Felix that your diagnosis of my case is correct. I sometimes become so upset by the yellow half breeds from New York and Chicago that I almost go segregationist. If they’d stay up north and let those of us who know the problem settle it—we could and would do it.

  I’ll tell you about a plan when I see you. My meeting at Cornell was a humdinger: 9,900—at the lecture 90% students. Sounded like a Dem convention when I appeared and when I went away.

  I’m looking forward to a grand visit with you. That letter of yours gave me a real lift.

  Sincerely yours,

  Harry

  Truman is worried about events in the Caribbean and in Asia, and about how Eisenhower handled the downing of an American U-2 spy plane by the Soviet Union. Acheson’s dinner—a black-tie event—took place on April 27.

  May 9, 1960

  Dear Dean:

  I have been reading the results of our situation in Asia east of the Caribbean Sea and I am very much worried.

  It seems to me that the President of the United States ought not to admit that he doesn’t know what is going on. It looks as if we are in a very ridiculous position with our friends. We have always been known for honest and fair dealings as a nation and I really don’t know how we are going to recover from this last blow.

  I am still thinking about that wonderful dinner you had and what a grand time I had with you. I wish it were possible for the two of us to sit down and discuss the situation and see what we can do to remedy it. I don’t know whether there is anything that can be done or not. As you know, I am a natural born optimist but I am pessimistic on this situation.

  Sincerely yours,

  Harry

  Acheson analyzes Soviet motives for using the U-2 incident to prevent the convening of a summit conference at Paris in mid-May. Eisenhower had been humiliated by Khrushchev over the incident, and tried to deny the mission, but then the Russians produced the captured American pilot. The article Acheson sends to Truman is “The Persistence of Illusion: The Soviet Economic Drive and American National Interest,” by Townsend Hoopes.

  May 23, 1960

  Dear Mr. President:

  The first sentence of your letter to me of May 9 is a real puzzler. “I have been reading,” you say, “the results of our situation in Asia east of the Caribbean Sea and I am very much worried.” I have been worrying for some time that the Asia problem was creeping up on us, but I had not realized how close it had approached, and here it is now just a bit south of Bermuda. So I am worried too.

  However puzzling your geography may have become, your meaning is perfectly clear, and I agree entirely that the President of the United States ought not to admit that he doesn’t know what is going on. And, even more important than admitting this fact, it ought not to be a fact.

  The day that our admission about the U-2 flight came out I was lecturing at the National War College and a madder and more disgusted group of officers I never saw. There used to be a saying around in my youth that the Lord took care of children, drunks and the United States of America. But it seems that now we are over-taxing omnipotence.

  Shortly before the Summit meeting the official attitude around the State Department was that the Summit would be a pushover. Khrushchev, they said, was under such pressures at home that in order to have a political success he must get an agreement and have Eisenhower in Moscow. So he would agree to a nuclear test ban and then adjourn the festivities to Moscow. I produced a great deal of merriment around town by predicting that the Summit would not last two days. I seem to have overstated it by one.

  The official version has now changed. It is still said that Khrushchev was under great pressure, but this time it was pressure in the opposite direction. The State Department tells us that the pressure was not for a success but for a failure and came from the Army and the Chinese allies. Having learned of the firmness of Mr. Eisenhower and the unbreakable unity of the Allies, he had to end the Summit without a test of strength, and, in seizing upon the U-2 incident, he has overplayed his hand.

  I think this is as erroneous as the first view. Mr. Khrushchev knew exactly what he was doing, and he was playing the game of the protracted conf
lict, as the Russians have always played it, alternating tension with detente. Peaceful coexistence is now abandoned for a renewal of the cold war, but the purpose is the same. It is to get us out of Berlin, get Germany out of the Western Alliance, and to get the United States out of Europe.

  My guess is that, under the cover of the commotion which will be going on in the U.N., the East Germans will begin to tighten up on civilian traffic with Berlin, and sometime, when we are sufficiently distracted by attempts to prevent majorities or two-thirds majorities in the Security Council or the General Assembly, the treaty with the East Germans will be made.

  Mr. Eisenhower, like a weary fighter, is maneuvering for the bell; and, whatever happens, he will do nothing about it, leaving these problems for his successor. The enclosed article from the Yale Review seems to me a pretty sound statement of the situation as it stands at present.

  Most sincerely,

  Dean

  Truman is pessimistic about the situation in several parts of the world. He tells Acheson he’s going to the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles.

  May 27, 1960

  Dear Dean:

  Yours of the 23rd gave me quite a lift. That sentence should have read “west of the Caribbean Sea.” I was thinking of Panama, Guatemala, Chile, Indonesia, Indo-China and the riots in Japan. What started my train of thought was this whiskered nut in Cuba.

  He’s buying oil from Russia shipped in Russian ships when his neighbors could furnish it for maybe half the price! He’s selling sugar for a pittance to Kruchie’s agent for less than 3 cents a pound which is sold in Soviet Land for a dollar!

  Panama wants to steal the canal as Nasser stole Suez. Chile our former good friend kisses in with our world enemies. Venezuela spits on our Vice President while the President of the United States receives the same treatment in Paris. I’m not a pessimist as you very well know.

  But how the hell could we come to this international debacle? And you and I are in a fix where we dare not kick the guy in the ass who is to blame. I wrote an article last September which came out in October I think in which I said what I did yesterday—if the United Nations is expected to work summits are a farce. Now Ike’s reading a prepared U.N. speech.

  I’m going to L.A. as a delegate and I suppose I’ll be tongue tied.

  It’s a hell of a situation!

  You’d better cheer me up or there’ll be a personal explosion.

  My best to Alice.

  Harry

  Acheson had trouble writing this remarkable letter reining in Truman so as not to damage their party’s chances of winning the presidency. He first handwrote a draft, which he heavily altered. He had the edited draft typed, and then handwrote a slightly altered version that he sent Truman. Acheson also telephoned his friend to talk over, perhaps in softer language, what he had said so bluntly in this letter. Acheson’s new salutation “Boss” suggests that Truman had said something to activate this new familiarity, possibly first names, which would have made Acheson very uncomfortable. Hence the compromise: Boss.

  June 28, 1960

  Dear Boss,

  As the Convention approaches and you are likely to become, shall we say, emphatic in your statements to the press, could we make a treaty as to what we shall not say?

  On the positive side we can, and doubtless will, say that our candidate—yours and mine—has all the virtues of the Greats from Pericles through Churchill. St. Peter and the Pee-pul. Forgive this innocent though improbable hyperbole. But there are some things that no one should, and few will, forgive.

  These fall into several groups, but the common denominator is the harm that comes from allowing the intensity of the personal view to dim a proper concern for the common cause. The list of the “It’s not dones,” as I see it, goes like this:—

  I. About Other Democratic Candidates:

  (a) Never say that any of them is not qualified to be President.

  (b) Never say that any of them can’t win.

  (c) Never suggest that any of them is the tool of any group or interest, or not a true blue liberal, or has (or has used) more money than another.

  The reason: At this point public argument is too late. Deals may still be possible. I just don’t know. But sounding off is sure to be wrong. If our candidate is going anywhere—which I doubt—it will not be because of public attacks on other candidates. And such attacks can do a lot of harm when they are quoted in the election campaign.

  II. About the Negro Sit-in Strikes:

  (a) Do not say that they are communist inspired. The evidence is all the other way, despite alleged views of J. Edgar Hoover, whom you should trust as much as you would a rattlesnake with a silencer on its rattle.

  (b) Do not say that you disapprove of them. Whatever you think, you are under no compulsion to broadcast it. Free speech is a restraint on the government: not an incitement to the citizens.

  The reason: Your views, as reported, are wholly out of keeping with your public record. The discussion does not convince anyone of anything. If you want to discuss the sociological, moral and legal interests involved in this issue, you should give much more time and thought to them.

  III. About Foreign Policy

  (a) For the next four months do not say that in foreign policy we must support the President.

  The reason: This cliché has become a menace. It misrepresents by creating the false belief that in the recent series of disasters the President has had a policy or position to support.

  This just isn’t true. One might as well say “support the President” if he falls off the end of a dock. That isn’t a policy. But to urge support for him makes his predicament appear to be a policy to people who don’t know what a dock is.

  So, please, for just four months let his apologists come to his aid. We have got to beat Nixon. We shall probably have to do it with Kennedy. Why make it any harder than it has to be? Now if ever, our vocal cords ought to be played by the keyboard of our minds. This is so hard for me that I have stopped using my cords at all. By August they will be ready to play “My Rosary.”

  So I offer you a treaty on “don’ts.” Will you agree?

  Most sincerely,

  Dean

  Truman takes Acheson’s strong medicine graciously. He had, however, already violated the “treaty on ‘don’ts.’ ” On July 2, in a televised press conference at the Truman Library, he had said he would not attend the Democratic convention, which was taking on aspects of a “prearranged affair.” He then addressed John F. Kennedy directly. “Senator, are you certain that you’re quite ready for the country or the country is ready for you in the role of President in January 1961?” He asked Kennedy to put aside his personal ambition and allow the convention to select a candidate “with the greatest possible maturity and experience.” He gave a long list of potential candidates who he felt had these qualities, including his own favorite, Missouri Senator Stuart Symington. Truman says in this letter to Acheson that he will depart for the convention the next day, but he did not go.

  July 9, 1960

  Dear Dean:

  You’ll never know how very much I appreciated your call and good letter. I tried my best to profit by both. Whether I did or not is up to you to decide.

  Anyway it looks as if things have, to some extent, slowed down and the band wagon isn’t running so fast. I’ve never been so wrought up and if you and the “Madam”—the “Boss”—had not put the brakes on I’d have blown my top—maybe!

  Now Butler, the permanent Chairman, the temporary Chairman, Sam Rayburn and all the rest of them are spending money on long winded telegrams urging me to be present at the Convention.

  I am taking a plane tomorrow evening for L.A. and intend to have a lot of fun with the guessers and the prophets.

  It may not amount to much but you never can tell.

  When I return home I’ll owe you more information.

  Again thanks to a real friend and a real standby.

  My best to Alice.

  S
incerely,

  Harry

  The Achesons are at their farm in Sandy Spring, Maryland. Acheson is pleased—if only tepidly—with the outcome of the Democratic convention and is looking forward to a new Democratic administration led by Kennedy.

  July 17, 1960

  Dear Boss,

  We are here for the summer, and I, a commuter. So your letter of July 9th, by virtue of your extravagance in putting a special delivery stamp on it, lay on the floor at P Street for about a week. Mr. Summerfield forwards ordinary mail but special delivery has him baffled, and it goes into oblivion through the mail drop until Alice or Johnson happens to go in to P Street.

  But in this case it was just as well. Your letter told me of your penultimate decision to go to Los Angeles, which was happily reversed by the ultimate one, not to go. Had I gotten your letter I should have wasted the family substance on the telephone urging you not to do what fate was to prevent you from doing. I am sorry that your sister-in-law had to be sacrificed to keep you from so unwise a step. But it was in a good cause and I hope that she is now much improved.

  I listened to your press conference and regretted that you felt impelled to say anything, though what you said was better than what you first told me that you intended to say. It seemed quite inevitable that Jack’s nomination would occur and that all that you and Lyndon said you would both have to eat—as you indeed have.

  Poor Lyndon came off much worse, since he is now in the crate on the way to the county fair and destined to be a younger and more garrulous—if that is possible—Alben Barkley. It is possible that being a smart operator in the Senate is a special brand of smartness which doesn’t carry over into the larger political field. Lyndon certainly behaved like a high school lad running for class president in 1956, and seems to have retrograded by 1960. Jack and his team were the only “pros” in Los Angeles, so far as I could see.