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

by David McCullough

  The ticket seems to me the best which under the circumstances—by which I mean Jack’s determination to go all out for it and the absence of any opposition of comparable capacity and determination—the Party could put up. It will not raise great enthusiasm, but neither could any other ticket, and neither will Nixon on the other side. So far as a Kennedy administration is concerned, it would, I think, be better than what we have, than what Nixon would give: and I see no solid evidence on which to found a belief that Stu or Lyndon would do any better.

  One current belief seems to me quite unfounded, that Lyndon as VP will continue to run the Senate and have great influence with Sam. I remember on the Hoover Commission urging on President Hoover that the V.P. should be selected and set up to be the Administration’s agent on the Hill. The old man said, “It won’t work. That is what I thought when I selected Charlie Curtis to be my V.P. But I found the day after the inauguration that no one, including his Senate colleagues, wanted to talk to No. 2.”

  Well, we’re off to the races, after a little breather and a little more vulgarity and foolishness at Chicago. I hope that it is still true that the Lord looks benignly after children, drunks and the U.S.A. But he may think it about time that the last of the trio grew out of irresponsibility.

  Our warmest greetings to Bess and you.

  As ever,

  Dean

  Truman is unable to accept Kennedy completely as the Democratic presidential nominee or to like the process that selected him. The “Governor of Connecticut” is Abraham Ribicoff.

  August 6, 1960

  Dear Dean:

  Well, you told me what I ought to listen to—and don’t. Your letter of July 17th was a classic. It was most highly appreciated. What I want to know is how much of a damphool can a man be—and still think he might be right. That’s this old man—and he can’t help it!

  Now we have the devil and the deep blue sea to choose from and I suppose we’ll have to take the devil. Maybe he won’t be so hard on us as Galilee was to the pigs that were drowned.

  You were right, that I would have been in a better position if I’d said nothing. But, Dean, what can you do with a talker when there is a chance to talk. Well, here we are with two men who are problems.

  You and I are not able to vote for Nixon. So I suppose we’ll have to vote for the “ticket.” Lyndon has been to see me and the Governor of Connecticut is coming here on Wednesday the 10th to try to persuade me to campaign with Kennedy. Kennedy is expected on the 21st to “pay his respects.” I wonder what I can do that won’t hurt the Party and still be right!

  My mail gets bigger and bigger—and most of it is crackpot—but I rather like to read that sort. They’d never let me see it in the White House. It is sometimes entertaining and most times makes you want to aim a good punch at the proboscis—but you can’t.

  Hope you’ll always be patient with me because I love your letters and you too.

  Sincerely,

  Harry

  August 12, 1960

  Dear Boss,

  Your delightfully contrite letter has disarmed me wholly. To add to this, Alice and I read your letter just after looking at the N.Y. Times picture of you and Governor Abe under the caption “Truman Will Stump Coast to Coast for Kennedy.” So I offered the thought that if the Lord is accurately quoted as having remarked “Vengeance is mine,” He probably has a copyright on “I told you so,” also. So I say no more. You have said it all, and said it with all your wry good humor.

  Now you are in for it. Just don’t exhaust yourself through sheer nonsense. Here is a thought which you might work in to get you onto the merits of the Party as such. In the U.S. the registration is something like 60–40 in favor of the Democrats. When it comes to enlisting Americans of brains and character for all the multifarious tasks of democratic government, the Republicans proscribe all Democrats. This brings them down to 40% of available material—a minority to start with. Then they proscribe all Republicans who had worked for the Government under Democratic administrators. This brought them down to about 20% (the inexperienced fifth). You were old fashioned enough to believe that all Americans were needed and eligible for the great task which faces our country and you used them all. The Party will do this again. We don’t have a means test in reverse, nor are we limited in our choices to big business executives who can only “afford” a year or two for public service—though that may be all the public can afford of them.

  Well, you see. This is known as the “high road.” But it really is, you know. (You have to be ready to explain that Ike and Foster got by, even though they had worked for you, but getting out in time to denounce you.) All of this may make no sense but it could upset the calculation of the “truth squads” which the newspaper tells me will follow you around and read your preconvention statements about Kennedy. As for those, they were obviously made by another fellow of the same name.

  I have a very depressed letter from Dirk Stikker. You remember him. He was the Dutch Foreign Minister from about 1949–53, was then Ambassador to London and is now the Dutchman on NATO. He says that the alliance—the only hope against Mr. K.—is floundering for lack of U.S. leadership. Spaak tells him the next ten months will decide NATO’s fate. In the absence of U.S. leadership, de Gaulle, Macmillan, and Adenauer each take their crack at some new idea which weakens the basic conception that it is Europe AND North America which is needed to deal with the U.S.S.R. He urges that both candidates make strong statements that no plans for NATO can or should be made now but that immediately after Jan. 1961 the new president will confer with the NATO powers on an urgent and far reaching strengthening of the alliance.

  I have some ideas as to what this should consist of, but now is no time for this sort of thought and, perhaps, ideas from me will not get very far at any time.

  So far in 1960 Jack Kennedy seems to have handled himself very well. In his match with you, in his handling of Lyndon (who made quite a goat of himself), Adlai and the whole convention I find it hard to fault him. This is by no means the same thing as saying that he arouses enthusiasm. Neither candidate does that. If their joint appearances don’t stir some interest the campaign may turn out to be one of these pitchers’ duels where neither side gets a hit and the paying customers go to sleep. If enough of us stay awake we can still win.

  Alice is 18 today.

  Affectionately,

  Dean

  During his meeting with Governor Ribicoff on August 10, Truman agreed to campaign for John Kennedy, and he arranged with Ribicoff to meet with Kennedy at the Truman Library on August 20. Kennedy flew to Kansas City from Washington that day and met privately with Truman for about thirty minutes. Afterward, they joined Senator Henry M. Jackson, the new chair of the Democratic National Committee, and Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri at a press conference in the library’s auditorium. Truman took Kennedy by the arm and guided him to his place at the speakers’ table. He announced that he would campaign for Kennedy and that, in the midst of an overall Democratic victory on election night, Kennedy would carry Missouri by an “overwhelming majority.” Kennedy replied, “I am happy the President is going to join in, we need all good Democrats. I am delighted he is going to associate himself with us.” When a reporter pressed Truman on his earlier statements about Kennedy’s youth and immaturity, Truman responded tersely that such concerns were “solved by the convention.… That’s all there is to it.”

  Acheson will be coming to Kansas City to speak to the Lawyers Association of Kansas City on November 30. Don Jackson is an officer with the association.

  August 15, 1960

  Dear Dean:

  I am enclosing you a copy of a letter I have written in reply to one I received from Don Jackson.

  I am as happy as I can be that you are coming here on November 30 and if there is anything in the world that I can do to make your visit pleasant, you may be sure I will do it.

  Please give my best to Alice and tell her that the “Boss” is still in charge of my house. />
  Sincerely yours,

  Harry

  Acheson is becoming bored by the presidential campaign.

  August 23, 1960

  Dear Boss,

  Many thanks for your letter about the Bar dinner on November 30. I accepted their invitation to get a chance to see you and Bess in Independence without the whole gang around which make Washington visits so hurried and hectic—except at P Street. So I shall get there perhaps the day before, or anyway early enough for a good visit with you.

  Do you get a funny sort of sense that, so far at least, there are no human candidates in this campaign? They seem improbable, like very life-like puppets, who, or which, are operated by most skillful technicians. Both are surrounded by clever people who dash off smart memoranda, but it is not all pulled together, on either side, by and into a man. The ideas are too contrived. No one believes a congeries so suited to his apparent “voter need”, as Madison Ave would put it. Even Bob Taft was heretical enough to be for government housing. These two are so perfectly suited to some one’s idea of what they ought to be suited to that they bore the hell out of me.

  This session of Congress seems to be bearing out a long held view of Alice’s that Lyndon is not nearly as smart as he and [a] lot of his admirers think.

  Whew! What a lot of subversive stuff!

  Affectionately,

  Dean

  Truman wrote two versions of this letter, both presented below. In the second, shorter version, he removed his ramblings about former Presidents. Both versions express his lingering despair at the outcome of the Democratic convention. Regarding his account of earlier presidential elections, it should be noted that Winfield Scott ran for President only once, in 1852, losing to Franklin Pierce.

  August 26, 1960

  Not Sent

  Dear Dean:

  Your letters of the 12th and the 23rd really gave me the lift I needed. I have been as blue as indigo since the California meeting in L.A. It was a travesty on National Conventions. Ed Pauley organized it and then Kennedy’s pa kicked him out! Ed didn’t consult me!

  That convention should have been helped immensely if it had been in Chicago, St. Louis or Philadelphia. But it wasn’t held at any of those places. You and I are stuck with the necessity of taking the worst of two evils or none at all. So—I’m taking the immature Democrat as the best of the two. Nixon is impossible. So there we are.

  When I took the stand I did I hoped to help—but I didn’t. I look at history and the period after Madison and then the one after Jackson. After Jackson we had Martin Van Buren a smart fixer and then William Henry Harrison, a stuffed shirt who insisted on riding a white horse to the Capital—and a month later John Tyler was President. You know that old devil, who was my great grandmother’s uncle, had some ideas of honor. He resigned from the Senate when he was not able to support Jackson’s financial program. Then came James K. Polk, a great President. Said what he intended to do and did it. Then three months after leaving the White House went home and died!

  Then old Zach Taylor came along, father-in-law of Jefferson Davis. He became famous at the Battle of Buena Vista by telling Captain Bragg to “give them a little more grape.” Winfield Scott “Old Fuss and Feathers” as anxious as Grant and Ike to be President. Old Zach kept him out. But he ran again and was ingloriously defeated by one of his Brigadier generals Franklin Pierce—who always had the stomach ache or a pain in the neck when there was a shooting engagement in Mexico.

  Franklin Pierce agreed to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and signed the Kansas Nebraska Bill. With John Brown and his murders on the border between Missouri and Kansas these events caused the War Between the States—now officially called the Civil War, as was the War of the Roses in England.

  I’m afraid I’m boring you but that is not the intention. I’m afraid that this immature boy who was responsible for picking out five great Senators may not know any more about the Presidency that he will occupy, than he did about the great Senators. Only one, Henry Clay, belonged in the list. I sent him a list of a dozen or so but it wasn’t used. So, what the hell, you and I will take it and not like it but hope for the future.

  Sincerely,

  Harry

  August 26, 1960

  Dear Dean:

  Your letters of the 12th and 23rd really gave me the lift I needed. I have been as blue as indigo since the California meeting in L.A. It was a travesty on the Convention System. I don’t think the end of Conventions is in sight, in spite of what Sam Houston said.

  The California Convention was organized by Ed Pauley without any consultation with anyone. He lined 65% of the National Committee and then called me!

  In my opinion the Convention should have been held in Chicago, St. Louis, or the “City of Brotherly Love.” But it wasn’t. You and I are stuck with taking the lesser or the worst of two evils—or none at all.

  So, I am taking the immature Democrat as the best of what’s before us. Nixon is impossible. There we are. I hoped my stand before the Convention might help—but it didn’t. Maybe I should have been there.

  Well, I’ve come to the conclusion that the devil has a hand in most things and he certainly ran the L.A. Convention.

  When we look at the history of this great country, we wonder how the hell we arrived at the top notch of things where we are. I am sure that’s what the oldsters thought in 1828, 1840, 1852 and sure enough in 1860. Well, we came out on top in all those dates. Let’s hope to God we’ll do it again. It is going to take Him to do it!

  Sincerely,

  Harry

  The letter to Kennedy that Acheson mentions argues against a concept, much discussed at the time, that the Vice President should be a kind of prime minister, running most of the government’s affairs and leaving the President primarily with the duties of commander in chief. Acheson advises Kennedy to “make it plain that you know enough about American history to know how idiotic this Prime Minister business is.” The article Acheson sent to Truman is titled “The President and the Secretary of State” and concerns the relationship between the two officials. Mr. Citizen was a collection of magazine articles written by Truman, published as a book in January 1960. Acheson’s article was published in a book, The Secretary of State, ed. Don K. Price (Prentice-Hall, 1960).

  September 14, 1960

  Dear Boss,

  Thank you a thousand times for sending me Mr. Citizen with its most appreciated inscription. I read it at once and of course, with the greatest interest. It has a lot of you in it and while that has been known to bring mingled emotions, it is all to the good in this case. Alice, too, was touched by your reference to her in the inscription and her gratitude goes along with mine.

  You may be interested in a letter which I have just written to Jack Kennedy and a copy of my article mentioned in it. I have not the slightest doubt that you will agree with every word of the article. Indeed, Mr. Hoover will too, for he expressed the same ideas when we were on the first Hoover commission together.

  This campaign is so far a bust. If Kennedy goes on talking about this religious business he will gain few protestant votes and lose a lot of Catholic ones. His strongest point he can’t make. He isn’t a very good Catholic.

  Affectionately,

  Dean

  Acheson advises Truman regarding his upcoming campaign tour. Edward L. Rodden was ambassador to Uruguay from 1951 to 1953.

  October 3, 1960

  Dear Boss,

  Did Charlie Murphy read you a speech, originally written by Ambassador Rodden and revised by me attacking Nixon. I hope he did and that you will deliver it.

  Your most effective role in this campaign will be attack. What you say in praise of Jack will carry no weight. But you have the truth on your side and no contrary statements to embarrass you when you lambast Nixon.

  The speech is a good speech.

  We are back in town today for the winter. It has been lovely in Sandy Spring.

  Yours,

  Dean

  Tru
man’s tour, which he called his “fall lecture tour,” began October 8. He visited Iowa, Texas, Washington, D.C., North Carolina, and Virginia, then went to Tennessee, Missouri, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Washington State, Nevada, and California, and finally to New York and Pennsylvania. He completed the tour four days before election day with a speech in Pittsburgh on November 4. He gave eighteen speeches in fourteen states in a little less than four weeks. Perhaps Truman’s most famous statement from his campaign tour was made in San Antonio, Texas, on October 11. “If you vote for Nixon,” he said, “you ought to go to hell.” John Kennedy claimed that when he heard about Truman’s remark, he sent him a telegram that read, “I have noted with interest your suggestion as to where those who vote for my opponent should go. While I understand and sympathize with your deep motivation, I think it is important that our side try to refrain from raising the religious issue.”

  Truman promises Acheson to give the speech about Nixon, which Acheson partly wrote, in Nixon’s home state of California.

  October 9, 1960

  Dear Dean:

  I was happy to receive your note of the 3rd about the proposed speech on Nixon, which I am expecting to deliver in California without an erasure. It struck me and it struck Mrs. Truman as exactly what ought to be said, but I think California is the place to say it.

  I am leaving tomorrow for Texas to talk principally to the Baptists in Waco, although I have an interlude meeting in Texarkana and one in San Antonio. Just bear in mind that I owe you a longhand letter in reply to your beautiful one about my book and as soon as I can sit down and attend to things as I should you will receive it.