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

by David McCullough

  I certainly do appreciate the trouble you have gone to to give the facts and figures on Nixon. He is a dangerous man. Never has there been one like him so close to the Presidency.

  I had a wonderful farm meeting in Iowa yesterday. In Iowa, which was as enthusiastic as the labor meeting I had in Marion, Indiana, I was overwhelmed. If the Waco, Texas, religious meeting turns out all right I think we will then be on the road.

  I have a schedule which takes me from Waco on the 12th to Washington, D.C., by regular plane. Then the next morning I am supposed to leave for Raleigh, North Carolina, and on the 15th I will go from Raleigh to Abingdon, Virginia, and then back home. I thought perhaps if I arrived in Washington at a reasonable hour you and I might have a session on the situation as I have found it, in the various places where I have been.

  The trend is very substantially on the mend so far as our side is concerned but, of course, you must understand that this is a statement of a prejudiced witness, in fact a very prejudiced witness.

  Please give my best to Alice and say I certainly will be happy when this rat race is over and we can have our usual associations, socially and otherwise.

  Sincerely yours,

  Harry

  Truman gave the Nixon speech on October 28 in Oakland, California, without an erasure, as he promised, but with some additions of his own that increased its punch. He began by telling of many good people and things that come from California. “There is only one product of this state that does not measure up to its high standards,” he said, “and that is Richard Nixon, Trickie Dickie, the political opportunist.” He added the “Trickie Dickie” part in his own hand on the speech draft. He mentions Disneyland, favorably, and then launches on an extended fantasy. “Now I think I have discovered what Nixon can do,” he begins. “He has considerable gifts of showmanship, and the ability to create all kinds of illusions. He should go into this amusement park business and open one of his own, which we could call Nixonland.… Nixon would be in charge of Nixonland personally, and he would be the guide for all the Nixonland rides. Which he would do very well—by the way—as he has been taking the American people for a ride for a good many years already.” He goes on to describe many of the rides in Nixonland, including “the Nixon trip … through Communistland. And you would see stuffed Communists popping out from behind every bush. And Nixon would stand in the bow of the boat, and shoot them dead—with blanks.” This Nixonland is fake, Truman warns. “So, I say, let us leave Nixonland behind us, and leave Nixon there, and face the real world and its problems.… Let us build for the future of the United States of America and for a secure and peaceful world with Jack Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.” One wonders what Truman’s audience thought of this peculiar speech, and how many votes Truman won for the Kennedy-Johnson ticket that night.

  On November 8, 1960, John F. Kennedy was elected over Richard Nixon. Truman looks forward to a visit from Acheson, who is giving a speech in Kansas City at the end of the month.

  November 21, 1960

  Dear Dean:

  The campaign is ended and we have a Catholic for President. It makes no difference, in my opinion, what church a man belongs to, if he believes in the oath he takes to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. I have taken it twenty five or thirty times.

  I didn’t have to weigh what I was swearing in that oath. I believed in it.

  If our new President works at the job, he’ll have no trouble. You know, I wish I’d been young enough to go back to the White House and make Alibi Ike wear a top hat! He spent his time after the election in 1952 trying to show how good he could be. But why worry about what’s past.

  We are faced with a situation equal to any we’ve been up against in a hundred years.

  I’m looking forward to a visit when you come out here on November 30th.

  You know what the “Boss” has done? She’s torn up the whole second floor of this old 1859 House of ours and we are in a hell of a fix. Mrs. R. had to stay at a hotel and I fear you will too. But maybe you and I can have a better time! Don’t tell Alice but let’s see what happens.

  Sincerely,

  Harry

  Two weeks after the election, Acheson speculates about the close results. “Schuman” was French statesman Robert Schuman, president of the European Parliamentary Assembly.

  November 22, 1960

  Dear Boss:

  Many thanks for your post election letter which came this morning. First a word or two about your plans for our meeting in Kansas City. I am planning, if you approve, to stay over on Thursday, December 1st until the 4 o’clock through flight to Washington, to have some quiet time with you. The plane from here on November 30th will not get in until after lunch—1:54 P.M.—and WDAF wants me to record a television interview in the afternoon. So there won’t be much peace on Wednesday.

  If you are free on Thursday we might meet at your convenience say at the Library, and from there on do what you wish. If I could see the top Boss it would be a joy for me.

  Alice is not coming as she did something to a muscle or nerve in her right leg which has been painful and incapacitating, though now yielding to heat and rest. She will send her messages and get her report through me.

  This election is so unbelievably close that I wonder whether we really know the result yet. If the southern conspiracy should flower, and enough delegates—I mean electors—withhold their votes to prevent a majority of the total number, what then? Some electors are pledged by state law and some are not. Can they be ordered by mandamus to vote? To vote for the one to whom they are pledged? Suppose they violate the order and either refused to vote, or vote for Lyndon. What then? I suppose that the court could put them in jail for contempt, but it can’t vote for them. If it invalidates the votes for Lyndon the election goes to the House and Nixon has a majority of states, with one vote each. Or perhaps if Lyndon were on the slate which went to the House he might get a majority should the Kennedy states switch to him.

  It is all very speculative, but most interesting.

  Do you really care about Jack’s being a Catholic? I never have. It hasn’t bothered me about de Gaulle or Adenauer or Schuman or De Gasperi, so why Kennedy? Furthermore I don’t think he’s a very good Catholic. But a Jehovah’s Witness would bother me badly. The whole public health service would go to hell over night.

  Another question. You are quoted as saying that you won’t worry about the farmers any more because they voted for Nixon. But did they? A lot of people in the farm states voted Democratic. What about them? Guilt by association? That ought to stir up the animal.

  Affectionately,

  Dean

  November 26, 1960

  HONORABLE DEAN ACHESON

  WILL SEE YOU WHEN YOU LAND IN OUR BIG SUBURB. WANT TO HAVE GOOD VISIT WITH YOU THURSDAY. YOU WILL SEE THE BOSS. SORRY ALICE IS NOT WITH YOU.

  HARRY S TRUMAN

  Harry Truman and Dean Acheson on February 17, 1955, during a press conference at the Muehlebach Hotel in Kansas City.

  8

  February 1961 to October 1971

  JFK and LBJ – An Operation and a Fall – More Memoirs –Deaths in the Family – The Last Letter

  Once the excitement of the campaign season had subsided and the new, young, Democratic President had moved into the White House, Truman’s and Acheson’s letters to each other began to convey less mutual engagement in the nation’s affairs. With Eisenhower gone, the two friends no longer felt an urgent need to join forces to try to change policies that they felt were deeply in error. They wrote fairly regularly during 1961, but beginning in 1962 the steady, and equal, flow of letters abated. In addition to this, with advancing age Truman was naturally becoming increasingly less interested in public life. In what is probably the saddest letter he ever wrote to Acheson, on July 7, 1961, he also worried about his ability to present himself in public as he should, and said he envied Acheson for being able to make an important contribution to the national life: “You are making a contribution
, I am not. Wish I could.”

  Acheson was indeed making a contribution. President Kennedy had immediately brought Acheson into his administration as an adviser on NATO and Berlin, and Acheson wrote three important policy-review reports for Kennedy on these topics, as well as one on the country’s balance-of-payments problem. During the Cuban missile crisis, the President included Acheson in the so-called ExCom group, which advised him on how to end the threat the Soviet missiles created without bringing on war.

  Shortly after Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963, President Johnson called on Acheson to advise him on a number of foreign-policy questions, including U.S. policy in Vietnam, and although Acheson didn’t write Truman in detail about all the highly secret work he was engaged in, he did share some gossipy accounts of Kennedy and Johnson. He called Kennedy “a sort of Indian snake charmer” who was too concerned with image and had trouble making decisions. Johnson, he said, “creates distrust by being too smart. He is never quite candid.… He yields to petty impulses.”

  The subjects of illness and death crept into the men’s letters, often humorously. Truman especially attended many funerals. “At 79 you go to funeral after funeral of your friends,” he wrote in May 1963, “… and you sometimes wonder if the old man with the scythe isn’t after you.” Both friends did write each other promptly to express heartfelt sympathy about these losses.

  Acheson did not write Truman about the substantial relationship he developed with President Richard Nixon. Though Acheson had mixed feelings about Nixon, he admired him—and his National Security Adviser, Henry Kissinger—enough that on important occasions he advised Nixon and publicly supported his foreign policies. Truman had never forgiven Nixon for remarks he made during the 1952 campaign, in a speech in Texarkana, Texas. Truman, Acheson, and Adlai Stevenson, Nixon had said, were all “traitors to the high principles in which many of the nation’s Democrats believe.” On another occasion Nixon charged that “Mr. Truman, Dean Acheson, and other [Truman] administration officials for political reasons covered up the Communist conspiracy and attempted to halt its exposure.” Truman had a long memory for this kind of attack on his patriotism and on that of loyal public servants such as Dean Acheson. When he was criticized in 1958 for insulting Vice President Nixon by calling him a “squirrel head,” Truman justified his use of such a moniker by saying “character assassins cannot be insulted.”

  The two friends had several opportunities to honor each other publicly. On one occasion, Truman provided a heartfelt tribute about Acheson, Yale class of 1915, to the Yale Club of Montclair, New Jersey. “No one,” Truman said, “has had a clearer sense of the times or the direction of the course this nation had to take in her relations with its friends and allies.” When Acheson learned of this tribute, he wrote to Truman, “You always touch me by your faith in me.” When Acheson’s memoirs of his State Department years, Present at the Creation, came out in 1969, the book carried a brief but moving dedication: “To Harry S. Truman, ‘The captain with the mighty heart.’ ”

  · · ·

  Truman is not pleased with President Kennedy’s new United Nations ambassador—Adlai Stevenson.

  February 6, 1961

  Dear Dean:

  I have the urge to write you a personal communication, in the hope that there will be a chance to see you when I’m in Washington March 9th.

  I am very much interested in what the new President will do. I hope he will do the right thing.

  What a condition we are faced with! Cuba—the water shut off on our naval base, the dictatorship in Nicaragua, Santo Domingo, Haiti, Ecuador, Chile,—etc.

  Wish you were the United Nations ambassador. I’m very much perturbed that Adlai Stevenson won’t know what to do, and if he does he won’t do it!

  I’ll be in N.Y. Feb 10th sail for Bermuda to see Margie and the two boys on Feb. 11th and be back in N.Y. Mar 2nd, then home and in D.C. Mar. 9th.

  My very best to Alice, which includes Mrs. T.

  Harry

  Acheson again asks Truman to allow State Department historians to see documents relating to the Potsdam Conference in the papers from his White House office file that had not yet been turned over to the Truman Library. Acheson refers to his appointment as chair of President Kennedy’s Advisory Committee on NATO. At about the time he wrote this letter, he submitted to the President a report titled “A Review of North Atlantic Problems for the Future.”

  March 23, 1961

  Dear Mr. President:

  This letter is outside the famous HST-DA series and has to do with a matter of business which Dr. Bernard Noble of State Department has taken up with me. Today he called on me and gave me the enclosed explanatory letter. He mentioned the fact that in connection with the Department’s Potsdam papers, you had most kindly allowed offices of the Department to see papers in those files which you have not yet turned over to the Library and had given permission for some of these papers to be included in the official record. He now wishes to request similar consideration from you in regard to the regular historical series “Foreign Relations in the United States.” The volumes covering the years of your Presidency will not be published for some time but the Department is already at work on them. He would like to have permission to look at the files which I have already mentioned and if any documents appropriate for inclusion in the official volumes are found to request your permission to use them. Not only would their use be contingent upon your permission but policy offices of the Government would examine them also to see whether there were any reasons for not making them public by the time the volumes should go to press.

  I think that this is a fair and proper request and hope that you will grant it. It is most important that these official volumes be as complete as propriety permits. They are widely used by scholars throughout the world and will be an important source of understanding the years of your Presidency.

  Your last visit to Washington came at a time when both Alice and I were stricken with the most virulent virus which has yet come our way. Poor Alice has had a wretched winter with one of these attacks after another. I joined her at the end of a rather splendid demonstration of my own. The result was that we missed you and were full of disappointment.

  As you know, I have been drafted for a tour of duty on a review of NATO. This, I think, has been useful to President Kennedy and his Cabinet officers concerned with it. The first phase of my work is about at an end. Alice and I will fly to Amsterdam on the sixth of April for an argument which I have at The Hague Court beginning April 10. By the end of the month we should be back. I hope in time for a spring visit from you.

  With most affectionate greetings to you and the boss,

  As ever,

  Dean

  March 28, 1961

  Dear Dean:

  I appreciated very highly your letter of the 23rd and, of course, I will be glad to do whatever is necessary with regards to the request of Dr. Bernard Noble.

  I am enclosing him a copy of this letter and you tell him he will be perfectly welcome here and I will do everything I possibly can to help him.

  Sincerely yours,

  Harry S. Truman

  Those articles of yours are dandies. Will write you about them later.

  “This asinine Cuban adventure” is the Bay of Pigs invasion by Cuban partisans, organized by the CIA, which was a humiliating failure. Acheson reminds Truman that they had rejected similar coup plots for Iran and Guatemala proposed by Truman’s intelligence advisers. The book Acheson sent Truman is his Sketches from Life of Men I Have Known.

  May 3, 1961

  Dear Boss:

  I am home just in time to thank you for your birthday note and to write you one wishing you all good things for this coming year and many to follow. I have seen some recent photographs of you looking sassy and full of fight.

  Our trip to Europe was interesting, hard work and fun, all mixed together. The end of it, in which first our government and then de Gaulle’s fell apart, had its grim aspect. W
hy we ever engaged in this asinine Cuban adventure, I cannot imagine. Before I left it was mentioned to me and I told my informants how you and I had turned down similar suggestions for Iran and Guatemala and why. I thought that this Cuban idea had been put aside, as it should have been. It gave Europe as bad a turn as the U-2. The direction of this government seems surprisingly weak. So far as I can make out the mere inertia of the Eisenhower plan carried it to execution. All that the present administration did was to take out of it those elements of strength essential to its success.

  Brains are no substitute for judgment. Kennedy has, abroad at least, lost a very large part of the almost fanatical admiration which his youth and good looks had inspired.

  Washington is a depressed town. The morale in the State Department has about struck bottom.

  Nevertheless, I say again, “Many, many happy returns of your birthday.”

  As ever,

  Dean

  P.S. An inscribed copy of my book goes to you today.

  Truman indulges a pet peeve about daylight saving time, which he feels ruins the time-zone system. He longs for a moment to return to the Senate, and refers to the appointment in September 1960 of Missouri Lieutenant Governor Edward V. Long to the U.S. Senate to replace the deceased Senator Thomas C. Hennings, Jr.

  May 13, 1961

  Dear Dean:

  I’m sitting here this Saturday morning at eleven o’clock wondering what you may be doing at the same time maybe two hours later by that God Awful mixed up time under which we have to live.

  You know it took about fifty or sixty years to arrange the time zones and now they mean not a thing. Maybe we should have a rod in our back yards with a couple of poles on each side of it, pointing to true north, if such there is, so we may be able to tell when it is noon by old sol. But I’m thinking of you, noon, one or two o’clock.