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

by David McCullough

  September 21, 1961

  Dear Mr. President,

  This is a somber note. It is not intended to depress you, though it will. It is highly confidential. The purpose is to put you on guard for developments which neither you nor I can prevent, but which neither one of us should support or condone. Beware especially of the tendency to get you “to support the President” in syndicated newspaper articles.

  I believe that sometime this autumn we are in for a most humiliating defeat over Berlin. Our own policy and preparations are increasingly weak and vacillating. Our allies are already in full retreat. Spaak is, or [will] soon be, in Moscow looking for terms. Lange of Norway will follow. The Germans are about to collapse. If Adenauer is allowed to stay on, which is doubtful, it will be only to sign the surrender. McCloy is everywhere urging an accommodation with Khrushchev. Walter Lippmann is the archangel of appeasement. The White House staff is already scuttling my recommendations.

  The worst of it is not that eight years of Eisenhower inaction and one of Kennedy may have made the result inevitable, but that it will probably be dressed up as statesmanship of the new order, a refreshing departure from the bankrupt inheritance of the Truman-Acheson reliance on military power.

  So count one hundred before you comment on anything, and don’t let Bill Hillman write anything for you on foreign policy. The First Amendment protects silence as well as speech. I am going underground.

  If you read today’s U.S.-Soviet agreement on the principles of “general and complete disarmament” with the U.N. to have the only armed forces to be permitted, and look also at the Soviet demand for the Troika system and triple veto in the U.N., you will see the idiocy of our policy. No one means a damned thing which is said. We are all engaged in a propaganda battle of insincerities to create “images” of ourselves in the minds of people who don’t count. If we get Barry Goldwater after this—as we well may—we shall thoroughly deserve it.

  This is all for your most private eye. I hope I am wrong, but do not think that there is the remotest chance that I am. The course is set and events are about to take control.

  Alice sends her love to you and the Boss.

  As ever,

  Dean

  September 24, 1961

  Dear Dean:

  Your letter of Aug. 4th has been read and reread. I think it is a classic. It sets out the issues. What the hell are we to do? I don’t know. Your letter sets it out.

  For my part I’m happy you are trying to set the Administration on the right track. Keep it up.

  I am supposed to be in Washington on the last day in October for a talk to the Washington Press Club. Then to stay all night at the White House.

  I’ll let you know what time the arrival will be made. My headquarters will be at the Mayflower. Don’t know whether I should go to the White House or not.

  Bess will be with me.

  Sincerely,

  Harry

  Truman responds to Acheson’s letter of September 21. He is, unlike Acheson, always an optimist.

  September 25, 1961

  Dear Dean:

  Your somber note gave me the most depressing viewpoint I’ve had since Jan. 20th 1953.

  I can’t agree with you. We saved Berlin once. We will have to do it again. The Russian Dictator is one of those who can’t face issues when they are met head on.

  You must remember that our head of state is young, inexperienced and hopeful. Let’s hope the hopeful works.

  Was good to talk to you. Let’s keep working for the country. We, I hope, can do it. You know what I told you. I’m always in your corner.

  Sincerely,

  Harry

  Joe Brown, whom Truman mentions, was a personal friend; he had been vice president and general counsel of the Kansas City Southern Railway.

  October 26, 1961

  Dear Dean:

  Yesterday morning I received a telegram from Mrs. Joe Brown telling me that Joe had passed away the night before.

  I was very sorry to hear that and I know you will be. The funeral ceremony, I think, will be tomorrow. Her address is 1030 West 59th Terrace, Kansas City, Missouri.

  I am hoping to see you when I arrive back in Washington and I hope we will have the usual good visit. I am also looking forward to the luncheon with you on the date you and the Madam set, which I believe is November 1st.

  Sincerely yours,

  Harry

  On November 1 Truman had lunch with Acheson in Washington, had dinner with President Kennedy at the White House and spent the night there. On November 2, he gave a speech to the National Press Club, which had asked him to look back on his presidency. “I don’t like to do that,” Truman said, “because I always have looked forward.” He talked mainly about the 1948 campaign, because his speech was on the anniversary of election day, 1948. He also mentioned how depressing his trips to Washington were during the Eisenhower administration, when he always knew the President was following misguided policies. He contrasted his current happy trip to Washington. Kennedy was President and the country was turning in the right direction. “I look to the days and months ahead with confidence,” he concluded.

  Chester Bowles, a successful advertising man, cofounder of Benton & Bowles, was regarded by Acheson as too intellectually soft to be suited to foreign affairs and was removed as Under Secretary of State but immediately named as a special adviser to the President on Asian, African, and Latin American affairs. German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer was eighty-five years old at this time and perhaps, Acheson observes, beginning to fail.

  November 28, 1961

  Dear Mr. President:

  Mayor Richard Lee of New Haven has just passed on to me the transmission to you of his request that you speak at a fund raising dinner in New Haven. The funds are for his campaign for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senator. The dinner could be held in late January, late February or anytime in March. Dick says that he has as yet no opposition and expects none unless Ribicoff wants the nomination. He (Dick) does not think that he does want it, but instead wants an appointment to the Supreme Court. I do not advise your doing this, since you have a good many more important things on your calendar. But if you have an urge for a political speech, here is a chance. What shall I tell him?

  Washington becomes more and more puzzling to me. One day Bowles is kicked out of the State Department; the next day he is taken into the White House to advise on all foreign problems except those of Europe. Dear old Averell becomes, of all things, Ass’t Sec. of State for the Far East where he has been once.

  When Adenauer was here he asked me to see him alone, which I did. He had failed a good deal since last April. I thought that he did not make much sense. I gather from Paul Nitze that the Chancellor made the same impression in his conferences. The whole Berlin and German policy becomes bewildering to me. One of my friends will brief me on it soon and I shall try to give you a more coherent account than I could now.

  Alice is hard at work for an exhibition of her new paintings here in January, early in the month. We plan then to go to Cambodia on Prince Sihanouk’s invitation, and then on for a visit to Australia, principally to see Bob Menzies—and to get a month away from winter in Washington, a frivolous reason but the true one.

  Affectionately,

  Dean

  At the Yale Club’s annual dinner in Washington, D.C., on March 27, 1962, held at the National Press Club, Truman presented an award called the Yale Bowl to Acheson (Yale class of 1915). He gave a brief speech about his old friend, reading from a draft handwritten on hotel stationery. When he got back home, he handwrote a somewhat more polished draft of the speech and sent this to Acheson (reproduced below). Acheson in turn sent Truman the notes, quite rough in this case, which he had used in making his acceptance speech. Although Acheson began by saying he was going to talk primarily about Yale, he then spoke about “my beloved Chief” on the pretext that “Mr. T. is a Yale man by our adoption.” He addressed the “mystery” of why Truman was such a great success a
s President, citing three reasons. First, his vitality, a priceless gift “for which ancestors, not he, are responsible.” Second, the clear and competent decision-making procedure he followed. All the people involved in a decision understood their mutual responsibility; all their points of view, including adversarial ones, were heard in the presence of one another; the President worked hard to be well informed on all issues; he made decisions promptly, clearly, and in writing; and he adhered to his decisions once he had made them. The third reason was Truman’s combination of good judgment and good luck. “Judgment easy to admire, but don’t despise luck,” Acheson concluded.

  March 27, 1962

  I am here this evening to perform a duty that I like very much. I more than appreciate the privilege you have given me to help honor my good friend of many years standing, the Honorable Dean Acheson.

  Dean is one of the greatest men of this period and he will go down in history as one of the greatest of the great Secretaries of State of the United States. When history is written he will be placed in that galaxy of the men who saved the free world.

  He will be in the same class as Washington and his Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson, and as Lincoln and his great Secretary of State William Seward.

  He is among the greatest of the great public servants in every capacity in which he served—and he served in many capacities from the 1930s to 1953.

  He furnished me with the information needed to end two wars—one in Europe and one in the Pacific.

  I wish I had command of the English Language such as Dean has, so I could adequately state his record to this great government. Present the bowl

  Harry Truman

  Truman did not accept the lecture invitation Acheson speaks of.

  April 9, 1962

  Dear Mr. President:

  Ned Hall sent me a copy of his letter to you of April 6, asking you to give a lecture at the Hill School in April 1963 on the new foundation which they have gotten this year. He mentions in his letter that I did it this year. So I am writing to say that indeed I did, and that Alice and I enjoyed our experience very much. It is no trouble to get to the school, which is only an hour away from Philadelphia by car, which the school will provide. It is also a simple way to pick up fifteen hundred dollars without much pain.

  I can’t tell you what a delightful time we had with you and Mrs. Truman a week ago last weekend. It was wonderful to see you both looking so well and to have a chance for a little, though not much, talk. We must make up for the crowded scene by having some private talk when you are in these parts next.

  Alice is off on Sunday for Cyprus and southern France. I join her in London at the end of the first week in May for a short stay there and then a visit to Sweden. We are really establishing the all-time record for travel in 1962.

  Our warmest greetings to you both.

  As ever,

  Dean

  Acheson came to the Truman Library on March 31 to attend a meeting of the board of directors of the Harry S. Truman Library Institute for National and International Affairs and the presentation ceremony for a bust of himself commissioned by the foundation that had raised the funds to build the Truman Library. Acheson also spoke at a conference of scholars held in conjunction with the board meeting. The bust of Acheson has been installed for many years in the Truman Library’s research room, where scholars pore over the papers of both Truman and Acheson.

  April 20, 1962

  Dear Dean:

  Miss Conway brought me the picture which you sent to her to be signed for Mr. Gardner Jackson and we are sending it to him direct, as you requested, in the self-addressed, stamped envelope you enclosed. I can’t understand why in the world you would send a stamped envelope to one who has been signing his name in the right-hand corner and letting it go free.

  You really made the meeting here for the Heads of the Universities and Teachers. Everybody in Independence is still talking about it.

  I don’t know when I will be in your neighborhood again but I certainly want to spend some time with you discussing conditions as they are and what they ought to be in the future. I have refused to give any interviews on the present administration as to the welfare of the country and the world. I always tell them we can’t judge a President when he has served only one-eighth of his term.

  I hope everything is going well with you and I sincerely hope, when conditions work out as they should, I will have an opportunity to have another visit with you.

  Sincerely yours,

  Harry S. Truman

  David K. E. Bruce, with whom Acheson mentions having lunch, was the American ambassador to the United Kingdom. Archbishop Makarios III of the Greek Orthodox Church was president of the Republic of Cyprus at this time.

  May 3, 1962

  Dear Boss:

  Alice and I will be in London with the Bruces on your birthday. We shall drink your health and raise a loud cheer for you in the company of good men and true everywhere. All good wishes and many more years to spread the word and hearten the brave. We need it now more than ever these days.

  I have a curious and apprehensive feeling as I watch JFK that he is a sort of Indian snake charmer. He toots away on his pipe and our problems sway back and forth around him in a trance-like manner, never approaching, but never withdrawing; all are in a state of suspended life, including the pipe player, who lives only in his dreams.

  Some day one of these snakes will wake up; and no one will be able even to run.

  So we are going away again. Alice has been in Cyprus doing some painting and being received by his Grace of the whiskers, Archbishop-President Makarios. (What a President you would have made if you had been an Archbishop into the bargain and had had whiskers down to your waist! The idea is a novel one but quite intriguing.) I am to meet her in London after she has a week or ten days in Southern France, in the small town of Vence near Grasse, a place for painters. After ten days we go on to Sweden when I attend a conference presided over by Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands. Then we shall both visit the Bohemans for a few days. You will remember him as the Swedish Ambassador, a tall able fellow who always believed that agriculture would prove the Achilles heel of the Soviet system—that is, the limiting factor.

  Again our most affectionate remembrances and greetings go to you and Bess.

  Most warmly,

  Dean

  Years before this letter was written, when Truman’s presidency was into its sixth year and he was starting to think of his place in history, he wrote a memorandum to an assistant: “The lies are beginning to be solidified and made into historical facts. Let’s head them off now while we can. The truth is all I want for history. If I appear in a bad light when we have the truth that is just too bad. We must take it. But I don’t want a pack of lying so called historians to do to Roosevelt and to me what the New Englanders did to Jefferson and Jackson.” Truman, who was a devoted reader of history and felt he understood something about historians, always worried that false or biased accounts of him and his administration would be accepted as factual.

  July 6, 1962

  Dear Dean:

  Well, it came about at last. My historical outfit insisted that I call you. I did, and you answered as I knew you would.

  But, Dean, if there is anything in the world I dislike to do, it is to put my good friends on the “spot.” Under no circumstances would I have called you, but because I am most interested in having the facts properly stated for the future.

  Andrew Johnson, James Monroe, James Madison, Rutherford Hayes, Grover Cleveland and even Calvin Coolidge have been placed in a most embarrassing position by people who want to make them appear as ridiculous characters.

  Maybe I am one. But I am anxious that my good friends help me to prevent that from happening. You know, better than anyone, how hard I worked to meet the decisions it was necessary to make.

  Now, articles are coming out, along with books, showing I could never make a decision unless some smart boy told me how to make it. That may
have happened—but I didn’t know it.

  Dean, my best to you and Alice.

  Sincerely,

  Harry

  Truman did not accept the invitation that Acheson mentions.

  August 6, 1962

  Dear Boss

  Early in July Jack Wheeler-Bennett, the only friend I have with an office in Buckingham Palace, asked me to urge you to accept an invitation which he sent you on July 5th to give a lecture at Ditchley House next spring. I decided to mind my own business, an unusually rare and wise decision for me. Now he writes again asking whether his earlier letter went astray. Thus we are chivvied to chivy our friends.

  But I do not urge you to do this, but only say that if you and the boss would like a free ride to Europe and back to fix up any damage that Ike may have done, this is a pretty painless way to get it. Ditchley House is a most beautiful eighteenth century great house, the Foundation represents the crème de la crème of England, and the subject they want to hear about you know backwards and forwards.

  This does my duty and, I hope, puts not even the pressure of a thistle down on you.

  Alice and I have been getting the greatest satisfaction from the first class job which our David has done for over a year now as U.S. attorney for the D.C. He is becoming a wise and effective force in the community, understanding the problems and respected by judges, police and citizens. It is very gratifying to see his fine qualities blossom.

  With deep affection.

  As ever,

  Dean

  August 8, 1962

  Dear Mr. President:

  Six years ago I took up with you, at Dr. Bernard Noble’s urging, the request of the Department of State for access to your reserved papers relating to the Potsdam Conference, in aid of compiling for publication a volume or more of papers on that Conference. You readily agreed and were of immense help in the preparation of the work. In fact, it would have been woefully incomplete without your help.