by Roy Jenkins
In his early eighties his powers, not so much of mind as of body, began noticeably to fail. He had a bad bathroom fall in the autumn of 1964. He lost a lot of weight and became a very emaciated old man. He also lost his mobility and for his last six or seven years was more or less confined to his house. Suddenly, over a weekend in the summer of 1966, he ceased to go regularly to the Library (the Nixon visit was a rare subsequent exception) and ceased also to walk briskly about the town in the early mornings, or at any other time of day. When a prominent Independence citizen who was the ex-President’s lawyer was asked by an interviewer what Truman thought of some major developments which took place in the town square around 1970 he in effect replied that he had few thoughts about them because he never saw them. Bess Truman, who had never taxed herself very heavily, remained much more active, and even after 29 years of courtship and 53 years of marriage still managed 10 years of widowhood before dying at the age of 97.
Truman’s agility, although non-athletic, was an essential part of his personality. When it went a good part of his mental zest went with it. His daughter insists that he continued to read two newspapers a day and to keep abreast of events well into the last year of his life. But he lost his desire to comment upon these events or to communicate outside the small family circle. After 1970 his life, which had already gone into a lower gear in 1966, quietly subsided. He died in a Kansas City hospital on December 26th, 1972. He was buried in the courtyard of the Library.
The commemorative stone, while not elaborate, is neither eloquent nor sparse. It lists with equal prominence each office which he had held, from Eastern Judge to President of the United States. This flatness was in a sense appropriate, for he had treated all the offices with equal respect, and behaved in each of them with equal determination to do his best, and equal equanimity about the comments of most others when he had done it. It so happened that the first offices led to the building of some good roads and the last to the building of a Western world which enjoyed unprecedented prosperity and freedom from major war for a generation. In each case he built well, honestly, and without pretension.
References
The reference sources most frequently quoted are referred to by title as listed below.
Sketches from Life by Dean Acheson (New York: Harper & Row, 1961; London: Hamish Hamilton, 1961)
Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department by Dean Acheson (New York: W. W. Norton, 1969; London: Hamish Hamilton, 1970). Extracts reprinted by permission of Hamish Hamilton Ltd.
Roosevelt, the Soldier of Freedom by James Macgregor Burns (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970; London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971)
The Man of Independence by Jonathan Daniels (New York:J. P. Lip-pincott, 1950)
Conflict and Crisis by Robert Donovan (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1977). Extracts reprinted by permission of the Sterling Lord Agency. Copyright © 1977 by Robert Donovan.
Tumultuous Years by Robert Donovan (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1982). Extracts reprinted by permission of W. W. Norton Company, Inc.
Plain Speaking, an Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman by Merle Miller (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1973; London: Victor Gollancz, 1974)
Off the Record, The Private Papers of Harry S. Truman edited by Robert H. Ferrell (New York: Harper & Row, 1980)
Dear Bess: the Letters of Harry to Bess Truman 1910-1959 edited by Robert H. Ferrell (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1983). Extracts reprinted by permission of W. W. Norton Company, Inc.
Harry S. Truman by Margaret Truman (New York: William Morrow, 1973; London Hamish Hamilton, 1973). Extracts reprinted by permission of Hamish Hamilton Ltd and William Morrow & Company, Inc. Copyright © 1972 by Margaret Truman Daniels.
1. THE TRANSITION
1. Off the Record, p. 16
2. Plain Speaking from ‘A preparatory note on the Language’
3. ibid, p. 34
2. JACKSON COUNTY
1. Plain Speaking, p. 67 and Dear Bess, passim
2. Dear Bess, p. 293
3. The Man of Independence, p. 147
4. Plain Speaking, p. 137
5. Harry S. Truman; p. 82
3. JUNIOR SENATOR FROM MISSOURI
1. Dear Bess, p. 396
2. Dear Bess, p. 376
3. ibid, p. 420
4. ibid, p. 414
5. Harry S. Truman, p. 117
6. Charles Robbins, Last of his Kind (Morrow, 1979), p. 111n
7. Dear Bess, p. 39
8. ibid, p. 441
9. The Man of Independence, p. 211
10. Dear Bess, pp. 445-6
11. Plain Speaking, p. 158
12. ibid, p. 169
13. Dear Bess, p. 495
4. HEIR TO A DYING PRESIDENT
1. Joseph Alsop, The Life and Times of Franklin D. Roosevelt (Thames & Hudson, 1982), p. 250
2. Harry S. Truman, p. 167
3. ibid, p. 168
4. Roosevelt, the Soldier of Freedom, p. 505
5. The Man of Independence, pp. 248-9
6. Roosevelt, the Soldier of Freedom, p. 505
7. Harry S. Truman, p. 177
8. ibid, p. 186
9. ibid, p. 199
5. THE NEW PRESIDENT
1. Off the Record, pp. 31-2
2. ibid, p. 49
3. Dear Bess, p. 522
4. Off the Record, p. 55
5. Dear Bess, p. 517
6. Off the Record, p. 59
7. ibid, p. 51
8. Dear Bess, p. 522
9. Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War (Cassell, 1953), Vol. VI, p. 553
10. Off the Record, p. 60
11. ibid, p. 56
12. Conflict and Crisis, p. 97
6. TRUMAN BATTERED
1. Dear Bess, p. 523
2. Conflict and Crisis, pp. 134-5
3. ibid, p. 135
4. Off Record, p. 73 (in a letter to his cousin, Miss Nellie Noland)
5. Dear Bess, p. 526
6. Conflict and Crisis, p. 122
7. Off Record, p. 64
8. Conflict and Crisis, p. 236
9. Off the Record, p. 104
10. ibid, p. 83
11. Conflict and Crisis, p. 236
12. ibid, p. 212
13. ibid, pp. 216-17 (quoted in)
14. Diaries of Harold L. Ickes (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1955).
15. Dear Bess, p. 523
16. Conflict and Crisis, p. 172
17. Off the Record, p. 96
18. Harry S. Truman, p. 330
19. ibid, p. 324
7. TRUMAN RESURGENT
1. Harry S. Truman, p. 148
2. Sketches from Life, p. 157
3. Off the Record, p. 109
4. Present at the Creation, p. 219
5. Alan Bullock: Ernest Bevin: Foreign Secretary (Heinemann, 1983), p. 379
6. Harry S. Truman, p. 343
7. Crisis and Conflict, p. 287
8. ibid, pp. 301-2
9. The Forrestal Diaries pp. 333-4
10. Off the Record, p. 1 20
8. VICTORY OUT OF THE JAWS OF DEFEAT
1. Conflict and Crisis, p. 319
2. Harry S. Truman, pp. 384-5
3. Conflict and Crisis, p. 374
4. Harry S. Truman, p. 388
5. Conflict and Crisis, p. 376
6. Harry S. Truman, p. 388
7. Conflict and Crisis, p. 376
8. The Man of Independence, p. 319
9. Donovan, op. cit. p. 382, based upon statements by Clark Clifford
10. Conflict and Crisis, p. 361
11. ibid, p. 389
12. ibid, p. 289 (quoted in)
13. Harry S. Truman, p. 9
14. ibid, p. 11
15. Irwin Ross, The Loneliest Campaign (New American Library, 1968), p. 129
16. Harry S. Truman, p. 21
17. The Loneliest Campaign, pp. 187-8
18. ibid, p. 240
19. Conflict and Crisis, p. 438
9. THE LIMITATIONS OF VICTORY
1. Harry S. Truman, p. 400
2. Off the Record, p. 168
3. Tumultuous Years, p. 54
4. Harry S. Truman, p. 425
5. Off the Record, p. 168
6. Harry S. Truman, p. 429
10. TRUMAN’S THIRD WAR
1. Harry S. Truman, pp. 435-6
2. Off the Record, pp. 177-8
3. Margot Asquith, Autobiography (Eyre & Spotiswoode, 1985), p. 295
4. Harry S. Truman, p. 455
5. Khrushchev Remembers (Little, Brown, 1970), pp. 367-73
6. Dear Bess, p. 562
7. Present at the Creation, p. 406
8. Harry S. Truman, p. 457
9. Dear Bess, p. 562
10. Harry S. Truman, p. 469
11. Tumultuous Years, p. 224
12. Present at the Creation, p. 415
13. Harry S. Truman, p. 484
14. Present at the Creation, p. 406
15. Harry S. Truman, p. 493 (quoted in)
16. Tumultuous Years, p. 289
17. Harry S. Truman, p. 493 (quoted in)
18. Tumultuous Years, p. 309
19. Present at the Creation, p. 475
20. ibid, p. 478
21. ibid, p. 480
22. K. Harris, Attlee (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1982), pp. 463-4
23. Harry S. Truman, pp. 513
24. Ibid, p. 518
25. Off the Record, p. 211
26. Plain Speaking, p. 301
11.THE LAST PHASE
1. Tumultuous Years, p. 335
2. Off the Record, p. 220
3. ibid, p. 245
4. Harry S. Truman, p. 532
5. Off the Record, pp. 266-7
6. ibid, pp. 268-9
7. Harry S. Truman, p. 545
8. Tumultuous Years, p. 392
9. Memoirs of Harry S. Truman (Doubleday, 1956), Vol. II, pp. 527-30
10. Harry S. Truman, p. 557
11. ibid, p. 557
12. Off the Record, pp. 275-6
13. ibid, p. 279
14. Harry S. Truman, p. 556
15. ibid, p. 555
16. Tumultuous Years, p. 407
17. Plain Speaking, p. 17
18. Off the Record, p. 288
12. A QUIET END
1 Off the Record, p. 546
2 Harry S. Truman, p. 562
3 Off the Record, p. 382
4 ibid, pp. 403-4
1 He was only the 32nd person to hold the office. But as Grover Cleveland held it twice, the Truman presidency is normally counted as the 33rd.
2 But see pp. 59-60 infra for some exegesis on the uncertainty of the date when this note was first composed and of the order in which Roosevelt placed Truman and Douglas.
3 ‘Cronies’ always played a considerable part in Truman’s life. They had to be male and possess at least some of the characteristics of being loyal, unpretentiously convivial, and adequately good at poker. Mostly they worked with or for Truman, although not necessarily so, and some of those with whom he worked most closely, and greatly liked and respected (notably General Marshall and Dean Acheson) were not cronies. This breakfast ‘crony’ of his first day as President was Hugh Fulton who had been counsel to the Senate committee over which Truman presided during the war. Fairly soon afterwards Truman cooled towards him. This was unusual: he was mostly very loyal to cronies.
1 Harry S. Truman, published in 1973, a little more than a year after his death. It is the best ‘daughter biography’ that I know. It is also very near to being the best book on Truman. It is rightly partial and does not see everything in the round (otherwise there would be no point in writing this book). But it is both interesting and careful with facts.
2 Amongst earlier Presidents the ‘S’ in Ulysses S. Grant was equally sterile, although this arose accidentally from a confusion in Army records.
3 His grandmother was less impressed. When he appeared in it at Grandview she told him that it was the first time a ‘blue [i.e. Union] uniform’ had been seen in that house since 1863, and that he was not to bring it there again. (Letters to Bess, p. 219.)
4 Biographical notes, written by Truman circa 1956, and quoted by William Hillman in Mr President (p. 135). There seems some discrepancy between this picture and Margaret Truman’s statement that the farm earned $15,000 a year.
5 Typically, he did not think much of it: ‘New York is a very much overrated burg’, he wrote on March 26th, 1918. ‘It merely keeps up its rep. by its press agents continually harping on the wonder of it. There isn’t a town west of the Mississippi of any size that can’t show you a better time.’ (Dear Bess, p. 253.)
6 ‘The bonus’ was an ex gratia payment to World War I veterans in the form of a twenty-year endowment insurance certificate due to mature in 1945. In the depression the American Legion demanded immediate cash payments. The issue was not resolved until January 1936. Hoover treated the ‘Bonus Marchers’, who camped in Washington in the summer of 1932, with cold legality. He sent the Army, under the command of General Douglas MacArthur, with his aide Colonel Eisenhower at his side, to disperse them. This was done with considerable roughness. Roosevelt gave them sympathy but not the money. Payment was eventually authorized by Congress over his veto.
7 It was a major issue at the Democratic National Convention in New York City that year. Even the exhaustion of 103 ballots to choose a ‘neutral’ candidate, John W. Davis, former Ambassador to London, rather than the Catholic ‘wet’ and therefore highly vulnerable Al Smith or William G. McAdoo, Woodrow Wilson’s somewhat conservative son-in-law, did not prevent the delegates agonizing lengthily over whether or not to condemn the Klan in the platform, and only deciding not to do so by the splendid margin of 5423/20 votes to 5413/20.
8 The Man of Independence (J. B. Lippincott, 1950). Daniels was the son of Josephus Daniels, Wilson’s Secretary of the Navy to whom Franklin D. Roosevelt was Assistant Secretary from 1913 to 1919. Truman is reported as having said of it: ‘That book is filled with a lot of bunk. He used to work for me when I was President and he worked for Roosevelt. But when he wrote that book he just seemed to go haywire in places [but] he got most things like that [facts & dates] right …’ (Merle Miller, Plain Speaking, p. 60.)
9 And not only on the highways. Kansas City still has the rare distinction of a suburban stream (Brush Creek) that runs for four miles or more along a wide concrete bed.
10 Fourteen years later Truman took Canfil to the Potsdam Conference as a sort of baggage master. He had recently appointed him US Marshal for the Western district of Missouri. This enabled Truman to introduce him to Stalin as ‘Marshal Canfil’. Thereafter, Truman claimed, the Russian entourage treated him with immense respect. It became one of Truman’s few enjoyable memories of Potsdam.
11 Truman also placed a Jackson statue in front of the remodelled Independence courthouse. He would have been amazed to be told that a little over forty years later it would be complemented by a statue of himself, not on a horse, but walking at a vigorous pace—an unusual but appropriate portrayal. In Kansas City his courthouse was overshadowed within two years by a new City Hall of 26 floors, built across the street by his old rival Henry McElroy, who had become City Manager. The main contractors for both towers was the Sventon Construction Company, which must have had a good five years. McElroy died while awaiting trial after the Pendergast débâcle in 1939.
1 Daniels op cit p. 183. Daniels’ judgments, in my view and despite Truman’s own disparagement of the work (see p. 22 supra), remain perceptive after 34 years.
3 Truman firmly supported the President but this did not seem to impair his relations with Wheeler.
3 Louis Dembitz Brandeis, 1856-1941, associate justice of the Supreme Court, 1916-1939, the first Jew to be appointed to that body. Mostly his judgments (often in a minority) supported the New Deal, although he was a little suspicious of Roosevelt’s centralizing tendencies and was against him on the constitutionality of the Natio
nal Recovery Act and on the Court-packing issue.
4 Truman’s health was of some continuing concern throughout the late 1930s. In September 1937 he went to an army hospital (he was a lieutenant-colonel in the reserve) at Hot Springs, Arkansas for two weeks of intensive check-up and tests, and returned there on several subsequent occasions. He was concerned about a whole variety of complaints: erratic sleeping, tiredness by day, lack of appetite, headaches. The picture of Truman as a man of unblemished health, robust appetite for simple food, assured sleep, effortless ability to rise every morning at 6.00 and walk a brisk four miles before breakfast, all adding up to a predictably long life to the age of 88, was something which came with his presidency and not long before. In his early fifties (as when he was a much younger man on the farm) there was a good deal of complaint about the difficulty of getting out of bed, accompanied by occasional bursts of 12 or 15 hours of sleep, and some touches of hypochondria.
* Cordell Hull, on the other hand, declined it flatly when Roosevelt dangled it before him. And Speaker Rayburn, Truman’s first preferred candidate, in no way allowed himself to become obsessive. When Truman had proposed him at a San Francisco banquet in March he returned the compliment by proposing Truman at St Louis one week later. And when he found himself effectively eliminated by being judged insufficiently conservative to carry his own Texas delegation he took the setback calmly.