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Harry S. Truman
33rd President of the United States
In office April 12, 1945 – January 20, 1953
Vice President	None (1945–1949) Alben Barkley (1949–1953)
Preceded by	Franklin D. Roosevelt
Succeeded by	Dwight D. Eisenhower
34th Vice President of the United States
In office January 20, 1945 – April 12, 1945
President	Franklin D. Roosevelt
Preceded by	Henry A. Wallace
Succeeded by	Alben W. Barkley
United States Senator from Missouri
In office January 3, 1935 – January 17, 1945
Preceded by	Roscoe C. Patterson
Succeeded by	Frank P. Briggs
Personal details
Born	(1884-05-08)May 8, 1884 Lamar, Missouri
Died	December 26, 1972(1972-12-26) (aged 88) Kansas City, Missouri
Political party	Democratic
Spouse	Bess Wallace Truman
Children	Mary Margaret Truman
Occupation	Small businessman (haberdasher), farmer
Signature
Military service
Branch/service	Missouri National Guard United States Army
Years of service	1905-1911 1917-1919
Rank	Captain
Commands	Battery D, 129th Field Artillery, 60th Brigade, 35th Infantry Division
Battles/wars	World War I Western Front

Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884 – December 26, 1972) was the 33rd President of the United States (1945–1953). As the 34th vice president, he succeeded Franklin D. Roosevelt, who died less than three months after he began his fourth term.

During World War I Truman served as an artillery officer, making him the only president to have seen combat in World War I (his successor Eisenhower spent the war training tank crews in Pennsylvania). After the war he became part of the political machine of Tom Pendergast and was elected a county commissioner in Missouri and eventually a United States senator. After he gained national prominence as head of the wartime Truman Committee, Truman replaced vice president Henry A. Wallace as Roosevelt's running mate in 1944.

Truman faced challenge after challenge in domestic affairs. The disorderly reconversion of the economy of the United States was marked by severe shortages, numerous strikes, and the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act over his veto. He confounded all predictions to win re-election in 1948, helped by his famous Whistle Stop Tour of rural America. After his re-election he was able to pass only one of the proposals in his Fair Deal program. He used executive orders to begin desegregation of the U.S. armed forces and to create loyalty checks which dismissed thousands of communist supporters from office, even though he strongly opposed mandatory loyalty oaths for governmental employees, a stance that led to charges that his administration was soft on communism. Truman's presidency was also eventful in foreign affairs, with the end of World War II and his decision to use nuclear weapons against Japan, the founding of the United Nations, the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe, the Truman Doctrine to contain communism, the beginning of the Cold War, the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and the Korean War. Corruption in Truman's administration reached the cabinet and senior White House staff. Republicans made corruption a central issue in the 1952 campaign.

Truman, whose demeanor was very different from that of the patrician Roosevelt, was a folksy, unassuming president. He popularized such phrases as "The buck stops here" and "If you can't stand the heat, you better get out of the kitchen." He overcame the low expectations of many political observers who compared him unfavorably with his highly regarded predecessor. At different points in his presidency, Truman earned both the lowest public approval ratings that had ever been recorded, and the highest approval ratings to be recorded until 1991. Despite negative public opinion during his term in office, popular and scholarly assessments of his presidency became more positive after his retirement from politics and the publication of his memoirs. Truman's legendary upset victory in 1948 over Thomas E. Dewey is routinely invoked by underdog presidential candidates. Most historians consider Truman one of the greatest U.S. Presidents.

Personal life

Truman was born on May 8, 1884 in Lamar, Missouri, the oldest child of John Anderson Truman (1851-1914) and Martha Ellen Young Truman (1852-1947). His parents chose the name Harry after his mother's brother, Harrison Young (1846-1916), Harry's uncle. His parents chose "S" as his middle name, in attempt to please both of Harry's grandfathers, Anderson Shippe Truman and Solomon Young; the initial did not actually stand for anything, as was a common practice among Scots-Irish. A brother, John Vivian (1886–1965), soon followed, along with sister Mary Jane Truman (1889–1978).

John Truman was a farmer and livestock dealer. The family lived in Lamar until Harry was ten months old. They then moved to a farm near Harrisonville, then to Belton, and in 1887 to his grandparents' 600 acre (240 ha) farm in Grandview. When Truman was six, his parents moved the family to Independence, so he could attend the Presbyterian Church Sunday School. Truman did not attend a traditional school until he was eight.

As a young boy, Truman had three main interests: music, reading, and history, all encouraged by his mother. He was very close to his mother for as long as she lived, and as president solicited political as well as personal advice from her. He got up at five every morning to practice the piano, and went to a local music teacher twice a week until he was fifteen. Truman also read a great deal of popular history. He was a page at the 1900 Democratic National Convention at Convention Hall in Kansas City.

After graduating from Independence High School (now William Chrisman High School) in 1901, Truman worked as a timekeeper on the Santa Fe Railroad, sleeping in "hobo camps" near the rail lines; he then worked at a series of clerical jobs. He worked briefly in the mail room of the Kansas City Star. Truman decided not join the International Typographical Union. He returned to the Grandview farm in 1906 and stayed there until 1917 when he went into military service.

The physically demanding work he put in on the Grandview farm was a formative experience. During this period he courted Bess Wallace and even proposed to her in 1911. She turned him down, and Truman said he wanted to make more money than a farmer before he proposed again. He did propose again in 1918, after coming back as a Captain from World War I, and she accepted.

Truman was the only president who served after 1897 not to earn a college degree: poor eyesight prevented him from applying to West Point (his childhood dream) and financial constraints prevented him from securing a degree elsewhere. He did, however, study for two years toward a law degree at the Kansas City Law School (now the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law) in the early 1920s. Later in his life, at age 60, Truman was issued an invitation to become a member of Missouri-Kansas City's Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity, which he accepted.

World War I

Truman enlisted in the Missouri Army National Guard in 1905, and served in it until 1911. With the onset of American participation in World War I, he rejoined the Guard. At his physical in 1905, his eyesight had been an unacceptable 20/50 in the right eye and 20/40 in the left. Reportedly, he passed by secretly memorizing the eye chart.

Before going to France, he was sent to Camp Doniphan, adjacent to Fort Sill, near Lawton, Oklahoma for training. He ran the camp canteen with Edward Jacobson, who had experience in a Kansas City clothing store as a clerk. At Ft. Sill he also met Lieutenant James M. Pendergast, the nephew of Thomas Joseph (T.J.) Pendergast, a Kansas City politician. Both men would have profound influences on later events in Truman's life.

Truman was chosen to be an officer, and then battery commander in an artillery regiment in France. His unit was Battery D, 129th Field Artillery, 60th Brigade, 35th Infantry Division, known for its discipline problems. During a sudden attack by the Germans in the Vosges Mountains, the battery started to disperse; Truman ordered them back into position using profanities that he had "learned while working on the Santa Fe railroad." Shocked by the outburst, his men reassembled and followed him to safety. Under Captain Truman's command in France, the battery did not lose a single man. On November 11, 1918 his artillery unit fired some of the last shots of World War I into German positions. The war was a transformative experience that brought out Truman's leadership qualities; he later rose to the rank of Colonel in the Army Reserves , and his war record made possible his later political career in Missouri.

Early business career

At the war's conclusion, Truman returned to Independence and married his longtime love interest, Bess Wallace, on June 28, 1919, the very day that the Treaty of Versailles was signed. The couple had one child, Mary Margaret (February 17, 1924 - January 29, 2008).

A month before the wedding, banking on their success at Fort Sill and overseas, Truman and Jacobson opened a haberdashery of the same name at 104 West 12th Street in downtown Kansas City. After a few successful years, the store went bankrupt during the recession of 1921, which greatly affected the farm economy. Truman blamed the fall in farm prices on the policies of the Republicans; he worked to pay off the debts until 1934, just as he was going into the U.S. Senate, when banker William T. Kemper retrieved the note during the sale of a bankrupt bank and allowed Truman to pay it off for $1,000. (At the same time Kemper made a $1,000 contribution to Truman's campaign.)

Former comrades in arms and former business partners, Jacobson and Truman remained close friends for life. Decades later, Jacobson's advice to Truman on Zionism would play a critical role in the US government's decision to recognize Israel.

Politics

Jackson County judge

In 1922, with the help of the Kansas City Democratic machine led by boss Tom Pendergast, Truman was elected as a judge of the County Court of the eastern district of Jackson County—an administrative, not judicial, position similar to county commissioners elsewhere.

In 1922, Truman gave a friend $10 for an initiation fee for the Ku Klux Klan but later asked to get his money back; he was never initiated, never attended a meeting, and never claimed membership. Though Truman at times expressed anger towards Jews in his diaries, his business partner and close friend Edward Jacobson was Jewish. Truman's attitudes toward blacks were typical of white Missourians of his era, and were expressed in his casual use of terms like "nigger". Years later, another measure of his racial attitudes would come to the forefront: tales of the abuse, violence, and persecution suffered by many African American veterans upon their return from World War II infuriated Truman, and were a major factor in his decision to issue Executive Order 9981, in July 1948, to back civil rights initiatives and desegregate the armed forces.

He was not reelected in 1924, but in 1926 was elected the presiding judge for the court, and was reelected in 1930.

In 1930 Truman coordinated the "Ten Year Plan", which transformed Jackson County and the Kansas City skyline with new public works projects, including an extensive series of roads, construction of a new Wight and Wight-designed County Court building, and the dedication of a series of 12 Madonna of the Trail monuments honoring pioneer women.

In 1933 Truman was named Missouri's director for the Federal Re-Employment program (part of the Civil Works Administration) at the request of Postmaster General James Farley as payback to Pendergast for delivering the Kansas City vote to Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1932 presidential election. The appointment confirmed Pendergast's control over federal patronage jobs in Missouri and marked the zenith of his power. It was also to create a relationship between Truman and Harry Hopkins and assure avid Truman support for the New Deal.

U.S. Senator

First term

After serving as judge, Truman wanted to run for Governor or Congress, but Pendergast rejected these ideas. In 1934, Pendergast's aides suggested Harry Truman as a candidate for Senator; after three other men turned him down, Pendergast reluctantly backed Truman as the candidate for the 1934 U.S. Senate election for Missouri. During the Democratic primary, Truman defeated John J. Cochran and Tuck Milligan, the brother of federal prosecutor Maurice M. Milligan. Truman then defeated the incumbent Republican, Roscoe C. Patterson, by nearly 20 percent.

Truman assumed office under a cloud as "the senator from Pendergast." He gave patronage decisions to Pendergast but always maintained he voted his conscience. Truman always defended the patronage by saying that by offering a little, he saved a lot.

In his first term as a U.S. Senator, Truman spoke out bluntly against corporate greed, and warned about the dangers of Wall Street speculators and other moneyed special interests attaining too much influence in national affairs. He was, however, largely ignored by President Roosevelt, who appeared not to have taken him seriously at this stage. Truman reportedly had difficulty getting White House secretaries to return his calls.

The 1936 election of Pendergast-backed Governor Lloyd C. Stark revealed even bigger voter irregularities in Missouri than had been uncovered in 1934. Milligan prosecuted 278 defendants in vote fraud cases; he convicted 259. Stark turned on Pendergast, urged prosecution, and was able to wrest federal patronage from the Pendergast machine.

Ultimately Milligan discovered that Pendergast had not paid federal taxes between 1927 and 1937 and had conducted a fraudulent insurance scam. In 1939, Pendergast pled guilty and received a $10,000 fine and a 15-month sentence at Leavenworth Federal Prison. No charges were filed against Truman.

1940 election

Truman's prospects for re-election to the Senate looked bleak. In 1940, both Stark and Maurice Milligan challenged him in the Democratic primary for the Senate. Robert E. Hannegan, who controlled St. Louis Democratic politics, threw his support in the election behind Truman. (Hannegan would go on to broker the 1944 deal that put Truman on the vice presidential ticket for Roosevelt.) Truman campaigned tirelessly and combatively. In the end, Stark and Milligan split the anti-Pendergast vote in the Democratic primary, with Stark and Milligan having more combined votes than Truman.

In September 1940, during the general election campaign, Truman was elected Grand Master of the Missouri Grand Lodge of Freemasonry. In November of that year, he defeated Kansas City State Senator Manvel H. Davis by over 40,000 votes and retained his Senate seat. Truman said later that the Masonic election assured his victory in the general election over State Senator Davis.

The successful 1940 Senate campaign is regarded by many biographers as a personal triumph and vindication for Truman and as a precursor to the much more celebrated 1948 drive for the White House, another contest where he was underestimated. It was the turning point of his political career.

Defense policy statements

On June 23, 1941, the day after Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union, Senator Truman declared: "If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible, although I don't want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances. Neither of them thinks anything of their pledged word." Although the sentiment was in line with what many Americans felt at the time, it was regarded by later biographers as both inappropriate and cynical. The remark was the first in a long series of prominently inopportune off-the-cuff statements by Truman to members of the national press corps.

Truman Committee

Truman gained fame and respect when his preparedness committee (popularly known as the "Truman Committee") investigated the scandal of military wastefulness by exposing fraud and mismanagement. The Roosevelt administration had initially feared the Committee would hurt war morale, and Undersecretary of War Robert P. Patterson wrote to the president declaring it was "in the public interest" to suspend the committee. Truman wrote a letter to the president saying that the committee was "100 percent behind the administration" and that it had no intention of criticizing the military conduct of the war. The committee was considered a success and is reported to have saved at least $15 billion. Truman's advocacy of common-sense cost-saving measures for the military attracted much attention. In 1943, his work as chairman earned Truman his first appearance on the cover of Time. He would eventually appear on nine Time covers and be named the magazine's Man of the Year for 1945 and 1948. After years as a marginal figure in the Senate, Truman was cast into the national spotlight after the success of the Truman Committee.

Vice Presidency

Following months of uncertainty over the president's preference for a running mate, Truman was selected as Franklin Roosevelt's vice presidential candidate in 1944 as the result of a deal worked out by Hannegan, who was Democratic National Chairman that year.

Although his public image remained that of a robust, engaged world leader, Roosevelt's physical condition was in fact rapidly deteriorating in mid-1944. A handful of key FDR advisers, including outgoing Democratic National Committee Chairman Frank C. Walker, incoming Chairman Robert Hannegan, party treasurer Edwin W. Pauley, strategist Ed Flynn, and lobbyist George E. Allen closed ranks in the summer of 1944 to "keep Henry Wallace off the ticket." They considered Wallace, the incumbent vice president, too liberal, and had grave concerns about the possibility of his ascension to the presidency. Allen would later recall that each of these men "realized that the man nominated to run with Roosevelt would in all probability be the next President. . ."

After meeting personally with the party leaders, FDR agreed to replace Wallace as vice president; however, Roosevelt chose to leave the final selection of a running mate unresolved until the later stages of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. James F. Byrnes of South Carolina was initially favored, but labor leaders opposed him. Roosevelt also opposed Byrnes, but was reluctant to disappoint any candidate and did not want to tell Byrnes of his opposition directly; thus the president told Hannegan to "clear it with Sidney", meaning labor leader and Byrnes opponent Sidney Hillman, a few days before the convention. In addition, Byrnes' status as a segregationist gave him problems with Northern liberals, and he was also considered vulnerable because of his conversion from Catholicism. Reportedly, Roosevelt offered the position to Governor Henry F. Schricker of Indiana, but he declined. Before the convention began, Roosevelt wrote a note saying he would accept either Truman or Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas; state and city party leaders preferred Truman. Truman himself did not campaign directly or indirectly that summer for the number two spot on the ticket, and always maintained that he had not wanted the job of vice president. As a result, Roosevelt had to put a great deal of pressure on Truman to accept the vice presidency. On July 19, the party bosses summoned Truman to a suite in the Blackstone Hotel to listen in on a phone call that, unknown to the Senator, they had rehearsed in advance with the President. During the conversation, FDR asked the party bosses whether Truman would accept the position. When they said no, FDR angrily accused Truman of disrupting the unity of the Democratic party then hung up. Feeling as if he had no choice, Truman reluctantly agreed to become Roosevelt's running mate.

Truman's candidacy was humorously dubbed the second "Missouri Compromise" at the 1944 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, as his appeal to the party center contrasted with the liberal Wallace and the conservative Byrnes. The nomination was well received, and the Roosevelt-Truman team went on to score a 432–99 electoral-vote victory in the 1944 presidential election, defeating Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York and Governor John Bricker of Ohio. Truman was sworn in as vice president on January 20, 1945, and served less than three months.

Truman's brief vice-presidency was relatively uneventful, and Roosevelt rarely contacted him, even to inform him of major decisions. Truman shocked many when he attended his disgraced patron Pendergast's funeral a few days after being sworn in. Truman was reportedly the only elected official who attended the funeral. Truman brushed aside the criticism, saying simply, "He was always my friend and I have always been his."

On April 12, 1945, Truman was urgently called to the White House, where Eleanor Roosevelt informed him that the president had died after suffering a massive cerebral hemorrhage. Truman's first concern was for Mrs. Roosevelt. He asked if there was anything he could do for her, to which she replied, "Is there anything we can do for you? For you are the one in trouble now."

Presidency 1945–1953

First term (1945–1949)

Assuming office

Truman had been vice president for only 82 days when President Roosevelt died, April 12, 1945. He had had very little meaningful communication with Roosevelt about world affairs or domestic politics after being sworn in as vice president, and was completely uninformed about major initiatives relating to the successful prosecution of the war—notably the top secret Manhattan Project, which was about to test the world's first atomic bomb.

Shortly after taking the oath of office, Truman said to reporters:

"Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now. I don't know if you fellas ever had a load of hay fall on you, but when they told me what happened yesterday, I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me."

A few days after his swearing in, he wrote to his wife, Bess: "It won't be long until I can sit back and study the whole picture and. . . there'll be no more to this job than there was to running Jackson County and not anymore worry." However, the simplicity he had predicted would prove elusive.

Upon assuming the presidency, Truman asked all the members of FDR's cabinet to remain in place, told them that he was open to their advice, and laid down a central principle of his administration: he would be the one making decisions, and they were to support him. Just a few weeks after he assumed office, on his 61st birthday, the Allies achieved victory in Europe.

Truman was much more difficult for the Secret Service to protect than the wheel chair–bound Roosevelt was. The Secret Service had been protecting Roosevelt for over 12 years. Because he was wheel chair–bound, most of the time, if he needed to go anywhere, his Secret Service agents would push him at their own speed. Truman had no such restrictions and was an avid walker, regularly taking walks around Washington D.C.

Atomic bomb use

We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world. It may be the fire destruction prophesied in the Euphrates Valley Era, after Noah and his fabulous Ark.

— Harry Truman, writing about the atomic bomb in his diary,

Truman was quickly briefed on the Manhattan Project and authorized use of atomic weapons against the Japanese in August 1945, after Japan did not accept the Potsdam Declaration. The atomic bombings that followed were the first, and so far the only, instance of nuclear warfare.

On the morning of August 6, 1945, at 8:15, the B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb, Little Boy, on Hiroshima. Two days later, having heard nothing from the Japanese government, the U.S. military proceeded with its plans to drop a second atomic bomb. On August 9, Nagasaki was also devastated with a bomb, Fat Man, dropped by the B-29 bomber Bockscar. Truman received news of the bombing while aboard the heavy cruiser USS Augusta on his way back to the U.S. after the Potsdam Conference. The Japanese agreed to surrender on August 14.

At the Potsdam Conference, Truman indicated cryptically to Joseph Stalin the U.S. was about to use a new kind of weapon against the Japanese. Though this was the first time the Soviets had been officially given information about the atomic bomb, Stalin (through his spies in the U.S.) was already well aware of the bomb project, in fact learning about it long before Truman himself did.

In the years since the bombings, however, questions about Truman's choice have become more pointed. Supporters of Truman's decision to use the bomb argue that it saved hundreds of thousands of lives that would have been lost in an invasion of mainland Japan. Eleanor Roosevelt spoke in support of this view in 1954, saying that Truman had "made the only decision he could," and that the bomb's use was necessary "to avoid tremendous sacrifice of American lives." Others, including historian Gar Alperovitz, have argued that the use of nuclear weapons was unnecessary and inherently immoral. Truman himself wrote later in life that, "I knew what I was doing when I stopped the war... I have no regrets and, under the same circumstances, I would do it again."

Strikes and economic upheaval

The end of World War II was followed in the United States by uneasy and contentious conversion back to a peacetime economy. The president was faced with a sudden renewal of labor-management conflicts that had lain dormant during the war years, severe shortages in housing and consumer products, and widespread dissatisfaction with inflation, which at one point hit six percent in a single month. In this polarized environment, there was a wave of destabilizing strikes in major industries, and Truman's response to them was generally seen as ineffective. In the spring of 1946, a national railway strike, unprecedented in the nation's history, brought virtually all passenger and freight lines to a standstill for over a month. When the railway workers turned down a proposed settlement, Truman seized control of the railways and threatened to draft striking workers into the armed forces. While delivering a speech before Congress requesting authority for this plan, Truman received word that the strike had been settled on his terms. He announced this development to Congress on the spot and received a tumultuous ovation that was replayed for weeks on newsreels. Although the resolution of the crippling railway strike made for stirring political theater, it actually cost Truman politically: his proposed solution was seen by many as high-handed; and labor voters, already wary of Truman's handling of workers' issues, were deeply alienated.

United Nations, Marshall Plan and the Cold War

As a Wilsonian internationalist, Truman strongly supported the creation of the United Nations, and included former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt on the delegation to the U.N.'s first General Assembly in order to meet the public desire for peace after the carnage of World War II. Faced with Communist abandonment of commitments to democracy made at the Potsdam Conference, and with Communist advances in Greece (leading to the Greek Civil War) and in Turkey that suggested a hunger for global domination, Truman and his foreign policy advisors concluded that the interests of the Soviet Union were quickly becoming incompatible with those of the United States. The Truman administration articulated an increasingly hard line against the Soviets.

Although he claimed no personal expertise on foreign matters, and although the opposition Republicans controlled the United States Congress, Truman was able to win bipartisan support for both the Truman Doctrine, which formalised a policy of containment, and the Marshall Plan, which aimed to help rebuild postwar Europe. To get Congress to spend the vast sums necessary to restart the moribund European economy, Truman used an ideological argument, arguing forcefully that Communism flourishes in economically deprived areas. His goal was to "scare the hell out of Congress." As part of the U.S. Cold War strategy, Truman signed the National Security Act of 1947 and reorganized military forces by merging the Department of War and the Department of the Navy into the National Military Establishment (later the Department of Defense) and creating the U.S. Air Force. The act also created the CIA and the National Security Council.

Fair Deal

After many years of Democratic majorities in Congress and two Democratic presidents, voter fatigue with the Democrats delivered a new Republican majority in the 1946 midterm elections, with the Republicans picking up 55 seats in the House of Representatives and several seats in the Senate. Although Truman cooperated closely with the Republican leaders on foreign policy, he fought them bitterly on domestic issues. He failed to prevent tax cuts or the removal of price controls. The power of the labor unions was significantly curtailed by the Taft-Hartley Act, which was enacted by overriding Truman's veto.

As he readied for the approaching 1948 election, Truman made clear his identity as a Democrat in the New Deal tradition, advocating national health insurance, the repeal of the anti-union Taft-Hartley Act, and an aggressive civil rights program. Taken together, it all constituted a broad legislative agenda that came to be called the "Fair Deal".

Truman's proposals made for potent campaign rhetoric, but were not well received by Congress, even after Democratic gains in the 1948 election. Only one of the major Fair Deal bills, the Housing Act of 1949, was ever enacted.

Recognition of Israel

Truman was a key figure in the establishment of the Jewish state in the Palestine Mandate. In shaping his policy toward Palestine, Truman experienced continuous pressures, especially from the Jewish community, virtually from the moment he took office as president. Truman writes, "Top Jewish leaders in the United States were putting all sorts of pressure on me to commit American power and forces on behalf of the Jewish aspirations in Palestine." In 1946, an Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry recommended the gradual establishment of two states in Palestine, with neither Jews nor Arabs dominating. However, there was little Zionist support for the two-state proposal. Britain's empire was in rapid decline, and under pressure to withdraw from Palestine quickly because of attacks on British forces by armed Zionist groups.

At the urging of the British, a special U.N. committee, UNSCOP, recommended the immediate partitioning of Palestine into two states, and with Truman's support, this initiative was approved by the General Assembly on November 29, 1947. According to Truman, "The facts were that not only were there pressure movements around the United Nations unlike anything that had been seen there before, but that the White House, too, was subjected to a constant barrage. I do not think I ever had as much pressure and propaganda aimed at the White House as I had in this instance. The persistence of a few of the extreme Zionist leaders — actuated by a political motive and engaging in political threats — disturbed and annoyed me." The president noted in a letter to Eleanor Roosevelt, "I regret this situation very much because my sympathy has always been on their side."

The British announced on November 30, 1947 that they would leave Palestine by May 15, 1948. A civil war broke out in Palestine and the Arab League Council nations began moving troops to Palestine's borders. The Zionist idea of a Jewish state in the Middle East was popular in the U.S. , and Truman eventually came to support it.

The State Department, however, disagreed with the idea. Secretary of State George Marshall and most of the foreign service experts strongly opposed the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. Thus, when Truman agreed to meet with Chaim Weizmann at the request of Edward Jacobson, he found himself overruling his own Secretary of State. In the end, Marshall did not publicly dispute the president's decision, as Truman feared he might. Secretary of Defense James Forrestal was vocal on the issue of Palestine and spoke repeatedly about the perils of arousing Arab hostility, which might result in denial of access to petroleum resources in the area and about "the impact of this question on the security of the United States." Truman recognized the State of Israel on May 14, 1948, eleven minutes after it declared itself a nation.

Lenczowski writes:

Initially, he was merely interested in relieving human misery by urging admission of displaced Jews to British-ruled Palestine. In that early stage, he appeared to be quite firm in rejecting "a political structure imposed on the Middle East that would result in conflict." He was also aware, as we have seen, of the gains likely to accrue to the Soviets if Arabs were to be antagonized. Yet he ultimately chose a policy that did lead to conflict and opened the gates to Soviet penetration in the Arab world, as the examples of Nasser's, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and other states showed. Was this policy based on his genuine conversion to the idea that the thus generated conflict in the Middle East was of secondary importance and that the Soviet factor could be safely disregarded? This alternative does not quite square with his determination to stop Soviet advances in the northern tier of Iran, Turkey, and Greece. Furthermore, as his arms embargo indicated, he did not identify US interest with Israel's victory and never went on record claiming that Israel was America’s ally or strategic asset. This leaves us with the other possible alternative — that despite his resentment of the political pressures at home he chose to give them priority over other considerations. Certain observers who stood close to the decision-making process of that era were convinced that domestic politics constituted a major motivation in Truman's behavior. In the often quoted statement addressed to four American envoys from the middle east who, at a meeting in the White House on November 10, 1945, warned him of adverse effects of a pro-Zionist policy, he declared: "I am sorry, gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism: I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents."

For his part, Truman once asserted,

Hitler had been murdering Jews right and left. I saw it, and I dream about it even to this day. The Jews needed some place where they could go. It is my attitude that the American government couldn't stand idly by while the victims Hitler's madness are not allowed to build new lives.

Coupled with such strong humanitarian concerns was Truman's pragmatic need for cash during the 1948 campaign. One particularly critical donor, Abraham Feinberg, arranged for a gift to the campaign of $100,000 in support of a cross-country campaign train trip that Truman wanted to make, but that the Democratic National Committee could not afford. The trip became known as the "whistle-stop tour," and emerged as the centerpiece of the Truman campaign. Feinberg, who helped secure many donations to the cash-starved campaign from supporters of the Zionist cause, was president of Americans for Haganah Incorporated, whose mission was to support unrestricted Jewish immigration to Palestine.

Berlin Airlift

On June 24, 1948, the Soviet Union blocked access to the three Western-held sectors of Berlin. The Allies had never negotiated a deal to guarantee supply of the sectors deep within the Soviet-occupied zone. The commander of the American occupation zone in Germany, General Lucius D. Clay, proposed sending a large armored column driving peacefully, as a moral right, down the autobahn across the Soviet zone to West Berlin, with instructions to defend itself if it were stopped or attacked. Truman, however, following the consensus in Washington, believed this would entail an unacceptable risk of war. He approved a plan to supply the blockaded city by air. On June 25, the Allies initiated the Berlin Airlift, a campaign that delivered food and other supplies, such as coal, using military airplanes on a massive scale. Nothing remotely like it had ever been attempted before, and no other nation had the capability, either logistically or materially, to have accomplished it. The airlift worked; ground access was again granted on May 11, 1949. The airlift continued for several months after that. The Berlin Airlift was one of Truman's great foreign policy successes as president; it significantly aided his election campaign in 1948.

Defense cutbacks

Truman, Congress, and the Pentagon followed a strategy of rapid demobilization after World War II, mothballing ships and sending the veterans home. The reasons for this strategy, which persisted through Truman's first term and well into his second, were largely financial. In order to fund domestic spending requirements, Truman had advocated a policy of defense program cuts for the U.S. armed forces at the end of the war. The Republican majority in Congress, anxious to enact numerous tax cuts, approved of Truman's plan to "hold the line" on defense spending. In addition, Truman's experience in the Senate left him with lingering suspicions that large sums were being wasted in the Pentagon. In 1949, Truman appointed Louis A. Johnson as Secretary of Defense. Impressed by U.S. advances in atomic bomb development, Truman and Johnson initially believed that the atomic bomb rendered conventional forces largely irrelevant to the modern battlefield. This assumption eventually had to be revisited, however, as the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic weapon in the same year.

Nevertheless, reductions continued, adversely affecting U.S. conventional defense readiness. Both Truman and Johnson had a particular antipathy to Navy and Marine Corps budget requests. Truman had a well-known dislike of the Marines dating back to his service in World War I, and famously said, "The Marine Corps is the Navy's police force, and as long as I am President that is what it will remain. They have a propaganda machine that is almost equal to Stalin's." Indeed, Truman had proposed disbanding the Marine Corps entirely as part of the 1948 defense reorganization plan, a plan that was abandoned only after a letter-writing campaign and the intervention of influential congressmen who were Marine veterans.

Under Truman defense budgets through Fiscal Year 1950, many Navy ships were mothballed, sold to other countries, or scrapped. The U.S. Army, faced with high turnover of experienced personnel, cut back on training exercises, and eased recruitment standards. Usable equipment was scrapped or sold off instead of stored, and even ammunition stockpiles were cut. The Marine Corps, its budgets slashed, was reduced to hoarding surplus inventories of World War II-era weapons and equipment. It was only after the invasion of South Korea by the North Koreans in 1950 that Truman sent significantly larger defense requests to Congress—and initiated what might be considered the modern period of defense spending in the United States.

Civil rights

A 1947 report by the Truman administration titled To Secure These Rights presented a detailed ten-point agenda of civil rights reforms. In February 1948, the president submitted a civil rights agenda to Congress that proposed creating several federal offices devoted to issues such as voting rights and fair employment practices. This provoked a storm of criticism from Southern Democrats in the run up to the national nominating convention, but Truman refused to compromise, saying: "My forebears were Confederates. . . . But my very stomach turned over when I had learned that Negro soldiers, just back from overseas, were being dumped out of Army trucks in Mississippi and beaten." In retirement however, Truman was less progressive on the issue. He described the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches as silly, stating that the marches would not "accomplish a darned thing".

Election of 1948

The 1948 presidential election is best remembered for Truman's stunning come-from-behind victory. In the spring of 1948, Truman's public approval rating stood at 36 percent, and the president was nearly universally regarded as incapable of winning the general election. The "New Deal" operatives within the party—including FDR's son James—tried to swing the Democratic nomination to General Dwight D. Eisenhower, a wildly popular figure whose political views—and party affiliation—were totally unknown. Eisenhower emphatically refused to accept, and Truman outflanked opponents to his nomination.

At the 1948 Democratic National Convention, Truman attempted to calm turbulent domestic political waters by placing a tepid civil rights plank in the party platform; the aim was to assuage the internal conflicts between the northern and southern wings of his party. Events overtook the president's efforts at compromise, however. A sharp address given by Mayor Hubert Humphrey of Minneapolis—as well as the local political interests of a number of urban bosses—convinced the Convention to adopt a stronger civil rights plank, which Truman approved wholeheartedly. All of Alabama's delegates, and a portion of Mississippi's, walked out of the convention in protest. Unfazed, Truman delivered an aggressive acceptance speech attacking the 80th Congress and promising to win the election and "make these Republicans like it."

Within two weeks, Truman issued Executive Order 9981, racially integrating the U.S. Armed Services. Truman took considerable political risk in backing civil rights, and many seasoned Democrats were concerned that the loss of Dixiecrat support might destroy the Democratic Party. The fear seemed well justified—Strom Thurmond declared his candidacy for the presidency and led a full-scale revolt of Southern "states' rights" proponents. This revolt on the right was matched by a revolt on the left, led by former Vice President Henry A. Wallace on the Progressive Party ticket. Immediately after its first post-FDR convention, the Democratic Party found itself disintegrating. Victory in November seemed a remote possibility indeed, with the party not simply split but divided three ways.

There followed a remarkable 21,928-mile (35,290 km) presidential odyssey, an unprecedented personal appeal to the nation. Truman and his staff crisscrossed the United States in the presidential train; his "whistlestop" tactic of giving brief speeches from the rear platform of the observation car Ferdinand Magellan came to represent the entire campaign. His combative appearances, such as those at the town square of Harrisburg, Illinois, captured the popular imagination and drew huge crowds. Six stops in Michigan drew a combined total of half a million people; a full million turned out for a New York City ticker-tape parade.

The large, mostly spontaneous gatherings at Truman's depot events were an important sign of a critical change in momentum in the campaign—but this shift went virtually unnoticed by the national press corps, which continued reporting Republican Thomas Dewey's apparent impending victory as a certainty. One reason for the press' inaccurate projection was polls conducted primarily by telephone in a time when many people, including much of Truman's populist base, did not own a telephone. This skewed the data to indicate a stronger support base for Dewey than existed, resulting in an unintended and undetected projection error that may well have contributed to the perception of Truman's bleak chances. The three major polling organizations also stopped polling well before the November 2 election date—Roper in September, and Crossley and Gallup in October—thus failing to measure the very period when Truman appears to have surged past Dewey.

In the end, Truman held his midwestern base of progressives, won most of the Southern states despite his civil rights plank, and squeaked through with narrow victories in a few critical "battleground" states, notably Ohio, California, and Illinois. The final tally showed that the president had secured 303 electoral votes, Dewey 189, and Thurmond only 39. Henry Wallace got none. The defining image of the campaign came after Election Day, when Truman held aloft the erroneous front page of the Chicago Tribune with a huge headline proclaiming "Dewey Defeats Truman."

Truman's no-holds-barred style of campaigning in the face of seemingly impossible odds became a campaign tactic that would be repeated by, and appealed to by, many presidential candidates in years to come, notably George H. W. Bush in 1992, another trailing incumbent who fought constantly with Congress.

Truman did not have a vice president in his first term. His running mate, and eventual vice president for the term that began January 20, 1949, was Alben W. Barkley.

Second term (1949–1953)

Truman's inauguration was the first ever televised nationally.

His second term was grueling, in large measure because of foreign policy challenges connected directly or indirectly to his policy of containment. For instance, he quickly had to come to terms with the end of the American nuclear monopoly. With information provided by its espionage networks in the United States, the Soviet Union's atomic bomb project progressed much faster than had been expected and they exploded their first bomb on August 29, 1949. On January 7, 1953, Truman announced the detonation of the first U.S. hydrogen bomb.

NATO

Truman was a strong supporter of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which established a formal peacetime military alliance with Canada and many of the democratic European nations that had not fallen under Soviet control following World War II. Truman successfully guided the treaty through the Senate in 1949. NATO's stated goals were to check Soviet expansion in Europe and to send a clear message to communist leaders that the world's democracies were willing and able to build new security structures in support of democratic ideals. The United States, United Kingdom, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Norway, Denmark, Portugal, Iceland, and Canada were the original treaty signatories; Greece and Turkey joined in 1952.

People's Republic of China

On December 21, 1949, Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi) and his National Revolutionary Army left mainland China, fleeing to Taiwan in the face of successful attacks by Mao Zedong's communist army during the Chinese Civil War. In June 1950, Truman ordered the U.S. Navy's Seventh Fleet into the Taiwan Strait to prevent further conflict between the communist government at the China mainland and the Republic of China at Taiwan. Truman also called for Taiwan not to make any further attack on the mainland.

Soviet espionage and McCarthyism

Throughout his presidency, Truman had to deal with accusations that the federal government was harboring Soviet spies at the highest level. Testimony in Congress on this issue garnered national attention, and thousands of people were fired as security risks. An optimistic, patriotic man, Truman was dubious about reports of potential Communist or Soviet penetration of the U.S. government, and his oft-quoted response was to dismiss the allegations as a "red herring."

In August 1948, Whittaker Chambers, a former spy for the Soviets and a senior editor at Time magazine, testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and presented a list of what he said were members of an underground communist network working within the United States government in the 1930s. One was Alger Hiss, a senior State Department official. Hiss denied the accusations.

Chambers' revelations led to a crisis in American political culture, as Hiss was convicted of perjury, in a controversial trial. On February 9, 1950, Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy accused the State Department of having communists on the payroll, and specifically claimed that Secretary of State Dean Acheson knew of, and was protecting, 205 communists within the State Department. At issue was whether Truman had discovered all the subversive agents that had entered the government during the Roosevelt years. Many on the right, such as McCarthy and Congressman Richard Nixon, insisted that he had not.

By spotlighting this issue and attacking Truman's administration, McCarthy quickly established himself as a national figure, and his explosive allegations dominated the headlines. His claims were short on confirmable details, but they nevertheless transfixed a nation struggling to come to grips with frightening new realities: the Soviet Union's nuclear explosion, the loss of U.S. atom bomb secrets, the fall of China to communism, and new revelations of Soviet intelligence penetration of other U.S. agencies, including the Treasury Department. Truman, a pragmatic man who had made allowances for the likes of Tom Pendergast and Stalin, quickly developed an unshakable loathing of Joseph McCarthy. He counterattacked, saying that "Americanism" itself was under attack by elements "who are loudly proclaiming that they are its chief defenders. ... They are trying to create fear and suspicion among us by the use of slander, unproved accusations and just plain lies. ... They are trying to get us to believe that our Government is riddled with communism and corruption. ... These slandermongers are trying to get us so hysterical that no one will stand up to them for fear of being called a communist. Now this is an old communist trick in reverse. ... That is not fair play. That is not Americanism." Nevertheless Truman was never able to shake his image among the public of being unable to purge his government of subversive influences.

Pakistan

President Truman recognized the newly created state of Pakistan in 1947 and the United States was one of the first countries in the world to do so. President Truman personally invited Pakistan's first Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan and his wife Begum Ra'ana to the United States for talks. Liaquat Ali Khan accepted the invitation and arrived in Washington in May 1950. Liaquat toured the United States and gave various speeches to the US Senate. At the time of the visit Pakistan was non-aligned between the US-led Western Bloc and the Soviet-led Eastern Bloc and it had recognized the Communist-led People's Republic of China, ignoring Washington's opposition to Peking. Despite the success of his US tour, Liaquat Ali's Government did not make any drastic change in its foreign policy of semi-non-alignment in the Cold War rivalry. In the UN Security Council, it did oppose North Korea's aggression against pro-American South Korea but refused to send Pakistani combat troops to join the UN force in the Korean Peninsula. This was mainly because Pakistan was recently recovering from its war with India over the disputed Kashmir in 1948.

Korean War

On June 25, 1950, the North Korean People's Army under the command of Kim Il-sung invaded South Korea, precipitating the outbreak of the Korean War. Poorly trained and equipped, without tanks or air support, the South Korean Army was rapidly pushed backwards, quickly losing the capital, Seoul.

Truman called for a naval blockade of Korea, only to learn that due to budget cutbacks, the U.S. Navy no longer possessed a sufficient number of warships to enforce such a measure. Truman promptly urged the United Nations to intervene; it did, authorizing armed defense for the first time in its history. The Soviet Union, which was boycotting the United Nations at the time, was not present at the vote that approved the measure. However, Truman decided not to consult with Congress, an error that greatly weakened his position later in the conflict.

In the first four weeks of the conflict, the American infantry forces hastily deployed to Korea proved too few and were under-equipped. The Eighth Army in Japan was forced to recondition World War II Sherman tanks from depots and monuments for use in Korea.

"I fired him because he wouldn't respect the authority of the President... I didn't fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that's not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail."

Responding to criticism over readiness, Truman fired his much-criticized Secretary of Defense, Louis A. Johnson, replacing him with retired General George Marshall. Truman (with UN approval) decided on a roll-back policy—that is, conquest of North Korea. UN forces led by General Douglas MacArthur led the counterattack, scoring a stunning surprise victory with an amphibious landing at the Battle of Inchon that nearly trapped the invaders. UN forces then marched north, toward the Yalu River boundary with China, with the goal of reuniting Korea under UN auspices.

China surprised the UN forces with a large-scale invasion in November. The UN forces were forced back to below the 38th parallel, then recovered; by early 1951 the war became a fierce stalemate at about the 38th parallel where it had begun. UN and U.S. casualties were heavy. Truman rejected MacArthur's request to attack Chinese supply bases north of the Yalu, but MacArthur nevertheless promoted his plan to Republican House leader Joseph Martin, who leaked it to the press. Truman was gravely concerned that further escalation of the war might draw the Soviet Union further into the conflict: it was already supplying weapons and providing warplanes (with Korean markings and Soviet fliers). On April 11, 1951, Truman fired MacArthur from all his commands in Korea and Japan.

Relieving MacArthur of his command was among the least politically popular decisions in presidential history. Truman's approval ratings plummeted, and he faced calls for his impeachment from, among others, Senator Robert Taft. The Chicago Tribune called for immediate impeachment proceedings against Truman:

President Truman must be impeached and convicted. His hasty and vindictive removal of Gen. MacArthur is the culmination of series of acts which have shown that he is unfit, morally and mentally, for his high office. . . . The American nation has never been in greater danger. It is led by a fool who is surrounded by knaves. . . .

Fierce criticism from virtually all quarters accused Truman of refusing to shoulder the blame for a war gone sour and blaming his generals instead. Many prominent citizens and officials, including Eleanor Roosevelt however supported and applauded Truman's decision. MacArthur meanwhile, returned to the United States to a hero's welcome, and, after his famous address before Congress—which Truman was reported to have said was a bunch of "damn bullshit". MacArthur was even rumored as a candidate for the presidency.

The war remained a frustrating stalemate for two years, with over 30,000 Americans killed, until a peace agreement restored borders and ended the conflict. In the interim, the difficulties in Korea and the popular outcry against Truman's sacking of MacArthur helped to make the president so unpopular that Democrats started turning to other candidates. In the New Hampshire primary on March 11, 1952, Truman lost to Estes Kefauver, who won the preference poll 19,800 to 15,927 and all eight delegates. Truman was forced to cancel his reelection campaign. In February 1952, Truman's approval mark stood at 22 percent according to Gallup polls, which was, until 2008, the all-time lowest approval mark for an active American president. However it didn't last beyond March.

Indochina

United States' involvement in Indochina widened during the Truman administration. On V-J Day 1945, Vietnamese Communist leader Ho Chi Minh declared independence from France, but the U.S. announced its support of restoring French power. In 1950, Ho again declared Vietnamese independence, which was recognized by Communist China and the Soviet Union. Ho controlled a remote territory along the Chinese border, while France controlled the remainder. Truman's "containment policy" called for opposition to Communist expansion, and led the U.S. to continue to recognize French rule, support the French client government, and increase aid to Vietnam. However, a basic dispute emerged: the Americans wanted a strong and independent Vietnam, while the French cared little about containing China but instead wanted to suppress local nationalism and integrate Indochina into the French Union.

White House renovations

In 1948 Truman ordered a controversial addition to the exterior of the White House: a second-floor balcony in the south portico that came to be known as the "Truman Balcony." The addition was unpopular.

Not long afterwards, engineering experts concluded that the building, much of it over 130 years old, was in a dangerously dilapidated condition. That August, a section of floor collapsed and Truman's own bedroom and bathroom were closed as unsafe. No public announcement about the serious structural problems of the White House was made until after the 1948 election had been won, by which time Truman had been informed that his new balcony was the only part of the building that was sound. The Truman family moved into nearby Blair House; as the newer West Wing, including the Oval Office, remained open, Truman found himself walking to work across the street each morning and afternoon. In due course the decision was made to demolish and rebuild the whole interior of the main White House, as well as excavating new basement levels and underpinning the foundations. The famous exterior of the structure, however, was buttressed and retained while the renovations proceeded inside. The work lasted from December 1949 until March 1952.

Assassination attempt

On November 1, 1950, Puerto Rican nationalists Griselio Torresola and Oscar Collazo attempted to assassinate Truman at Blair House. On the street outside the residence, Torresola mortally wounded a White House policeman, Leslie Coffelt, who shot Torresola dead before expiring himself. Collazo, as a co-conspirator in a felony that turned into a homicide, was found guilty of murder and was sentenced to death in 1952. Truman later commuted his sentence to life in prison.

Acknowledging the importance of the question of Puerto Rican independence, Truman allowed for a plebiscite in Puerto Rico to determine the status of its relationship to the United States.

The attack, which could easily have taken the president's life, drew new attention to security concerns surrounding his residence at Blair House. He had jumped up from his nap, and was watching the gunfight from his open bedroom window until a passerby shouted at him to take cover.

Steel and coal strikes

In response to a labor/management impasse arising from bitter disagreements over wage and price controls, Truman instructed his Secretary of Commerce, Charles W. Sawyer, to take control of a number of the nation's steel mills in April 1952. Truman cited his authority as Commander in Chief and the need to maintain an uninterrupted supply of steel for munitions to be used in the war in Korea. The Supreme Court found Truman's actions unconstitutional, however, and reversed the order in a major separation-of-powers decision, Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer. The 6–3 decision, which held that Truman's assertion of authority was too vague and was not rooted in any legislative action by Congress, was delivered by a Court composed entirely of Justices appointed by either Truman or Roosevelt. The high court's reversal of Truman's order was one of the notable defeats of his presidency.

After coal miners went on strike in the spring of 1946, Truman threatened to draft the miners into the Army if they didn't return to work, or use members of the Army to replace the workers.

Scandals and controversies

In 1950, the Senate, led by Estes Kefauver, investigated numerous charges of corruption among senior Administration officials, some of whom received fur coats and deep freezers for favors. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) was involved. In 1950, 166 IRS employees either resigned or were fired, and many were facing indictments from the Department of Justice on a variety of tax-fixing and bribery charges, including the assistant attorney general in charge of the Tax Division. When Attorney General Howard McGrath fired the special prosecutor for being too zealous, Truman fired McGrath. Historians agree that Truman himself was innocent and unaware—with one exception. In 1945, Mrs. Truman received a new, expensive, hard-to-get deep freezer. The businessman who provided the gift was the president of a perfume company and, thanks to Truman's aide and confidante General Harry Vaughan, received priority to fly to Europe days after the war ended, where he bought new perfumes. On the way back he "bumped" a wounded veteran from a flight that would have taken him back to the US. Disclosure of the episode in 1949 humiliated Truman. The President responded by vigorously defending Vaughan, an old friend with an office in the White House itself. Vaughan was eventually connected to multiple influence-peddling scandals.

Charges that Soviet agents had infiltrated the government bedeviled the Truman Administration and became a major campaign issue for Eisenhower in 1952. In 1947, Truman issued Executive Order 9835 to set up loyalty boards to investigate espionage among federal employees. Between 1947 and 1952, "about 20,000 government employees were investigated, some 2500 resigned 'voluntarily,' and 400 were fired." He did, however, strongly oppose mandatory loyalty oaths for governmental employees, a stance that led to charges that his Administration was soft on Communism.

In 1953, Senator Joseph McCarthy and Attorney General Herbert Brownell, Jr. claimed that Truman had known Harry Dexter White was a Soviet spy when Truman appointed him to the International Monetary Fund.

Administration and Cabinet

All of the cabinet members when Truman became president in 1945 had been previously serving under Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Judicial appointments

Supreme Court

Truman appointed the following Justices to the Supreme Court of the United States:

• Harold Hitz Burton—1945
• Fred M. Vinson (Chief Justice)—1946
• Tom C. Clark—1949
• Sherman Minton—1949

Truman's judicial appointments have been called by critics "inexcusable." A former Truman aide confided that it was the weakest aspect of Truman's presidency. The New York Times condemned the appointments of Tom C. Clark and Sherman Minton in particular as examples of cronyism and favoritism for unqualified candidates.

The four justices appointed by Truman joined with Justices Felix Frankfurter, Robert H. Jackson, and Stanley Reed to create a substantial seven-member conservative bloc on the Supreme Court. This returned the court for a time to the conservatism of the Taft era.

Other courts

In addition to his four Supreme Court appointments, Truman appointed 27 judges to the United States Courts of Appeals, and 101 judges to the United States district courts.

1952 election

In 1951, the U.S. ratified the 22nd Amendment, making a president ineligible to be elected for a third time, or to be elected for a second time after having served more than two years of a previous president's term. The latter clause would have applied to Truman in 1952, except that a grandfather clause in the amendment explicitly excluded the current president from this provision. However, Truman decided not to run for reelection.

At the time of the 1952 New Hampshire primary, no candidate had won Truman's backing. His first choice, Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson, had declined to run; Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson had also turned Truman down; Vice President Barkley was considered too old; and Truman distrusted and disliked Senator Estes Kefauver, whom he privately called "Cowfever."

Truman's name was on the New Hampshire primary ballot but Kefauver won. On March 29 Truman announced his decision not to run for re-election. Stevenson, having reconsidered his presidential ambitions, received Truman's backing and won the Democratic nomination.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, now a Republican and the nominee of his party, campaigned against what he denounced as Truman's failures regarding "Korea, Communism and Corruption" and the "mess in Washington," and promised to "go to Korea." Eisenhower defeated Stevenson decisively in the general election, ending 20 years of Democratic rule. While Truman and Eisenhower had previously been good friends, Truman felt betrayed that Eisenhower did not denounce Joseph McCarthy during the campaign.

Post-presidency

Truman Library, Memoirs, and life as a private citizen

Truman returned to Independence, Missouri to live at the Wallace home he and Bess had shared for years with her mother. His predecessor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, had organized his own presidential library, but legislation to enable future presidents to do something similar still remained to be enacted. Truman worked to garner private donations to build a presidential library, which he then donated to the federal government to maintain and operate—a practice adopted by all of his successors.

Once out of office, Truman quickly decided that he did not wish to be on any corporate payroll, believing that taking advantage of such financial opportunities would diminish the integrity of the nation's highest office. He also turned down numerous offers for commercial endorsements. Since his earlier business ventures had proved unremunerative, he had no personal savings. As a result, he faced financial challenges. Once Truman left the White House, his only income was his old army pension: $112.56 per month. Former members of Congress and the federal courts received a federal retirement package; President Truman himself had ensured that former servants of the executive branch of government would receive similar support. In 1953, however, there was no such benefit package for former presidents.

He took out a personal loan from a Missouri bank shortly after leaving office, and then set about establishing another precedent for future former chief executives: a book deal for his memoirs of his time in office. Ulysses S. Grant had overcome similar financial issues with his own memoirs, but the book had been published posthumously, and he had declined to write about life in the White House in any detail. For the memoirs Truman received only a flat payment of $670,000, and had to pay two-thirds of that in tax; he calculated he got $37,000 after he paid his assistants.

Truman's memoirs were a commercial and critical success; they were published in two volumes in 1955 and 1956 by Doubleday (Garden City, N.Y) and Hodder & Stoughton (London): Memoirs by Harry S. Truman: Year of Decisions and Memoirs by Harry S. Truman: Years of Trial and Hope.

Truman was quoted in 1957 as saying to then-House Majority Leader John McCormack, "Had it not been for the fact that I was able to sell some property that my brother, sister, and I inherited from our mother, I would practically be on relief, but with the sale of that property I am not financially embarrassed."

In 1958, Congress passed the Former Presidents Act, offering a $25,000 yearly pension to each former president, and it is likely that Truman's financial status played a role in the law's enactment. The one other living former president at the time, Herbert Hoover, also took the pension, even though he did not need the money; reportedly, he did so to avoid embarrassing Truman. Hoover may have been remembering an old favor: Shortly after becoming President, Truman had invited Hoover to the White House for an informal chat about conditions in Europe. This was Hoover's first visit to the White House since leaving office, as the Roosevelt administration had shunned Hoover. The two remained good friends for the remainder of their lives.

Later life and death

In 1956, Truman took a trip to Europe with his wife, and was a sensation. In Britain he received an honorary degree in Civic Law from Oxford University, an event that moved him to tears. He met with his friend Winston Churchill for the last time, and on returning to the U.S., he gave his full support to Adlai Stevenson's second bid for the White House, although he had initially favored Democratic Governor W. Averell Harriman of New York for the nomination.

Upon turning 80, Truman was feted in Washington and asked to address the United States Senate, as part of a new rule that allowed former presidents to be granted privilege of the floor. Truman was so emotionally overcome by the honor and by his reception that he was barely able to deliver his speech. He also campaigned for senatorial candidates. A bad fall in the bathroom of his home in late 1964 severely limited his physical capabilities, and he was unable to maintain his daily presence at his presidential library.

In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Medicare bill at the Truman Library and gave the first two Medicare cards to Truman and his wife Bess to honor his fight for government health care as president.

On December 5, 1972, he was admitted to Kansas City's Research Hospital and Medical Center with lung congestion from pneumonia. He subsequently developed multiple organ failure and died at 7:50 a.m. on December 26 at the age of 88. Bess Truman died nearly ten years later, on October 18, 1982. He and Bess are buried at the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri. Bess Truman opted for a simple private service at the library for her husband because of her advanced age and frail health, though a state funeral in Washington had been planned. Foreign dignitaries, instead, attended a memorial service at Washington National Cathedral a week later.

Legacy

When he left office in 1953, Truman was one of the most unpopular chief executives in history. His job approval rating of 22 percent in the Gallup Poll as of February 1952 was actually lower than Richard Nixon's was in August 1974 at 24 percent, the month that Nixon resigned. Public feeling toward Truman grew steadily warmer with the passing years, however, and the period shortly after his death consolidated a partial rehabilitation among both historians and members of the general public. Since leaving office, Truman has fared well in polls ranking the presidents. He has never been listed lower than ninth, and most recently was fifth in a C-SPAN poll in 2009. He has also had his critics. After a review of information available to Truman on the presence of espionage activities in the U.S. government, Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan concluded that Truman was "almost willfully obtuse" concerning the danger of American communism.

Truman died during a time when the nation was consumed with crises in Vietnam and Watergate, and his death brought a new wave of attention to his political career. In the early and mid-1970s, Truman captured the popular imagination much as he had in 1948, this time emerging as a kind of political folk hero, a president who was thought to exemplify an integrity and accountability many observers felt was lacking in the Nixon White House. Truman has been portrayed on screen many times, several in performances that have won wide acclaim, and the pop band Chicago recorded a nostalgic song, "Harry Truman" (1975).

Due to Truman's critical role in the US government's decision to recognize Israel, the Israeli village of Beit Harel was renamed Kfar Truman.

The Truman Scholarship, a federal program that seeks to honor U.S. college students who exemplified dedication to public service and leadership in public policy, was created in 1975.

The President Harry S. Truman Fellowship in National Security Science and Engineering, a distinguished postdoctoral three-year appointment at Sandia National Laboratories was created in 2004.

In 1951 President Truman established the Science Advisory Committee as part of the Office of Defence Mobilization. Renamed the President's Science Advisory Committee (PSAC) by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, it lasted until President Nixon disbanded it. It was reinstated by the first Bush administration under the name PCAST.

The USS Harry S. Truman was named on September 7, 1996. The ship, sometimes known as the 'HST', was authorized as USS United States, but her name was changed before the keel laying.

The University of Missouri established the Harry S. Truman School of Public Affairs to advance the study and practice of governance. The university's Missouri Tigers athletics programs have an official mascot named Truman the Tiger.

To mark its transformation from a regional state teachers' college to a highly selective liberal arts university and to honor the only Missourian to become president, Northeast Missouri State University became Truman State University on July 1, 1996. A member institution of the City Colleges of Chicago, Harry S Truman College in Chicago, Illinois is named in honor of the president for his dedication to public colleges and universities. The headquarters for the State Department, built in the 1930s but never officially named, was dedicated as the Harry S Truman Building in 2000.

In 1991, Truman was inducted into the Hall of Famous Missourians, and a bronze bust depicting him is on permanent display in the rotunda of the Missouri State Capitol.

Thom Daniel, grandson of the Trumans accepted a star on the Missouri Walk of Fame in 2006 to honor his late grandfather. John Truman, Truman's nephew, would accept a star for Bess Truman in 2007. The Walk of Fame is in Marshfield, Missouri, a city Truman visited in 1948.

Historic sites

• Harry S. Truman National Historic Site includes the Wallace House at 219 Delaware in Independence and the family farmhouse at Grandview, Missouri (Truman sold most of the farm for Kansas City suburban development including the Truman Corners Shopping Center).
• Harry S. Truman Birthplace State Historic Site is the house where Truman was born and spent 11 months in Lamar, Missouri.
• Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum—The Presidential Library in Independence
• Harry S. Truman Little White House—Truman's winter getaway at Key West, Florida

Truman's middle initial

Truman did not have a middle name, only a middle initial. In his autobiography, Truman stated, "I was named for . . . Harrison Young. I was given the diminutive Harry and, so that I could have two initials in my given name, the letter S was added. My Grandfather Truman's name was Anderson Shippe Truman and my Grandfather Young's name was Solomon Young, so I received the S for both of them." He once joked that the S was a name, not an initial, and it should not have a period, but official documents and his presidential library all use a period. The Harry S. Truman Library has numerous examples of the signature written at various times throughout Truman's lifetime where his own use of a period after the S is conspicuous. The Associated Press Stylebook has called for a period after the S since the early 1960s, when Truman indicated he had no preference. However, the use of a period after his middle initial is not universal. Prior to 2008, his official White House biography did not use it. All official United States Navy listings of the USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75) include the period after the S.

Truman's bare initial caused an unusual slip when he first became president and took the oath of office. At a meeting in the Cabinet Room, Chief Justice Harlan Stone began reading the oath by saying "I, Harry Shipp Truman, . . ." Truman responded: "I, Harry S. Truman, . . ."

See also

• Electoral history of Harry S. Truman
• National Mental Health Act

Notes

1. McCullough, David (1992). Truman. New York: Simon and Schuster. p. 717. ISBN 0-671-86920-5.
2. http://www.gallup.com/poll/4924/Bush-Job-Approval-Highest-Gallup-History.aspx
3. http://www.americanresearchgroup.com/economy/
4. http://www.pollingreport.com/BushJob.htm
5. McCullough, p. 24, 37
6. McCullough, p. 37
7. ^ "Use of the Period After the "S" in Harry S. Truman's Name". Harry S. Truman's Library and Museum. Retrieved 2007-08-14.
8. "Birthplace of Harry S. Truman". Truman Library. Retrieved 2007-08-01.
9. ^ Oshinsky, David M. (2004). "Harry Truman". In Alan Brinkley and Davis Dyer (ed.). The American Presidency. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. pp. 365–380. ISBN 0-618-38273-9.
10. McCullough, p. 38
11. Ferrell, Robert Hugh (1996). Harry S. Truman: A Life. Columbia: University of Missouri Press. p. 87. ISBN 0826210503.
12. "Drugstore Clerk at 14 His First Job". Truman Library. Retrieved 2007-07-26.
13. "How Harry S. Truman Became a Lambda Chi," Cross & Crescent magazine, Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity, August 2006.
14. McCullough, p. 105.
15. "Harry Truman joins Battery B of the Missouri National Guard". Truman Library. Retrieved 2007-07-26.
16. Chronological Record of the 129th Field Artillery 1917-1919 - the Truman Library
17. McCullough, p. 105-110.
18. Gilwee, William J. Capt. Harry Truman Artilleryman and Future President - at the Doughboy Center
19. Marks, Ted (1962). "Oral History Interview with Ted Marks". Truman Library. Retrieved 2008-08-13.
20. ^ Hanlon, Michael E. (2000). "Capt. Harry Truman, Artilleryman and Future President". Doughboy Center: The Story of the American Expeditionary Forces. Worldwar1.com Magazine. Retrieved 2007-07-19.
21. "Military Personnel File of Harry S. Truman". Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum. Retrieved 1 January 2009.
22. Ferrell, p. 87
23. ^ Truman, Margaret (1973). Harry S. Truman. William Morrow and Co. p. 429.
24. Hamby, Alonzo L. (1995). Man of the People: A Life of Harry S. Truman. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195045467.
25. Fuchs, James R. (March 15, 1962). "Oral History Interview with Edgar G. Hinde". Truman Library. Retrieved 2008-10-06.
26. "Harry S. Truman 1947 Diary". Truman Library. July 21, 1947. Retrieved 2007-08-01.
27. Foxman, Abraham H. (July 18, 2003). "Harry Truman, My Flawed Hero". Anti-Defamation League. Retrieved 2007-08-01.
28. Dana, Rebecca (July 11, 2003). "Harry Truman's Forgotten Diary". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2007-08-16. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
29. "Executive Order 9981: Desegregation of the Armed Forces (1948)". Ourdocuments.gov. 1948. Retrieved 2007-07-19.
30. Savage, Sean J. (1991). Roosevelt: The Party Leader, 1932–1945. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. p. 65. ISBN 0813117550. Retrieved 2007-07-27.
31. McCullough, p. 232
32. McCullough, p. 230
33. "The Pendergast Machine". Kansas City Police Officers Memorial — History. Retrieved 2007-07-26.
34. "Harry S. Truman Papers: Papers as Presiding Judge of the Jackson County (Missouri) Court — Partial Biographical Sketch 1920–1950". Truman Library. Retrieved 2007-07-26.
35. "Harry S. Truman (1884–1972) Masonic Record". The Masonic Presidents Tour. Masonic Library and Museum. Retrieved 2007-07-26.
36. McCullough, p. 252
37. "The Wonderful Wastebasket". Time: 3. March 24, 1952. Retrieved 2007-08-17.
38. Haydock, Michael D. (2000). "American History: Harry Truman and the 1948 U.S. Presidential Election". American History Magazine via Historynet.com. Retrieved 2007-07-28. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
39. The New York Times June 24, 1941; qtd in "Anniversary Remembrance," Time, July 2, 1951; reproduced as "Anniversary Remembrance," time.com.
40. McCullough, p. 262
41. Donovan, Robert J. (1996). Conflict and Crisis: The Presidency of Harry Truman, 1945–1948. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press. p. 36. ISBN 0-8262-1066-X. (Publisher's description of the book, retrieved August 2, 2007.)
42. Fleming, Thomas (2002). The New Dealers' War: F.D.R. And the War within World War II. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 0465024653.
43. ""Truman on Time Magazine Covers"". Time. Retrieved 2007-07-27. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
44. "Harry S. Truman: His Life and Times: Senator". Truman Library. Retrieved 2007-08-09.
45. McCullough, p. 293.
46. McCullough, p. 295
47. Ferrell, p. 167
48. Newman, Mark (2004). "Civil Rights and Human Rights". Reviews in American History. 32 (2): 247–254. doi:10.1353/rah.2004.0034. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
49. "Harry S. Truman, 34th Vice President (1945)". U.S. Senate. January 8, 1973. Retrieved 2007-08-03.
50. "A Little Touch of Harry". Time. January 8, 1973. Retrieved 2007-08-03.
51. "Indiana Governor Henry Frederick Schricker (1883–1966)". Indiana Historical Bureau. Retrieved 2007-08-03.
52. PBS's American Experience Harry Truman
53. "Eleanor and Harry: The Correspondence of Eleanor Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman". Truman Library. Retrieved 2007-07-26.
54. McCullough, p. 348
55. ^ McCullough
56. Hiroshima arguments rage 60 years on, BBC News, August 3, 2005
57. There is reason to believe the Japanese were waiting for a clarification of the seeming conflict between the Potsdam Declaration and the Atlantic Charter, as Alperovitz and Hasegawa point out.
58. "The Manhattan Project: An Interactive History". U. S. Department of Energy. Retrieved 2008-07-14.
59. Carter, Kit. "The Army Air Forces in World War II". Office of Air Force History, Washington, D.C. 1973: 685. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
60. "The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki". Atomicarchive.com. Retrieved 2007-07-26.
61. "The answer reached the President at five minutes past four that afternoon, Tuesday, August 14. Japan had surrendered." McCullough, p. 461.
62. "Atomic Bomb Chronology: 1945–1946". Tokyo Physicians for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. Retrieved 2007-07-28. "H. Truman told Y. Stalin about A-bomb experiment. Stalin was already informed by spy of Trinity but never revealed it."
63. "Interview Transcripts: The Potsdam Conference". The American Experience. PBS. Retrieved 2007-07-26. "Truman approached Stalin at the Potsdam conference and very carefully said to Stalin that he had this new weapon."
64. Truman, Harry S. (1955). Year of Decisions. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. p. 416. ISBN 156852062X. Stalin hoped we would make 'good use of it against the Japanese.'
65. David Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy 1939-1956 (Yale University Press, 1994).
66. McNulty, Bryan. "The great atomic bomb debate". Perspectives. Ohio University. Retrieved 2007-04-02.
67. ""The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb: Gar Alperovitz and the H-Net Debate"". Hiroshima: Was it Necessary?. Doug-long.com. Retrieved 2007-07-27.
68. Letter from Harry S. Truman to Irv Kupcinet (unsent), (5 August 1963), from The Papers of Harry S. Truman: Post-Presidential Papers, Harry S. Truman Library (digitized and online at National Archives Archival Research Catalog, ARC Identifier 201504).
69. ^ Grubin, David (1997). "The American Experience: Truman". PBS. Retrieved 2007-08-03.
70. ^ ""Word Has Just Been Received": Truman Speaks on the Railroad Strike: 1948–1952". History Matters. George Mason University. Retrieved 2007-07-26.
71. Holsti, Ole (1996). Public Opinion and American Foreign Policy. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press. p. 214. ISBN 978-0-472-06619-3.
72. ""Taft-Hartley: How It Works and How It Has Worked"". Time. October 19, 1959. Retrieved 2007-07-19. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
73. "President Truman Addresses Congress on Proposed Health Program, Washington, D.C." This Day in Truman History. Truman Library & Museum. November 19, 1945. Retrieved 2008-08-13.
74. Binning, William C. (1999). Encyclopedia of American Parties, Campaigns, and Elections. Westport, CT: Greenwood. p. 417. ISBN 0813117550. Retrieved 2007-07-29. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
75. "The Art of the Possible". "Time". June 6, 1949. Retrieved 2007-07-19.
76. George Lenczowski, (1990), American Presidents and the Middle East, p. 27
77. Harry S. Truman, Memoirs 2, p. 153
78. ^ Lenczowski, p. 27
79. "The Bombing of the King David Hotel". Jewish Virtual Library. Retrieved 2007-04-02.
80. Lenczowski, p. 28, cite, Harry S. Truman, Memoirs 2, p. 158
81. Margaret Truman, Harry S. Truman, p. 420.
82. McCullough
83. McCullough, pp. 614–620
84. Clifford, Clark (1991). Counsel to the President. New York: Random House. ISBN 0394569954. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
85. Lenczowski, p. 25
86. Walter Millis, ed. Forrestal Diaries, p. 322
87. Lenczowski, p. 26
88. Truman, Harry (1948-05-14). "Memo recognizing the state of Israel". Truman Presidential Museum & Library. Retrieved 2007-04-02. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
89. Janos, Andrew C. (2000). "In Memoriam: George Lenczowski". University of California. Retrieved 2008-08-13.
90. Truman, Memoirs 2, p. 140
91. William A. Eddy, F.D.R Meets Ibn Saud New York: American Friends of the Middle East, 1954),p. 57; Evan M. Wilson, Decision on Palestine, p58; Millis, ed. Forestall Diaries, p322; Emmanuel Neumann, “Abba Hillel Silver, History Maker,” American Zionist, February 5, 1953; and John S. Badeau, The Middle East Remembered (Washington, DC: Middle East Institute, 1983), p. 115
92. Eddy, FDR Meets Ibn Saud, p. 37. The four envoys were William A. Eddy, minister to Saudi Arabia; S. Pinkney Tuck, minister to Egypt; George Wadsworth, minister to Syria and Lebanon; and Lowell C. Pinkerton, general counsel in Jerusalem.
93. Quoted from footage of Truman speaking, presented in the film The 50 Years War. A slightly different quotation appears in the book, Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel, by Michael T. Benson. 1997, page 64
94. What Price Israel? 50th Anniversary Edition 1953-2003, Alfred M. Lilienthal, xxi-xxii. Truman is quoted as follows regarding Feinberg: "If not for my friend Abe, I couldn't have made the trip and I wouldn't have been elected."
95. The quote "If not for my friend Abe, I couldn't have made the trip and I wouldn't have been elected" also appears at the Truman Library's oral history interview with Feinberg. http://www.trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/feinberg.htm
96. Giangreco, D. M. (1988). "The Airlift Begins: Airbridge to Berlin—The Berlin Crisis of 1948, its Origins and Aftermath". Truman Library. Retrieved 2007-08-04. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
97. LaFeber, Walter (1993). America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945–1980 (7th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
98. McCullough, p. 741.
99. ^ Hess, Jerry N. (November 21, 1972). "Oral History Interviews with Karl R. Bendetsen: General Counsel, Department of the Army, 1949; Assistant Secretary of the Army, 1950–52; Under Secretary of the Army, 1952". Oral Archives. Truman Presidential Library. Retrieved 2007-07-29.
100. ^ Blair, Clay (2003). The Forgotten War: America in Korea, 1950–1953. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 1591140757.
101. ^ Krulak, Victor H. (Lt. Gen.) (1999). First to Fight: An Inside View of the U.S. Marine Corps. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 1557504644.
102. Lane, Peter J., Steel for Bodies: Ammunition Readiness During the Korean War, Master's Thesis: U.S. Army Command and General Staff College (2003)
103. Civil rights movement, Virginia Center for Digital History
104. "The greatest upset in American political history: Harry Truman and the 1948 election". White House Studies. 2006 (Winter). {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
105. Burnes, Brian (2003). Harry S. Truman: His Life and Times. Kansas City, MO: Kansas City Star Books. p. 137. ISBN 0974000930.
106. McCullough, p. 640.
107. "Truman's Democratic Convention Acceptance Speech". Presidential Links. PBS. 1948. Retrieved 2007-07-26.
108. "Chapter 12: The President Intervenes". Center of Military History. US Army. Retrieved 2007-07-27.
109. "Executive Order 9981, Establishing the President's Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services, Harry S. Truman". Federal Register. 1948. Retrieved 2007-07-27.
110. "Desegregation of the Armed Forces". Truman Library. Retrieved 2007-07-27.
111. McCullough, p. 654
112. McCullough, p. 657
113. McCullough, p. 701
114. Curran, Jeanne (2002). "Getting a Sample Isn't Always Easy". Dear Habermas. California State University — Dominguez Hills. Retrieved 2007-07-28. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help) "(E)lection polls have found, that the use of telephone surveys doesn't include lots of people who don't have telephones. That can lead to disastrous results, as it did in the Dewey-Truman election in 1948."
115. Bennett, Stephen Earl. "Restoration of Confidence: Polling's Comeback from 1948". Public Opinion Pros. Retrieved 2007-07-28. "Roper finished polling in September, Crossley’s last poll was October 18, and Gallup stopped polling after October 28."
116. Strout, Richard L. "Oral History Interview with Richard L. Strout". Truman Presidential Library. Retrieved 2007-07-28. "Roper quit polling on September the ninth."
117. "The Story Behind "Dewey Defeats Truman"". Historybuff.com. Retrieved 2007-07-28.
118. "U.S. Constitution: Twenty-Fifth Amendment". FindLaw. Retrieved 2007-07-28. Until the ratification of the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1967, there was no provision for filling a mid-term vacancy in the office of vice president.
119. "Taiwan Status: From Grotius to WTO". Geocities. Retrieved 2007-07-28.
120. ^ Fried, Richard M. (1990). Nightmare in Red: The McCarthy Era in Perspective. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195043618. Retrieved 2007-07-30.
121. Tanenhaus, Sam (1998). Whittaker Chambers. New York: Modern Library. ISBN 0375751459.
122. ^ ""McCarthyism" v. "Trumanism"". Time. August 27, 1951. Retrieved 2007-07-27. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
123. "Telegram, Joseph McCarthy to Harry S. Truman, February 11, 1950, with Truman's draft reply; McCarthy, Joseph; General File; PSF; Truman Papers". Truman Presidential Library. Retrieved 2007-07-28.
124. Aziz, Qutubuddin. "Quaid-i-Millat's visit to the United States — The foundation of friendship and economic co-operation". Truman Library & Museum. Retrieved 2008-02-08.
125. "Truman Library Photographs". Truman Library & Museum. Retrieved 2008-02-08.
126. Appleman, Roy E. (1992). South to the Naktong, North to the Yalu (June–November 1950). Washington, DC: Center of Military History, US Army. ISBN 0-16-035958-9. Retrieved 2007-07-27.
127. "Memorandum of Information for the Secretary — Blockade of Korea". Truman Presidential Library—Archives. July 6, 1950. Retrieved 2007-07-28.
128. Kepley, David R. (1988). The Collapse of the Middle Way: Senate Republicans and the Bipartisan Foreign Policy, 1948–1952. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0313257841.
129. Summers, Harry G. (1996). "The Korean War: A Fresh Perspective". Rt66.com. Retrieved 2007-07-28.
130. Matray, James I. (1979). "Truman's Plan for Victory: National Self-determination and the Thirty-eighth Parallel Decision in Korea". Journal of American History. 66 (2): 314–333. doi:10.2307/1900879.
131. Strout, Lawrence N. (1999). "Covering McCarthyism: How the Christian Science Monitor Handled Joseph R. McCarthy, 1950–1954". Journal of Political and Military Sociology. 2001 (Summer): 41.
132. "Truman". PBS. Retrieved 2008-09-28.
133. "U.S. Military Korean War Statistics". Korean-war.com. Retrieved 2007-07-26.
134. David, Paul T. (1954). Presidential Nominating Politics in 1952 Vol. 1. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Press. pp. 33–40.
135. "Comparing Past Presidential Performance". Public Opinion Archives. Roper Center. 2007. Retrieved 2007-07-26.
136. Duiker, William J. (1994). U.S. Containment Policy and the Conflict in Indochina. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. (Untitled review (PDF) of this book by Christopher Jesperson, Journal of Conflict Studies, Fall 1995. Retrieved August 4, 2007.)
137. "Truman Reconstruction : 1948–1952". White House Museum. Retrieved 2007-07-26.
138. McCullough, pp. 593, 652, 725, 875ff.
139. Higgs, Robert (March 1, 2004). "Truman's Attempt to Seize the Steel Industry". The Freeman. The Independent Institute. Retrieved 2007-08-03.
140. McCullough, David. Truman. Simon and Schuster. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
141. Frum, David (2000). How We Got Here: The '70s. New York, New York: Basic Books. p. 41. ISBN 0465041957. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
142. “Word Has Just Been Received”: Truman Speaks on the Railroad Strike. George Mason University. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
143. Smaltz, Donald C. (1998). "Independent Counsel: A View from Inside". The Georgetown Law Journal, Vol. 86, No. 6. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
144. Smaltz, Donald C. (January 29, 1996). "Speech Delivered by Donald C. Smaltz". University of North Texas Libraries. Retrieved 2007-08-03.
145. Donovan 1982, pp. 116–117
146. "The Corruption Issue: A Pandora's Box, referencing 1952 campaign, article 9/24/56". Time. 1956. Retrieved 2007-07-26. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
147. "Truman Loyalty Oath, 1947". Matrix. 1947. Retrieved 2007-07-19.
148. Boyer, Paul (1994). By the Bomb's Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. p. 103. ISBN 9780807844809.
149. Newman, Roger K. (1997). Hugo Black: A Biography. New York: Fordham University Press. p. 382. ISBN 0823217868. HST's stated desire to "keep something worse from happening" by implementing his loyalty check program {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
150. "The White Case Record". Time Magazine. November 30, 1953. Retrieved 2006-10-03.
151. Moynihan, Daniel Patrick; et al. (1997). Chairman's Foreword, Report of the Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Congress, U.S. Government Printing Office. Retrieved 2007-08-03. {{cite book}}: Explicit use of et al. in: |last= (help)
152. Eisler, Kim Isaac (1993). A Justice for All: William J. Brennan, Jr., and the decisions that transformed America. New York: Simon & Schuster. p. 76. ISBN 0671767879.
153. ^ Eisler, p. 76
154. McCullough p. 887
155. Ambrose, Stephen E. (1983). Eisenhower: 1890–1952. New York: Simon & Schuster. p. 515. ISBN 0671440691. Journalist Arthur Krock was told by a third party that in 1951 Truman privately offered the top spot on the Democratic ticket to Dwight D. Eisenhower, but Eisenhower, who turned out to be a Republican, supposedly declined. Truman and Eisenhower both denied the story {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
156. McCullough, pp. 887–893.
157. "The Way West, article 9/15/52". Time. 1952. Retrieved 2007-07-26. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
158. Hurwood, Burnhardt J. (1969). Korea: Land of the 38th Parallel. New York: Parents Magazine Press. p. 123. Retrieved 2007-08-01. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
159. Gibbs, Nancy (November 10, 2008). "When New President Meets Old, It's Not Always Pretty". TIME. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
160. Ferrell, p. 387.
161. "The Man of Spirit". Time. August 13, 1956. Retrieved 2007-07-29. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
162. McCullough p. 949; quoting Allan Nevins writing for The New York Times Book Review 11/6/55, called Year of Decisions a "volume of distinction"
163. McCullough, p. 963
164. Martin, Joseph William (1960). My First Fifty Years in Politics as Told to Robert J. Donovan. New York: McGraw-Hill. p. 249.
165. McCullough, pp. 389-90
166. McCullough, p. 983
167. "Biographical sketch of Mrs. Harry S. Truman". Truman Presidential Library. Retrieved 2007-07-28.
168. Moynihan, Daniel Patrick. "Chairman's Foreword". Moynihan Library. Retrieved 2008-08-13.
169. "Giving Them More Hell". Time. December 3, 1973. Retrieved 2007-07-29. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
170. "Our History: A Living Memorial". Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation. Retrieved 2007-07-26.
171. "Truman Fellowship". Sandia National Labs. Retrieved 2008-06-18.
172. "Harry S. Truman School of Public Affairs". Retrieved 2008-06-18.
173. "Harry S. Truman Birthplace State Historic Site". Missouri State Parks and Historic Sites. Retrieved 2008-08-18.
174. McCullough, p. 19
175. Goldstein, Norm (2003). Associated Press Stylebook 2003. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books. p. 256. ISBN 046500489X.
176. "Biography of Harry S. Truman". The White House. Retrieved 2007-08-16.
177. McCullough, p. 347

References

• Bernstein, Barton J. (ed.) (1966). The Truman Administration: A Documentary History (First edition ed.). HarperCollins. ISBN 0-060-90120-9. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help); |first= has generic name (help)
• Bernstein, Barton J. (ed.) (1970). Politics and Policies of the Truman Administration (Second edition ed.). Franklin Watts. ISBN 0-531-06328-3. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help); |first= has generic name (help)
• Ferrell, Robert H. (ed.) (1983). Dear Bess: The Letters from Harry to Bess Truman, 1910–1959. Appleton, Crofts Century. ISBN 0-390-18229-X. {{cite book}}: |first= has generic name (help)
• Ferrell, Robert H. (ed.) (1980). Off the Record: The Private Papers of Harry S. Truman. Harper & Row. ISBN 0-826-21119-4. {{cite book}}: |first= has generic name (help)
• Merrill, Dennis (ed.) (1969). Documentary History of the Truman Presidency. Frederick, Md.: Univ. Publ. of America. ISBN 1-556-55580-6. {{cite book}}: |first= has generic name (help) (35 volumes)
• Miller, Merle (1974). Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman. Putnam Publishing Group. ISBN 0-399-11261-8.
• Neal, Steve (2003). Miracle of '48: Harry Truman's Major Campaign Speeches & Selected Whistle-Stops. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

External links

• "President Harry S. Truman". American President: An Online Reference Resource. Miller Center of Public Affairs. Retrieved 2007-08-14.
• Harry S. Truman biography, NNDB
• "Truman Tapes". Presidential Recording Project. Miller Center of Public Affairs. Retrieved 2007-08-14.
• The American Presidency Project at UCSB: The Most Comprehensive Resource on the Web
• 'The American Presidency: Transformation and Change - Harry Truman', lecture by Professor Vernon Bogdanor at Gresham College, 29 January 2008
• Harry Truman and Independence, Missouri: "This is Where I Belong", a National Park Service Teaching with Historic Places (TwHP) lesson plan
• An analysis of Harry Truman's personality
• Harry Truman's cabinet
• Medical and health history of Harry Truman
• C-SPAN's Presidential Libraries: Harry S. Truman
• PBS American Experience Video Biography of Harry Truman
• White House biography

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Truman (1945–1953) Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953–1961) John F. Kennedy (1961–1963) Lyndon B. Johnson (1963–1969) Richard Nixon (1969–1974) Gerald Ford (1974–1977) Jimmy Carter (1977–1981) Ronald Reagan (1981–1989) George H. W. Bush (1989–1993) Bill Clinton (1993–2001) George W. Bush (2001–2009) Barack Obama (2009–2017) Donald Trump (2017–2021) Joe Biden (2021–present) Presidency timelines Washington McKinley T. Roosevelt Taft Wilson Harding Coolidge Hoover F. D. Roosevelt Truman Eisenhower Kennedy L. B. Johnson Nixon Ford Carter Reagan G. H. W. Bush Clinton G. W. Bush Obama Trump Biden Category List v t e Democratic Party History Second Party System Third Party System Fourth Party System Fifth Party System Sixth Party System National conventions, presidential tickets, and presidential primaries 1828 (None): Jackson/Calhoun 1832 (Baltimore): Jackson/Van Buren 1835 (Baltimore): Van Buren/R. Johnson 1840 (Baltimore): Van Buren/None 1844 (Baltimore): Polk/Dallas 1848 (Baltimore): Cass/Butler 1852 (Baltimore): Pierce/King 1856 (Cincinnati): Buchanan/Breckinridge 1860 (Charleston/Baltimore): Douglas/H. Johnson (Breckinridge/Lane, SD) 1864 (Chicago): McClellan/Pendleton 1868 (New York): Seymour/Blair 1872 (Baltimore): Greeley/Brown 1876 (Saint Louis): Tilden/Hendricks 1880 (Cincinnati): Hancock/English 1884 (Chicago): Cleveland/Hendricks 1888 (Saint Louis): Cleveland/Thurman 1892 (Chicago): Cleveland/Stevenson I 1896 (Chicago): W. Bryan/Sewall 1900 (Kansas City): W. Bryan/Stevenson I 1904 (Saint Louis): Parker/H. Davis 1908 (Denver): W. Bryan/Kern 1912 (Baltimore): Wilson/Marshall primaries 1916 (Saint Louis): Wilson/Marshall primaries 1920 (San Francisco): Cox/Roosevelt primaries 1924 (New York): J. Davis/C. Bryan primaries 1928 (Houston): Smith/Robinson primaries 1932 (Chicago): Roosevelt/Garner primaries 1936 (Philadelphia): Roosevelt/Garner primaries 1940 (Chicago): Roosevelt/Wallace primaries 1944 (Chicago): Roosevelt/Truman primaries 1948 (Philadelphia): Truman/Barkley primaries 1952 (Chicago): Stevenson II/Sparkman primaries 1956 (Chicago): Stevenson II/Kefauver primaries 1960 (Los Angeles): Kennedy/L. Johnson primaries 1964 (Atlantic City): L. Johnson/Humphrey primaries 1968 (Chicago): Humphrey/Muskie primaries 1972 (Miami Beach): McGovern/(Eagleton, Shriver) primaries 1976 (New York): Carter/Mondale primaries 1980 (New York): Carter/Mondale primaries 1984 (San Francisco): Mondale/Ferraro primaries 1988 (Atlanta): Dukakis/Bentsen primaries 1992 (New York): B. Clinton/Gore primaries 1996 (Chicago): B. Clinton/Gore primaries 2000 (Los Angeles): Gore/Lieberman primaries 2004 (Boston): Kerry/Edwards primaries 2008 (Denver): Obama/Biden primaries 2012 (Charlotte): Obama/Biden primaries 2016 (Philadelphia): H. Clinton/Kaine primaries 2020 (Milwaukee/other locations): Biden/Harris primaries 2024 (Chicago): Harris/Walz primaries Presidential administrations Jackson (1829–1837) Van Buren (1837–1841) Polk (1845–1849) Pierce (1853–1857) Buchanan (1857–1861) A. Johnson (1868–1869) Cleveland (1885–1889; 1893–1897) Wilson (1913–1921) Roosevelt (1933–1941; 1941–1945) Truman (1945–1953) Kennedy (1961–1963) L. B. Johnson (1963–1969) Carter (1977–1981) Clinton (1993–2001) Obama (2009–2017) Biden (2021–) U.S. House leaders, Speakers, and Caucus chairs A. Stevenson (1827–1834) Bell (1834–1835) Polk (1835–1839) J. W. Jones (1843–1845) Davis (1845–1847) Cobb (1849–1851) Boyd (1851–1855) G. W. Jones (1855–1857) Orr (1857–1859) Houston (1859–1861) Niblack/Randall (1869–1871) Niblack (1873–1875) Kerr (1875–1876) Randall (1876–1881) Carlisle (1883–1889) Holman (1889–1891) Crisp (1891–1895) D. B. Culberson (1895–1897) Richardson (1897–1903) Williams (1903–1909) Clark (1909–1921) Kitchin (1921–1923) Garrett (1923–1929) Garner (1929–1933) Rainey (1933–1934) Byrns (1935–1936) Bankhead (1936–1940) Rayburn (1940–1961) McCormack (1962–1971) Albert (1971–1977) O'Neill (1977–1987) Wright (1987–1989) Foley (1989–1995) Gephardt (1995–2003) Pelosi (2003–2023) Jeffries (2023–) U.S. Senate leaders and Caucus chairs J. W. Stevenson (1873–1877) Wallace (1877–1881) Pendleton (1881–1885) Beck (1885–1890) Gorman (1890–1898) Turpie (1898–1899) J. K. Jones (1899–1903) Gorman (1903–1906) Blackburn (1906–1907) C. A. Culberson (1907–1909) Money (1909–1911) Martin (1911–1913) Kern (1913–1917) Martin (1917–1919) Hitchcock (1919–1920) Underwood (1920–1923) Robinson (1923–1937) Barkley (1937–1949) Lucas (1949–1951) McFarland (1951–1953) Johnson (1953–1961) Mansfield (1961–1977) Byrd (1977–1989) Mitchell (1989–1995) Daschle (1995–2005) Reid (2005–2017) Schumer (2017–) Chairs of the DNC Hallett McLane Smalley Belmont Schell Hewitt Barnum Brice Harrity Jones Taggart Mack McCombs McCormick Cummings White Hull Shaver Raskob Farley Flynn Walker Hannegan McGrath Boyle McKinney Mitchell Butler Jackson Bailey O'Brien Harris O'Brien Westwood Strauss Curtis White Manatt Kirk Brown Wilhelm DeLee Dodd/Fowler Romer/Grossman Rendell/Andrew McAuliffe Dean Kaine Wasserman Schultz Perez Harrison State and territorial parties Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming American Samoa District of Columbia Guam Northern Mariana Islands Puerto Rico Virgin Islands Democrats Abroad Affiliated groups Congress Senate Caucus Policy Committee Steering and Outreach Committee House Caucus Factions Blue Dog Coalition Congressional Progressive Caucus Justice Democrats New Democrat Coalition Problem Solvers Caucus Fundraising Democratic Attorneys General Association Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Democratic Governors Association Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee National Conference of Democratic Mayors National Democratic Redistricting Committee Sectional College Democrats of America Democrats Abroad National Federation of Democratic Women Stonewall Democrats Stonewall Young Democrats Young Democrats of America High School Democrats of America Related Primaries Presidential candidates Debates Superdelegate Chairmanship elections 2005 2017 2021 2025 House caucus leadership elections 2006 2018 Weekly Democratic Address v t e Vice presidents of the United States John Adams (1789–1797) Thomas Jefferson (1797–1801) Aaron Burr (1801–1805) George Clinton (1805–1812) Elbridge Gerry (1813–1814) Daniel D. Tompkins (1817–1825) John C. Calhoun (1825–1832) Martin Van Buren (1833–1837) Richard M. Johnson (1837–1841) John Tyler (1841) George M. Dallas (1845–1849) Millard Fillmore (1849–1850) William R. King (1853) John C. Breckinridge (1857–1861) Hannibal Hamlin (1861–1865) Andrew Johnson (1865) Schuyler Colfax (1869–1873) Henry Wilson (1873–1875) William A. Wheeler (1877–1881) Chester A. Arthur (1881) Thomas A. Hendricks (1885) Levi P. Morton (1889–1893) Adlai Stevenson (1893–1897) Garret Hobart (1897–1899) Theodore Roosevelt (1901) Charles W. Fairbanks (1905–1909) James S. Sherman (1909–1912) Thomas R. Marshall (1913–1921) Calvin Coolidge (1921–1923) Charles G. Dawes (1925–1929) Charles Curtis (1929–1933) John N. Garner (1933–1941) Henry A. Wallace (1941–1945) Harry S. Truman (1945) Alben W. Barkley (1949–1953) Richard Nixon (1953–1961) Lyndon B. Johnson (1961–1963) Hubert Humphrey (1965–1969) Spiro Agnew (1969–1973) Gerald Ford (1973–1974) Nelson Rockefeller (1974–1977) Walter Mondale (1977–1981) George H. W. Bush (1981–1989) Dan Quayle (1989–1993) Al Gore (1993–2001) Dick Cheney (2001–2009) Joe Biden (2009–2017) Mike Pence (2017–2021) Kamala Harris (2021–present) Category List v t e Democratic Party History Second Party System Third Party System Fourth Party System Fifth Party System Sixth Party System National conventions, presidential tickets, and presidential primaries 1828 (None): Jackson/Calhoun 1832 (Baltimore): Jackson/Van Buren 1835 (Baltimore): Van Buren/R. Johnson 1840 (Baltimore): Van Buren/None 1844 (Baltimore): Polk/Dallas 1848 (Baltimore): Cass/Butler 1852 (Baltimore): Pierce/King 1856 (Cincinnati): Buchanan/Breckinridge 1860 (Charleston/Baltimore): Douglas/H. Johnson (Breckinridge/Lane, SD) 1864 (Chicago): McClellan/Pendleton 1868 (New York): Seymour/Blair 1872 (Baltimore): Greeley/Brown 1876 (Saint Louis): Tilden/Hendricks 1880 (Cincinnati): Hancock/English 1884 (Chicago): Cleveland/Hendricks 1888 (Saint Louis): Cleveland/Thurman 1892 (Chicago): Cleveland/Stevenson I 1896 (Chicago): W. Bryan/Sewall 1900 (Kansas City): W. Bryan/Stevenson I 1904 (Saint Louis): Parker/H. Davis 1908 (Denver): W. Bryan/Kern 1912 (Baltimore): Wilson/Marshall primaries 1916 (Saint Louis): Wilson/Marshall primaries 1920 (San Francisco): Cox/Roosevelt primaries 1924 (New York): J. Davis/C. Bryan primaries 1928 (Houston): Smith/Robinson primaries 1932 (Chicago): Roosevelt/Garner primaries 1936 (Philadelphia): Roosevelt/Garner primaries 1940 (Chicago): Roosevelt/Wallace primaries 1944 (Chicago): Roosevelt/Truman primaries 1948 (Philadelphia): Truman/Barkley primaries 1952 (Chicago): Stevenson II/Sparkman primaries 1956 (Chicago): Stevenson II/Kefauver primaries 1960 (Los Angeles): Kennedy/L. Johnson primaries 1964 (Atlantic City): L. Johnson/Humphrey primaries 1968 (Chicago): Humphrey/Muskie primaries 1972 (Miami Beach): McGovern/(Eagleton, Shriver) primaries 1976 (New York): Carter/Mondale primaries 1980 (New York): Carter/Mondale primaries 1984 (San Francisco): Mondale/Ferraro primaries 1988 (Atlanta): Dukakis/Bentsen primaries 1992 (New York): B. Clinton/Gore primaries 1996 (Chicago): B. Clinton/Gore primaries 2000 (Los Angeles): Gore/Lieberman primaries 2004 (Boston): Kerry/Edwards primaries 2008 (Denver): Obama/Biden primaries 2012 (Charlotte): Obama/Biden primaries 2016 (Philadelphia): H. Clinton/Kaine primaries 2020 (Milwaukee/other locations): Biden/Harris primaries 2024 (Chicago): Harris/Walz primaries Presidential administrations Jackson (1829–1837) Van Buren (1837–1841) Polk (1845–1849) Pierce (1853–1857) Buchanan (1857–1861) A. Johnson (1868–1869) Cleveland (1885–1889; 1893–1897) Wilson (1913–1921) Roosevelt (1933–1941; 1941–1945) Truman (1945–1953) Kennedy (1961–1963) L. B. Johnson (1963–1969) Carter (1977–1981) Clinton (1993–2001) Obama (2009–2017) Biden (2021–) U.S. House leaders, Speakers, and Caucus chairs A. Stevenson (1827–1834) Bell (1834–1835) Polk (1835–1839) J. W. Jones (1843–1845) Davis (1845–1847) Cobb (1849–1851) Boyd (1851–1855) G. W. Jones (1855–1857) Orr (1857–1859) Houston (1859–1861) Niblack/Randall (1869–1871) Niblack (1873–1875) Kerr (1875–1876) Randall (1876–1881) Carlisle (1883–1889) Holman (1889–1891) Crisp (1891–1895) D. B. Culberson (1895–1897) Richardson (1897–1903) Williams (1903–1909) Clark (1909–1921) Kitchin (1921–1923) Garrett (1923–1929) Garner (1929–1933) Rainey (1933–1934) Byrns (1935–1936) Bankhead (1936–1940) Rayburn (1940–1961) McCormack (1962–1971) Albert (1971–1977) O'Neill (1977–1987) Wright (1987–1989) Foley (1989–1995) Gephardt (1995–2003) Pelosi (2003–2023) Jeffries (2023–) U.S. Senate leaders and Caucus chairs J. W. Stevenson (1873–1877) Wallace (1877–1881) Pendleton (1881–1885) Beck (1885–1890) Gorman (1890–1898) Turpie (1898–1899) J. K. Jones (1899–1903) Gorman (1903–1906) Blackburn (1906–1907) C. A. Culberson (1907–1909) Money (1909–1911) Martin (1911–1913) Kern (1913–1917) Martin (1917–1919) Hitchcock (1919–1920) Underwood (1920–1923) Robinson (1923–1937) Barkley (1937–1949) Lucas (1949–1951) McFarland (1951–1953) Johnson (1953–1961) Mansfield (1961–1977) Byrd (1977–1989) Mitchell (1989–1995) Daschle (1995–2005) Reid (2005–2017) Schumer (2017–) Chairs of the DNC Hallett McLane Smalley Belmont Schell Hewitt Barnum Brice Harrity Jones Taggart Mack McCombs McCormick Cummings White Hull Shaver Raskob Farley Flynn Walker Hannegan McGrath Boyle McKinney Mitchell Butler Jackson Bailey O'Brien Harris O'Brien Westwood Strauss Curtis White Manatt Kirk Brown Wilhelm DeLee Dodd/Fowler Romer/Grossman Rendell/Andrew McAuliffe Dean Kaine Wasserman Schultz Perez Harrison State and territorial parties Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming American Samoa District of Columbia Guam Northern Mariana Islands Puerto Rico Virgin Islands Democrats Abroad Affiliated groups Congress Senate Caucus Policy Committee Steering and Outreach Committee House Caucus Factions Blue Dog Coalition Congressional Progressive Caucus Justice Democrats New Democrat Coalition Problem Solvers Caucus Fundraising Democratic Attorneys General Association Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Democratic Governors Association Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee National Conference of Democratic Mayors National Democratic Redistricting Committee Sectional College Democrats of America Democrats Abroad National Federation of Democratic Women Stonewall Democrats Stonewall Young Democrats Young Democrats of America High School Democrats of America Related Primaries Presidential candidates Debates Superdelegate Chairmanship elections 2005 2017 2021 2025 House caucus leadership elections 2006 2018 Weekly Democratic Address v t e United States senators from Missouri Class 1 Benton Geyer Polk Henderson Schurz Cockrell Warner Reed Patterson Truman Briggs Kem Symington Danforth Ashcroft Carnahan Talent McCaskill Hawley Class 3 Barton Buckner Linn Atchison Green Johnson Wilson Brown Drake Jewett Blair Bogy Armstrong Shields Vest Stone Wilfley Spencer Williams Hawes Clark Donnell Hennings Long Eagleton Bond Blunt Schmitt v t e Cold War United States Soviet Union NATO Warsaw Pact ANZUS METO SEATO NEATO Rio Pact Non-Aligned Movement 1940s Morgenthau Plan Hukbalahap rebellion Jamaican political conflict Dekemvriana Guerrilla war in the Baltic states Operation Priboi Operation Jungle Occupation of the Baltic states Cursed soldiers Operation Unthinkable Gouzenko Affair Division of Korea Indonesian National Revolution Operation Masterdom Operation Beleaguer Operation Blacklist Forty Iran crisis of 1946 Greek Civil War Baruch Plan Corfu Channel incident Turkish Straits crisis Restatement of Policy on Germany First Indochina War 1947 Polish parliamentary election Truman Doctrine Asian Relations Conference May 1947 crises Partition of India Indo-Pakistani war of 1947–1948 1947–1949 Palestine war 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine 1948 Arab–Israeli War 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight Marshall Plan Comecon 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état Incapacitation of the Allied Control Council Al-Wathbah uprising Tito–Stalin split Berlin Blockade Annexation of Hyderabad Madiun Affair Western betrayal Iron Curtain Eastern Bloc Western Bloc Chinese Civil War Chinese Communist Revolution Malayan Emergency March 1949 Syrian coup d'état Operation Valuable 1950s Bamboo curtain McCarthyism Korean War Arab Cold War (1952–1979) 1952 Egyptian revolution Iraqi Intifada (1952) Mau Mau rebellion East German uprising of 1953 1953 Iranian coup d'état Pact of Madrid Bricker Amendment 1954 Syrian coup d'état Petrov Affair Domino theory 1954 Geneva Conference 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état Capture of the Tuapse First Taiwan Strait Crisis Jebel Akhdar War Algerian War Kashmir Princess Bandung Conference Geneva Summit (1955) Vietnam War Cyprus Emergency "On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences" 1956 Poznań protests Hungarian Revolution of 1956 Polish October Suez Crisis "We will bury you" Operation Gladio Syrian Crisis of 1957 Sputnik crisis Ifni War Iraqi 14 July Revolution 1958 Lebanon crisis Second Taiwan Strait Crisis 1959 Mosul uprising 1959 Tibetan uprising Laotian Civil War Kitchen Debate Cuban Revolution Consolidation of the Cuban Revolution Sino-Soviet split 1960s Congo Crisis Simba rebellion 1960 U-2 incident Bay of Pigs Invasion 1960 Turkish coup d'état Albanian–Soviet split Expulsion of Soviets from Albania Iraqi–Kurdish conflict First Iraqi–Kurdish War Berlin Crisis of 1961 Berlin Wall Annexation of Goa Papua conflict Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation Sand War Portuguese Colonial War Angolan War of Independence Guinea-Bissau War of Independence Mozambican War of Independence Cuban Missile Crisis El Porteñazo Sino-Indian War Communist insurgency in Sarawak Ramadan Revolution Eritrean War of Independence North Yemen Civil War 1963 Syrian coup d'état Assassination of John F. Kennedy Aden Emergency Cyprus crisis of 1963–1964 Shifta War Mexican Dirty War Tlatelolco massacre Guatemalan Civil War Colombian conflict 1964 Brazilian coup d'état Dominican Civil War Rhodesian Bush War Indonesian mass killings of 1965–1966 Transition to the New Order (Indonesia) ASEAN Declaration 1966 Syrian coup d'état Cultural Revolution Argentine Revolution South African Border War Korean DMZ Conflict 12-3 incident Greek junta 1967 Hong Kong riots Years of Lead (Italy) Six-Day War War of Attrition Dhofar War Al-Wadiah War Nigerian Civil War Protests of 1968 May 68 Prague Spring USS Pueblo incident 1968 Polish political crisis 1968–1971 East Pakistan communist insurgency Communist insurgency in Malaysia Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia 17 July Revolution 1968 Peruvian coup d'état Revolutionary Government 1969 Sudanese coup d'état 1969 Libyan revolution Goulash Communism Sino-Soviet border conflict New People's Army rebellion 1970s Détente Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Black September Alcora Exercise Corrective Movement (Syria) Western Sahara conflict Cambodian Civil War Communist insurgency in Thailand 1970 Polish protests Koza riot Realpolitik Ping-pong diplomacy 1971 JVP insurrection Corrective revolution (Egypt) 1971 Turkish military memorandum 1971 Sudanese coup d'état 1971 Bolivian coup d'état Four Power Agreement on Berlin Bangladesh Liberation War 1972 visit by Richard Nixon to China North Yemen-South Yemen Border conflict of 1972 First Yemenite War Munich massacre 1972–1975 Bangladesh insurgency Eritrean Civil Wars 1973 Uruguayan coup d'état 1973 Afghan coup d'état 1973 Chilean coup d'état Yom Kippur War 1973 oil crisis Carnation Revolution Spanish transition to democracy Metapolitefsi Strategic Arms Limitation Talks Second Iraqi–Kurdish War Turkish invasion of Cyprus 15 August 1975 Bangladeshi coup d'état Siege of Dhaka (1975) Sipahi-Janata revolution Angolan Civil War Cambodian genocide June 1976 protests Mozambican Civil War Oromo conflict Ogaden War 1978 Somali coup attempt Western Sahara War Ethiopian Civil War Lebanese Civil War Sino-Albanian split Third Indochina War Cambodian–Vietnamese War Cambodian conflict Operation Condor Dirty War (Argentina) 1976 Argentine coup d'état Egyptian–Libyan War German Autumn Korean Air Lines Flight 902 Nicaraguan Revolution Uganda–Tanzania War NDF Rebellion Chadian–Libyan War Second Yemenite War Grand Mosque seizure Iranian revolution Saur Revolution Sino-Vietnamese War New Jewel Movement 1979 Herat uprising Seven Days to the River Rhine Struggle against political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union 1980s Salvadoran Civil War Soviet–Afghan War 1980 and 1984 Summer Olympics boycotts Gera Demands Peruvian Revolution Gdańsk Agreement Solidarity Eritrean Civil Wars 1980 Turkish coup d'état Ugandan Bush War Gulf of Sidra incident Martial law in Poland Casamance conflict Falklands War 1982 Ethiopian–Somali Border War Ndogboyosoi War United States invasion of Grenada Able Archer 83 Star Wars 1985 Geneva Summit Iran–Iraq War Somali Rebellion Reykjavík Summit 1986 Black Sea incident South Yemen civil war Toyota War 1987 Lieyu massacre Operation Denver 1987–1989 JVP insurrection Lord's Resistance Army insurgency 1988 Black Sea bumping incident 8888 Uprising Solidarity (Soviet reaction) Contras Central American crisis Operation RYAN Korean Air Lines Flight 007 People Power Revolution Glasnost Perestroika Bougainville conflict First Nagorno-Karabakh War Afghan Civil War United States invasion of Panama 1988 Polish strikes Polish Round Table Agreement 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre Revolutions of 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall Fall of the inner German border Velvet Revolution Romanian Revolution Peaceful Revolution 1990s Mongolian Revolution of 1990 Min Ping Yu No. 5540 incident Gulf War Min Ping Yu No. 5202 German reunification Yemeni unification Fall of communism in Albania Breakup of Yugoslavia Dissolution of the Soviet Union 1991 August Coup Dissolution of Czechoslovakia Frozen conflicts Abkhazia China-Taiwan Korea Kosovo South Ossetia Transnistria Sino-Indian border dispute North Borneo dispute Foreign policy Truman Doctrine Containment Eisenhower Doctrine Domino theory Hallstein Doctrine Kennedy Doctrine Peaceful coexistence Ostpolitik Johnson Doctrine Brezhnev Doctrine Nixon Doctrine Ulbricht Doctrine Carter Doctrine Reagan Doctrine Rollback Kinmen Agreement Ideologies Capitalism Liberalism Chicago school Conservatism American conservatism Keynesianism Libertarianism Monetarism Neoclassical economics Reaganomics Supply-side economics Democratic capitalism Socialism Communism Marxism–Leninism Castroism Eurocommunism Guevarism Hoxhaism Juche Ho Chi Minh Thought Maoism Trotskyism Stalinism Titoism Other Imperialism Anti-imperialism Nationalism Ultranationalism Chauvinism Ethnic nationalism Racism Zionism Anti-Zionism Fascism Neo-Nazism Islamism Totalitarianism Authoritarianism Autocracy Liberal democracy Illiberal democracy Guided democracy Social democracy Third-worldism White supremacy White nationalism White separatism Apartheid Organizations NATO SEATO METO EEC Warsaw Pact Comecon Non-Aligned Movement NN States ASEAN SAARC Safari Club Propaganda Pro-communist Active measures Izvestia Neues Deutschland Pravda Radio Moscow Rudé právo Trybuna Ludu TASS Soviet Life Pro-Western Amerika Crusade for Freedom Paix et Liberté Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Red Scare Voice of America Technological competition Arms race Nuclear arms race Space Race Historians Gar Alperovitz Thomas A. Bailey Michael Beschloss Archie Brown Warren H. Carroll Adrian Cioroianu John Costello Michael Cox Nicholas J. Cull Norman Davies Willem Drees Robert D. English Herbert Feis Robert Hugh Ferrell André Fontaine Anneli Ute Gabanyi John Lewis Gaddis Lloyd Gardner Timothy Garton Ash Gabriel Gorodetsky Fred Halliday Jussi Hanhimäki John Earl Haynes Patrick J. Hearden Tvrtko Jakovina Tony Judt Harvey Klehr Gabriel Kolko Walter LaFeber Walter Laqueur Melvyn P. Leffler Geir Lundestad Vojtech Mastny Jack F. Matlock Jr. Thomas J. McCormick Timothy Naftali Marius Oprea David S. Painter William B. Pickett Ronald E. Powaski Yakov M. Rabkin M. E. Sarotte Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Ellen Schrecker Giles Scott-Smith Shen Zhihua Timothy Snyder Athan Theoharis Andrew Thorpe Vladimir Tismăneanu Patrick Vaughan Alex von Tunzelmann Odd Arne Westad William Appleman Williams Jonathan Reed Winkler Rudolph Winnacker Ken Young Espionage and intelligence List of Eastern Bloc agents in the United States Soviet espionage in the United States Russian espionage in the United States American espionage in the Soviet Union and Russian Federation CIA and the Cultural Cold War CIA MI5 MI6 United States involvement in regime change Soviet involvement in regime change MVD KGB Stasi See also Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War Soviet Union–United States relations Soviet Union–United States summits Russia–NATO relations War on terror Brinkmanship Second Cold War Russian Revolution Category List of conflicts Timeline Template:Cold War figures v t e Time Persons of the Year 1927–1950 Charles Lindbergh (1927) Walter Chrysler (1928) Owen D. Young (1929) Mohandas Gandhi (1930) Pierre Laval (1931) Franklin D. Roosevelt (1932) Hugh S. Johnson (1933) Franklin D. Roosevelt (1934) Haile Selassie (1935) Wallis Simpson (1936) Chiang Kai-shek / Soong Mei-ling (1937) Adolf Hitler (1938) Joseph Stalin (1939) Winston Churchill (1940) Franklin D. Roosevelt (1941) Joseph Stalin (1942) George Marshall (1943) Dwight D. Eisenhower (1944) Harry S. Truman (1945) James F. Byrnes (1946) George Marshall (1947) Harry S. Truman (1948) Winston Churchill (1949) The American Fighting-Man (1950) 1951–1975 Mohammed Mosaddeq (1951) Elizabeth II (1952) Konrad Adenauer (1953) John Foster Dulles (1954) Harlow Curtice (1955) Hungarian Freedom Fighters (1956) Nikita Khrushchev (1957) Charles de Gaulle (1958) Dwight D. Eisenhower (1959) U.S. Scientists: George Beadle / Charles Draper / John Enders / Donald A. Glaser / Joshua Lederberg / Willard Libby / Linus Pauling / Edward Purcell / Isidor Rabi / Emilio Segrè / William Shockley / Edward Teller / Charles Townes / James Van Allen / Robert Woodward (1960) John F. Kennedy (1961) Pope John XXIII (1962) Martin Luther King Jr. (1963) Lyndon B. Johnson (1964) William Westmoreland (1965) The Generation Twenty-Five and Under (1966) Lyndon B. Johnson (1967) The Apollo 8 Astronauts: William Anders / Frank Borman / Jim Lovell (1968) The Middle Americans (1969) Willy Brandt (1970) Richard Nixon (1971) Henry Kissinger / Richard Nixon (1972) John Sirica (1973) King Faisal (1974) American Women: Susan Brownmiller / Kathleen Byerly / Alison Cheek / Jill Conway / Betty Ford / Ella Grasso / Carla Hills / Barbara Jordan / Billie Jean King / Susie Sharp / Carol Sutton / Addie Wyatt (1975) 1976–2000 Jimmy Carter (1976) Anwar Sadat (1977) Deng Xiaoping (1978) Ayatollah Khomeini (1979) Ronald Reagan (1980) Lech Wałęsa (1981) The Computer (1982) Ronald Reagan / Yuri Andropov (1983) Peter Ueberroth (1984) Deng Xiaoping (1985) Corazon Aquino (1986) Mikhail Gorbachev (1987) The Endangered Earth (1988) Mikhail Gorbachev (1989) George H. W. Bush (1990) Ted Turner (1991) Bill Clinton (1992) The Peacemakers: Yasser Arafat / F. W. de Klerk / Nelson Mandela / Yitzhak Rabin (1993) Pope John Paul II (1994) Newt Gingrich (1995) David Ho (1996) Andrew Grove (1997) Bill Clinton / Ken Starr (1998) Jeff Bezos (1999) George W. Bush (2000) 2001–present Rudolph Giuliani (2001) The Whistleblowers: Cynthia Cooper / Coleen Rowley / Sherron Watkins (2002) The American Soldier (2003) George W. Bush (2004) The Good Samaritans: Bono / Bill Gates / Melinda Gates (2005) You (2006) Vladimir Putin (2007) Barack Obama (2008) Ben Bernanke (2009) Mark Zuckerberg (2010) The Protester (2011) Barack Obama (2012) Pope Francis (2013) Ebola Fighters: Dr. Jerry Brown / Dr. Kent Brantly / Ella Watson-Stryker / Foday Gollah / Salome Karwah (2014) Angela Merkel (2015) Donald Trump (2016) The Silence Breakers (2017) The Guardians: Jamal Khashoggi / Maria Ressa / Wa Lone / Kyaw Soe Oo / Staff of The Capital (2018) Greta Thunberg (2019) Joe Biden / Kamala Harris (2020) Elon Musk (2021) Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Spirit of Ukraine (2022) Taylor Swift (2023) Donald Trump (2024) v t e Cabinet of President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933–1945) Vice President John Nance Garner (1933–1941) Henry A. Wallace (1941–1945) Harry S. Truman (1945) Secretary of State Cordell Hull (1933–1944) Edward Stettinius Jr. (1944–1945) Secretary of the Treasury William H. Woodin (1933) Henry Morgenthau Jr. (1934–1945) Secretary of War George Dern (1933–1936) Harry Hines Woodring (1936–1940) Henry L. Stimson (1940–1945) Attorney General Homer Stille Cummings (1933–1939) Frank Murphy (1939–1940) Robert H. Jackson (1940–1941) Francis Biddle (1941–1945) Postmaster General James Farley (1933–1940) Frank C. Walker (1940–1945) Secretary of the Navy Claude A. Swanson (1933–1939) Charles Edison (1939–1940) Frank Knox (1940–1944) James Forrestal (1944–1945) Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes (1933–1945) Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace (1933–1940) Claude R. Wickard (1940–1945) Secretary of Commerce Daniel C. Roper (1933–1938) Harry Hopkins (1938–1940) Jesse H. Jones (1940–1945) Henry A. Wallace (1945) Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins (1933–1945) v t e (← 1944) 1948 United States presidential election (→ 1952) Democratic Party Convention Primaries Candidates Incumbent nominee: Harry S. Truman campaign VP nominee: Alben W. Barkley Other candidates: Harley M. Kilgore Richard Russell Jr. Henry A. Wallace Republican Party Convention Primaries Candidates Nominee: Thomas E. Dewey VP nominee: Earl Warren Other candidates: Riley A. Bender Herbert E. Hitchcock Douglas MacArthur Joseph W. Martin Jr. Edward Martin Leverett Saltonstall Harold Stassen Arthur Vandenberg Robert A. Taft States' Rights Democratic Party Convention Candidates Nominee: Strom Thurmond VP nominee: Fielding L. Wright Other third-party and independent candidates Prohibition Party Nominee: Claude A. Watson VP nominee: Dale H. Learn Progressive Party Nominee: Henry A. Wallace Nominee: Glen H. Taylor Socialist Party Nominee: Norman Thomas VP nominee: Tucker P. Smith Socialist Workers Party Nominee: Farrell Dobbs VP nominee: Grace Carlson Independents and other candidates Gerald L. K. Smith Other 1948 elections: House Senate v t e Cabinet of President Harry S. Truman (1945–1953) Vice President None (1945–1949) Alben W. Barkley (1949–1953) Secretary of State Edward Stettinius Jr. (1945) James F. Byrnes (1945–1947) George C. Marshall (1947–1949) Dean Acheson (1949–1953) Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr. (1945) Fred M. Vinson (1945–1946) John Wesley Snyder (1946–1953) Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson (1945) Robert P. Patterson (1945–1947) Kenneth Claiborne Royall (1947) Secretary of Defense James Forrestal (1947–1949) Louis A. Johnson (1949–1950) George C. Marshall (1950–1951) Robert A. Lovett (1951–1953) Attorney General Francis Biddle (1945) Tom C. Clark (1945–1949) J. Howard McGrath (1949–1952) James P. McGranery (1952–1953) Postmaster General Frank C. Walker (1945) Robert E. Hannegan (1945–1947) Jesse M. Donaldson (1947–1953) Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal (1945–1947) Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes (1945–1946) Julius Albert Krug (1946–1949) Oscar L. Chapman (1949–1953) Secretary of Agriculture Claude R. Wickard (1945) Clinton Anderson (1945–1948) Charles F. Brannan (1948–1953) Secretary of Commerce Henry A. Wallace (1945–1946) W. Averell Harriman (1946–1948) Charles W. Sawyer (1948–1953) Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins (1945) Lewis B. Schwellenbach (1945–1948) Maurice J. Tobin (1948–1953)

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