Harry S. Truman

Harry S. Truman was born on May 8, 1884, in Lamar, Missouri. His father, John Anderson Truman, was born in 1851 and his mother, Martha Ellen Young, in 1852; in the 1840s the Young and Truman families had moved from KentuckyKentuckyKentucky is a U.S. state bordered by Illinois, Indiana and Ohio to the north, West Virginia and Virginia to the east, Tennessee to the south and Missouri to the west; its capital is Frankfort and its largest city is Louisville. It entered the Union on June 1, 1792, as the 15th state and the first state west of the Appalachian Mountains, and had a population of 4,505,836 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry to near Westport, Missouri.⁠[1]

His siblings were Vivian and Mary Jane.⁠[2]

In 1890 his parents moved the family to Independence, a county-seat town of about 6,000 people some ten miles east of Kansas City. That year Truman first met Bess Wallace at Sunday school. Poor eyesight led him to concentrate on reading and the piano, and he briefly considered becoming a concert pianist; he hoped to attend West Point, but his eyesight ruled out a commission.⁠[2][1]

He attended the Noland School and Independence High School, served as a page at the Democratic National Convention in 1900 and graduated from high school in 1901.⁠[1]

As his father’s finances worsened, Truman left a business college in Kansas City after one semester and in the summer of 1902 took a job in the mailroom of the Kansas City Star; he later worked as a railroad timekeeper, bank clerk and bookkeeper. In 1905 he joined the Missouri National Guard, serving until 1911.⁠[2][1]

In 1906 Truman left the bank to work on the family farm near Grandview, Missouri, where he spent most of the next decade. In 1910 he began courting Bess Wallace, who turned down his proposal in 1911, though they remained together. After his father died in 1914 he tried a small mining company and an oil partnership, neither of which succeeded.⁠[2][1]

As the United States prepared to enter World War I in 1917, Truman rejoined his National Guard unit, which was federalized as the 129th Artillery Regiment. He rose to captain and commanded the regiment’s Battery D in France, turning an underperforming battery into an effective unit.⁠[2][1]

The regiment shipped out to France in March 1918, first saw action in the Vosges mountains in August 1918 and later fought in the Argonne campaign. Truman was discharged on May 6, 1919. Wartime friends Eddie Jacobson and Harry Vaughn later became his business partner and aide.⁠[2][1]

On June 28, 1919, Truman married Bess Wallace in Independence, and the couple moved into the house at 219 North Delaware Street that had belonged to Bess’s grandparents.⁠[2][3]

Shortly after the wedding he and Eddie Jacobson opened a men’s clothing store in Kansas City. It closed in September 1922 during the economic downturn of the early 1920s, leaving Truman nearly bankrupt; he repaid his share of the debts over the next fifteen years.⁠[2][1]

In 1922, with the backing of Kansas City Democratic boss Thomas J. Pendergast, Truman was elected eastern district judge of the Jackson County Court, essentially a county commissioner’s post dealing with the budget, roads and patronage. He lost reelection in 1924, was elected presiding judge in 1926 and won again in 1930.⁠[2][4]

As presiding judge he guided a major rebuilding of the county’s road system and several public building projects and managed county finances in the early Depression. Despite his association with the Pendergast machine, he earned a reputation for integrity and efficiency.⁠[2][5]

In 1934 Truman wanted to run for the U.S. House, but Pendergast pushed him toward the Senate. He won a bitter Democratic primary marked by widespread ballot-box stuffing and easily took the seat in November. He arrived in Washington, D.C., with Bess and Margaret on December 31, 1934, and was sworn in as senator in January 1935.⁠[2][4]

In his first term he was a reliable supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal with strong ties to labor unions; he helped design the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938 and, with Senator Burton Wheeler of Montana, wrote the Transportation Act of 1940.⁠[2]

In 1940 Truman defeated Governor Lloyd Stark in the Democratic primary by only 8,000 votes and was reelected to the Senate.⁠[2][1]

From 1941 to 1944 he chaired the special Senate committee investigating the national defense program (the Truman Committee), which exposed waste and corruption, may have saved $15 billion and made him a national figure.⁠[1][6][5]

In 1944 Franklin D. Roosevelt dropped Vice President Henry A. Wallace from the ticket. After behind-the-scenes maneuvering Truman was nominated for vice president on July 21 and elected with Roosevelt on November 7, defeating Thomas Dewey and John Bricker.⁠[2][1]

Truman was sworn in as vice president on January 20, 1945. He presided over the Senate and served as a link between the White House and the Senate, casting a tie-breaking vote to confirm Henry A. Wallace as secretary of commerce. He served only 82 days as vice president.⁠[1][2]

On April 12, 1945, Truman was summoned to the White House, where Eleanor Roosevelt greeted him with the words “Harry, the president is dead.” Within hours he took the oath as the 33rd president of the United States. He had not been briefed on the atomic bomb or on tensions with the Soviet Union.⁠[2][6]

On June 26, 1945, Truman addressed the closing session of the U.N. Charter Conference in San Francisco, witnessing the signing of the United Nations charter. From July 17 to August 2 he attended the Potsdam Conference on the postwar treatment of Germany.⁠[7][6]

After Japan rejected an ultimatum to surrender, Truman approved the use of the atomic bomb that the United States had secretly developed. Bombs struck Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, immediately killing upwards of 100,000 people, with perhaps twice that number dying later from the aftereffects of radiation.⁠[4][5][7]

Truman announced the end of the war with Japan on August 14, and the Pacific war officially ended on September 2, 1945.⁠[7][4]

In September 1945 Truman sent Congress a 21-point postwar program that included rapid demobilization and temporary economic controls. From late 1945 through 1946 strikes hit the steel, coal, auto and railroad industries; he proposed compulsory mediation and arbitration, threatened to draft striking railroad workers and took the United Mine Workers to court, damaging his relationship with labor.⁠[8]

By September 1946 his approval had fallen to 32 percent, and in the 1946 midterm elections the Republicans, campaigning with slogans such as “Had Enough” and “To Err is Truman,” won control of both houses of Congress. In November 1946 he created a temporary federal loyalty security program, which he made permanent by executive order about five months later.⁠[8]

On March 12, 1947, Truman asked Congress for $400 million to counter communism in Greece and Turkey. The policy, known as the Truman Doctrine, pledged U.S. opposition to communist aggression and shifted American policy toward “containment” of the Soviet Union.⁠[7][4]

The Republican-led Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act, which limited union political activity, approved state “right to work” laws and allowed an eighty-day “cooling-off” period for strikes. Truman vetoed it in June 1947, saying it would “take fundamental rights away from our working people,” but Congress overrode the veto.⁠[8]

On July 26, 1947, Truman signed the National Security Act, which unified the armed forces and created the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council.⁠[7]

In late 1947 the civil rights committee he had appointed issued its report, To Secure These Rights, strongly backing civil rights legislation.⁠[8]

On April 3, 1948, Truman signed the Foreign Assistance Act, creating the European Recovery Program to carry out the Marshall Plan. Named for Secretary of State George C. Marshall, the plan provided about $13 billion in aid to rebuild Western European economies.⁠[7][4][6]

On June 26, 1948, in response to the Soviet blockade of West Berlin, Truman ordered the Berlin airlift, which supplied the city’s residents with food and supplies until the Soviets backed down.⁠[7][6]

On July 26, 1948, Truman signed Executive Order 9981, ending segregation in the U.S. armed forces; that year he also issued an executive order barring discrimination in the federal civil service.⁠[7][8]

In 1948 Truman, whose popularity was low, was widely expected to lose. With Alben Barkley as his running mate he campaigned hard against the Republican Congress. On November 2, 1948, he defeated the Republican governor of New York, Thomas Dewey (running mate Earl Warren; 45.1 percent, 189 electoral votes), with 49.5 percent of the popular vote and 303 electoral votes; J. Strom Thurmond of the States’ Rights Party (running mate Fielding Wright) won 2.4 percent and 39 electoral votes from four southern states, and Henry A. Wallace of the Progressive Party won 2.4 percent.⁠[9][10][7]

In his State of the Union address on January 5, 1949, Truman proposed the “Fair Deal,” including economic controls, repeal of Taft-Hartley, a higher minimum wage, expanded Social Security, housing, national health insurance and civil rights legislation. On January 20 he began his second term, proposing the Point IV program in his inaugural address.⁠[11][8]

Conservatives blocked national health insurance, repeal of Taft-Hartley and civil rights bills, and southern Democrats filibustered civil rights legislation; but Congress passed the Housing Act, signed on July 15, 1949, a 1949 minimum wage increase and a 1950 expansion of Social Security.⁠[8][11]

On August 10, 1949, Truman signed an amendment to the National Security Act creating a unified U.S. Department of Defense. On August 24 the North Atlantic Pact went into effect, bringing the United States into NATO, a collective security alliance with noncommunist European nations.⁠[11][4]

On September 23 he announced evidence of a Soviet atomic explosion. That year a communist government sympathetic to the Soviet Union took power in China, and Europe had divided into a Soviet bloc and an American-backed West.⁠[11][5]

On January 31, 1950, Truman ordered the development of the hydrogen bomb.⁠[11]

In 1950, shortly after British authorities arrested Klaus Fuchs for passing atomic secrets to the Soviets, Senator Joseph McCarthy charged that the State Department was full of communist agents; by spring 1950 the hysteria was known as “McCarthyism.” Truman said there was “not a single word of truth” in McCarthy’s claims.⁠[8]

After North Korea attacked South Korea in June 1950, Truman ordered U.S. air and sea forces to aid South Korea on June 26–30 and then sent ground forces and imposed a naval blockade. After China entered the war that fall the conflict settled into a stalemate that was unresolved when Truman left office in 1953. The Miller Center’s essay judges that the war globalized the Cold War and fueled a major U.S. military buildup and the nuclear arms race.⁠[11][5][6]

On November 1, 1950, Truman survived an assassination attempt by two Puerto Rican nationalists. On December 16 he declared a national emergency.⁠[11]

On April 11, 1951, Truman relieved General Douglas MacArthur of his commands for insubordination.⁠[11][6]

On March 27, 1952, after the White House renovation was completed, Truman moved back into the White House; on March 29 he announced that he would not seek reelection.⁠[11][6]

On April 8, 1952, he ordered the seizure of the steel mills to avert a strike. On June 2 the Supreme Court of the United States ruled 6–3 that the seizure was unconstitutional; a 53-day strike and a new contract followed.⁠[11][8]

From September 2 to November 1 he campaigned for the Democratic candidate, Adlai Stevenson, who lost to the Republican Dwight D. EisenhowerDwight D. EisenhowerDwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) was an American army general and politician who served as supreme commander of Allied forces in western Europe during World War II and as the 34th president of the United States, a Republican, from 1953 to 1961.Open the full entry. On November 5 Truman invited Eisenhower to the White House to discuss the transition.⁠[11][5]

On January 20, 1953, Truman attended Dwight D. Eisenhower’s inauguration and then left by train for Independence, Missouri. He left office as one of the least popular politicians in the country.⁠[11][10]

On May 8, 1955, his 71st birthday, Truman broke ground for the privately financed Truman Library building. On July 6, 1957, he took part in the dedication of the Harry S. Truman Library in Independence, the second presidential library in the National Archives and Records Service.⁠[12]

On July 30, 1965, Lyndon B. JohnsonLyndon B. JohnsonLyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) was an American politician who served Texas as a U.S. representative and senator and led the Senate Democrats, became vice president in 1961 and succeeded to the presidency on the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, serving as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. His administration enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and other “Great Society” legislation while expanding the U.S. military commitment in the Vietnam War.Open the full entry signed the Medicare bill at a ceremony at the Truman Library, which Truman called a “profound personal experience for me.” In January 1966 Truman and his wife received Medicare registration cards numbers one and two.⁠[12]

Truman died in Kansas City, Missouri, on December 26, 1972, at age 88, and was interred in the courtyard of the Truman Library on December 28.⁠[4][12]

His wife, Elizabeth Virginia “Bess” Wallace (1885–1982), died on October 18, 1982, at age 97; her funeral was held at Trinity Episcopal Church in Independence on October 21, and she was interred in the Truman Library courtyard. Their only child, Mary Margaret, was born in 1924 and died in 2008. Truman was a Baptist.⁠[13][12][5]

After leaving office Truman worked on his memoirs in 1953–1955; the first volume, Year of Decisions, was published in November 1955 and the second, Years of Trial and Hope, in 1956.⁠[12]

Truman’s Independence home was nicknamed “the Summer White House” during his presidency. It was designated a National Historic Landmark on November 11, 1971, and a National Historic Site in 1983 as the Harry S Truman National Historic Site.⁠[3]

The Miller Center’s essay judges that Truman’s reputation has grown since he left office: while acknowledging his challenges and blunders, scholars credit him with early civil rights steps, protecting New Deal gains, overseeing a long period of growth and laying the foundations of U.S. foreign policy, especially toward the Soviet Union. The essay notes that his containment approach shaped U.S. Cold War policy until the early 1990s and that his commitments to Israel and South Korea and U.S. leadership of NATO remain central to American foreign policy.⁠[5][10]

The essay also lists criticisms from some historians: that he accepted Douglas MacArthur’s assessment of Chinese intentions in Korea too readily, failed to tell the public of his doubts about Jiang Jieshi, responded too slowly and weakly to Joseph McCarthy, gave only lukewarm support to African American civil rights, and pursued liberal programs in 1946 and 1949 beyond what a conservative public would accept; it judges that these critiques have merit but underestimate the constraints he faced.⁠[10]

Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum: Official website: https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/ (opens in a new window).⁠[14]

Harry S Truman National Historic Site: Official website: https://www.nps.gov/hstr/index.htm (opens in a new window).⁠[15]