The Citizens of the Granite State Are Not Easily Won

"Eisenhower, Taft, Stassen, Warren, MacArthur, Truman, Kefauver -- it's a free country, and no armed guards to restrict your personal opinion."

So said the voice of a newsreel covering the first modern New Hampshire primary in 1952, in an unspoken comparison to Soviet Russia. As it happened, Eisenhower won the Republican primary and went on to win the presidency, while Estes Kefauver bested Harry Truman in the Democratic primary, though Kefauver didn't win the nomination (and neither did Truman, who chose retirement soon after New Hampshire). Kefauver won again in 1956, since New Hampshire clearly liked the Senator from Tennessee, and that year he was the vice presidential nominee.

"New Hampshire has spoken, and experts are looking for more straws in the political wind."

Harry Truman Dies

Two U.S. presidents died on the day after Christmas. The first was Harry Truman, who passed away in 1972. Exactly 34 years later, Gerald Ford died.

Today, Truman. Tomorrow, Ford. The following is an excerpt from President Truman's obituary in the New York Times by B. Drummond Ayers Jr.

"Mr. Truman's final illness was the eighth to put him in Research Hospital. The others involved four cases of intestinal infection, a broken rib, a hernia and appendicitis.

"The final period of illness began in late November as a case of minor lung congestion. Doctors initially treated him at home.

"But they ordered him hospitalized on Dec. 5 when the congestion grew worse and his heart, already weakened by a long struggle with hardening of the arteries, began to beat irregularly under the strain.

"At daybreak of the 18th day of his hospitalization, Mr. Truman went through was doctor's called a 'dangerous period' as his blood pressure dropped and his temperature rose.

"Mr. Truman's condition was changed from 'very serious' to 'critical' and his doctors and nurses began to monitor him almost constantly, particularly as his breathing became labored, his kidney output decreased, fluid built in his lungs and his heart began to flutter.

"On Christmas morning, the former President was so weak that that his doctors said that death could come 'within hours.'

"Today, it finally came.

"The room in which the former President died is on the sixth floor of Research Hospital, a 500-bed facility he helped dedicate in 1963. Two red and green Christmas bells hang in the window, which looks east toward Independence and the recently completed baseball and football stadium of the Harry S. Truman sports complex.

"The room cost $59.50 a day. In Mr. Truman's case it was paid for by private medical insurance and Medicare. Long an advocate of Federal Health plans, Mr. Truman held Medicare card number 1. He had not been able to push such a plan through during his own presidency, but Lyndon B. Johnson was more successful and came to Independence in 1965 to sign the Medicare Act in the Truman Library, enrolling the former President as the first member.

"It was a final political victory for Harry S. Truman."

FDR, Dewey and the Election of 1944

FDR, Dewey and the Election of 1944 by David M. Jordan focuses on the neglected story of that election, and Jordan does a fine job of telling it, from the pre-primary maneuvering among both parties, but especially the Republicans, through to the surprisingly energetic campaign, both on the part of ailing FDR and his remarkably young opponent. Dewey was only 42 at the time, the youngest-ever Republican nominee for the top job and the first major-party presidential candidate born in the 20th century.

This particular election is generally glossed over in histories of the period, probably because hindsight considers it a foregone conclusion. In the event, it wasn't that close: FDR-Truman took 432 electoral votes and 53.4 percent of the popular vote vs. Dewey-Bricker's 99 electoral votes and 45.9 percent of the popular vote. Still, before the election, pollsters weren't quite so sure of the outcome, with some even predicting Dewey's election. That and '48 might tell us that pollsters weren't very good at predicting national elections in the 1940s, but that's with the benefit of hindsight. A Dewey upset was considered plausible at the time, even if not very likely, and in point of fact '44 was the closest presidential election in which FDR participated. As Jordan makes clear, Dewey ran a spirited campaign in the face of the odds.

But at a curious distance from the electorate. Apparently Dewey and his men thought it best, at least at first, to focus on radio speeches more than personal appearances. During an early campaign trip by train to the West Coast, for example, Dewey only made a handful of rear-platform speeches, the kind so effective for President Truman four years later. No doubt the strategy reflected Dewey's personality. "The man had one of the coldest personalities of anyone who ever contemplated a run for the American presidency," notes Jordan. "David Brinkley wrote, 'In public, Dewey came across as pompous and cold. And for good reason. He was both.' He was generally conceded to be intelligent, efficient, a master of detail, 'serious-minded to the point of severity' as one contemporary noted. 'He is as humorless as a man can be,' noted another."

Balancing the Republican ticket that year, at least in one respect, was Gov. John W. Bricker of Ohio. "The governor of Ohio... was an almost complete opposite of Thomas E. Dewey," says Jordan. "John William Bricker, it was said, was 'excellent company.' People liked being around Bricker, and he enjoyed being around others... Big, jovial John Bricker, one author wrote, 'had the essential of popularity, a real and lively interest in people.' " Bricker also represented the conservative wing of the Republican Party, as opposed to the more moderate Dewey, and had the endorsement of Sen. Robert A. Taft ("Mr. Republican") in the early '44 primaries. Bricker didn't fare well in those contests, however, but well enough to be an acceptable choice for the number-two slot.

No one is forgotten faster than a failed vice presidential candidate (e.g., William Miller, who did a "Do you know me?" Amex ad after the '64 election), and Gov. Bricker certainly falls into that category, though some lingering memory of him might remain in Ohio. Bricker did, however, offer the ticket a rhyming slogan, an example of which the book shows in a photo of Republican campaign memorabilia: "Win the War Quicker With Dewey and Bricker." Apparently the slogan wasn't that commonly used, and not destined for the fame of "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too." Dewey and Bricker lost, after all, but even before that the Republican ticket probably didn't want to emphasize that their victory would indeed mean a change in the management of the war effort, since that was in fact what the Democrats were emphasizing as a negative ("don't change horses in mid-stream").

As for the Democrats, the Roosevelt campaign didn't show much zing until the "Fala Speech" in late September, during which the president had some amusingly choice words for the Republicans, much to the delight of the audience, who were mainly Teamsters leadership. Late in the campaign, and thus late in the book, FDR went on an open-car motorcade through four of the five boroughs of New York City, which Jordan describes in fascinating detail. The president began at an Army base in Brooklyn, went through downtown Brooklyn, then on to Ebbets Field, then through Queens, then across to the Bronx, then down through Harlem and finally on down Broadway and into Times Square. "Through it all, the rain kept coming down, the wind blew, and Franklin Roosevelt kept smiling and waving to the thousands watching for him, with Fala by his side," Jordan says. "After all was over, the police estimated the total crowds at 3,050,000, though it may have been, as Ray Brandt of the St. Louis Post Dispatch put it, "a mere million or two."

The book spends an entire chapter and more on the central mystery of the 1944 election, namely how and why Harry Truman was chosen as the Democratic vice presidential candidate. No account of that event that I've ever read quite spells it out clearly, probably because it isn't quite possible to do so, but Jordan takes a good whack at it. Vice President Henry Wallace wanted to keep the job, but boll weevils and other conservatives in the party wanted him out. President Roosevelt seemed to prefer James Byrnes, but he also seemed to accept the judgment of other party leaders that as a Southerner, Byrnes would cost more votes (Northern blacks, labor) than he would win -- something FDR never told Byrnes he believed. Other names were bandied about, such as Sam Rayburn, Alben Barkley, William O. Douglas, Truman and even John G. Winant (American ambassador to the Court of St. James's at the time), though he wasn't very seriously considered.

Eventually, Democratic Party leaders held an informal but important meeting with the president at the White House before the convention that seemed to settle matters in favor of Truman -- except that it didn't quite, and Truman wasn't really told about it anyway, going to the convention supporting Byrnes for vice president, and even planning to put his name in nomination. When FDR's men told Truman, at first he said he didn't want it, but was famously persuaded by a brusk phone call from President Roosevelt to a room that Democratic leadership had rented in the Blackstone Hotel (not the first time the Blackstone made a president). Even then, Henry Wallace might have been re-nominated by his supporters at the convention, but FDR's men put a stop to it using hasty parliamentary maneuvers, and almost resorted to cutting an electric cable to stop the convention organist from playing "Iowa, Iowa, That's Where the Tall Corn Grows," a song associated with Wallace at the time.

The book also offers interesting sketches of some of the lesser figures in the election. The Republicans' 1940 surprise candidate, Wendell Willkie, wanted another shot and entered the early '44 primaries, only to lose to Dewey. Even more interesting for us (though not for him) was the fact that Willkie died unexpectedly about a month before the election, without endorsing Dewey -- or Roosevelt either, and while it seems hard to believe he might have, it was considered possible because he didn't believe Dewey was internationalist enough, or at least was bowing too much the isolationist elements in the Republican Party (presumably those isolationists would have finished the war and then rejected American participation in the likes of the UN, the Marshall Plan and NATO).

Another supporting character is Harold Stassen. Good old Harold Stassen, always running. That's how we remember him now, but 1944 was before all that. That year, Lt. Comdr. Stassen was off in the Pacific theater as Adm. Halsey's flag secretary, having resigned the governorship of Minnesota to do his part. He wasn't really a contender in '44, but his star was rising (he'd given the keynote at the Republican national convention in 1940), and he later had an important part in nominating Dewey again in '48 and Eisenhower in '52, after which he settled into his recurring-candidate mode. That's another story.

The book also provides some food for speculative thought. After all, we know that FDR was near the end of the line in November 1944, even if at time the electorate didn't. What if he had died six months sooner -- a few weeks ahead of the voting? Who would the Democratic National Committee have picked to take his place? Would Dewey have won against that person, and if so, how would have he deployed the atomic bomb? Assuming that FDR dies in 1945, as he did, what kind of president would Wallace have made, had he been allowed to stay on the ticket? Would he have used the bomb? And what kind of president would John G. Winant have made, anyway? In history as it happened, the three-time Republican governor of New Hampshire, first chairman of the Social Security Board, head of the International Labor Organization and ambassador to the United Kingdom through much of World War II, retired to private life after the war and put a bullet through his head in 1947.

That's just my digression, but it only goes to show how many fascinating stories there are in a good work of political history, such as FDR, Dewey and the Election of 1944. Well worth reading.

Message from Matthew Algeo

Kind words by e-mail from Matthew Algeo, whose book, The President is a Sick Man, was discussed here a few days ago:

"Thanks for the heads up, and even more thanks for the very nice review! What a great blog, I posted a link to it on my Facebook pages. I will visit often.

"Definitely check out my Truman book, I think you'll like it.

"Thanks again!

The Truman book he refers to is his earlier work, Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure, which is about a road trip Harry and Bess took shortly after Truman left office in 1953. It does look interesting.

The Battle of Chapultepec

The Battle of Chapultepec, west of Mexico City, began on September 12, 1847, between U.S. forces under Gen. Winfield Scott and a Mexican garrison under Lt. Col. Felipe Xicoténcatl. Franklin Pierce, who would become the 12th President of the United States in 1853, participated as a brigadier general.

One hundred years later, the site was visited by another U.S. president, and 50 years after that, yet another. "On March 5, 1947 President Harry S. Truman was on the next to last day of a three-day whirlwind visit to Mexico," notes Mexconnect.com. "Departing from his prepared agenda, he announced that he wanted to make a stop at Mexico City's historic Chapultepec Castle. As the motorcade came to a halt by a grove of trees, Truman stepped out of his black Lincoln and walked over to a stone monument reading Niños Heroes ('Heroic Children').

Monument to the Heroic Cadets, Mexico City

"These were the six cadets who committed suicide during the Mexican-American War by leaping from the castle battlements rather than surrender. Truman laid a wreath on the monument and then stood for a few moments of silent reverence. All the while a contingent of contemporary Mexican cadets, some with tears streaming down their cheeks, stood at rigid attention.

"Truman's action, duplicated 50 years later by Bill Clinton, made him Mexico's all-time most popular U.S. president."

December 27, 1945:Creation of the World Bank

Though an international organization, the World Bank presidency is in effect controlled by another presidency -- that of the United States. The president of the United States nominates someone for the World Bank position (these days the World Bank Group, consisting of five organizations), who is then confirmed by the bank's board of governors.

Harry Truman nominated three men for the position, including the first, Eugene Meyer, financier and owner of the Washington Post. John Kennedy nominated one. LBJ also nominated one, former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, who stayed at the position until the presidency of Ronald Reagan, who nominated McNamara's two successors. George HW Bush and Bill Clinton nominated one person each, and George W. Bush has nominated two. Presidents Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford and Carter didn't have the opportunity to make any new nominations.

December 26, 1972 & 2006: Harry Truman and Gerald Ford Die

Today is the first anniversary of Gerald Ford's death, and the 35th anniversary of the passing of Harry Truman. Ford lived longer than any other person who held that office, besting old intramural rival Ronald Reagan only about six weeks before his (Ford's) death. Ford also was the third-oldest vice president; only Levi P. Morton (96) and John Nance Garner (98) lived longer. Truman didn't do so badly in terms of longevity, either. He lived to be 88, and as such is number five among presidents in lifespan, after Ford, Reagan, John Adams and Hoover.

Ford was also a member of that informal club, presidential short-timers. In fact, among all holders of the office, he was president for less time than all but four others: William Henry Harrison, whose famously abbreviated term lasted about a month in 1841; the unlucky James Garfield, who died that the spoils system might end, after 199 days as president in 1881; Zachary Taylor (one year, 128 days), who withstood bad army food much of his adult life but not bad cherries on the Fourth of July, 1850; and Warren Harding, who shocked the nation in 1923 by dropping dead before the enfeebled former President Wilson, serving only two years and 151 days.

Gerald Ford was president a little longer than Harding, two years and 164 days, and among presidents who survived their time in office, his was the shortest service. Millard Fillmore, who lived on after his presidency to be the first citizen of Buffalo and a Know-Nothing besides, was in office a little longer than Ford, occupying the White House for two years and 236 days.

Short time is actually fairly common in the rough-and-tumble of the US presidency. Among the 41 individuals who were president in the past – not counting the current officeholder, since history isn’t done with him yet, and counting Grover Cleveland only once for this purpose – only 11 have held the office eight years or longer (FDR being the obvious “or longer” in this category), 12 if you count George Washington. The time between Washington’s inauguration on April 30, 1789, and the end of his presidency on March 4, 1797, was only seven years and 308 days, but the government was new and things couldn’t be ready in time for an on-time swearing in, so I’m inclined to credit him the full eight years. Another seven men held the office for less than eight but more than four years; a dozen held office exactly four years; and ten didn’t even get a full term.

Eight years or more (in order, including Washington): Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson, Grant, Cleveland, Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Reagan, Clinton.

Between four and eight years: Lincoln, McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, Coolidge, Truman, Lyndon Johnson, Nixon.

Four years exactly: John Adams, John Q. Adams, Van Buren, Polk, Pierce, Buchanan, Hayes, Benjamin Harrison, Taft, Hoover, Carter, George H.W. Bush.

Less than four years: William Henry Harrison, Tyler, Taylor, Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Garfield, Arthur, Harding, Kennedy, Ford.

November 24, 1877:Alben Barkley's Birthday

Alben William Barkley, Democratic politico from Kentucky and big wheel in the US Senate in the 1930s and '40s, won the vice presidency in 1948 on the same ticket with Harry Truman. At Barkley's inauguration on January 20, 1949, he was 71, thus becoming the oldest person ever to become vice president (the second-oldest was Charles Curtis, Coolidge's veep, who entered the office at age 69 in 1925).

Curtis wasn't ever actually called a "veep." Alben Barkley was, however -- he was the first vice president to be called that -- and the term stuck, even though Barkley's successor, Richard Nixon, didn't want it. "Alben W. Barkley, who served as vice president of the United States from 1949 to 1953, was popularly known as the 'Veep,' " wrote Mark O. Hatfield in Vice Presidents of the United States, 1789-1993. "His young grandson had suggested this abbreviated alternative to the cumbersome 'Mr. Vice President.' When Barkley told the story at a press conference, the newspapers printed it, and the title stuck. Barkley's successor as vice president, Richard Nixon, declined to continue the nickname, saying that it had been bestowed on Barkley affectionately and belonged to him...

"A storyteller of great repute, Alben Barkley frequently poked fun at himself and his office. He was especially fond of telling about the mother who had two sons. One went to sea; the other became vice president; and neither was heard from again. In Barkley's case, the story was not at all true. He made sure that the public heard from him, and about him, as often as possible. And what the public heard, they liked, for Alben Barkley performed admirably as vice president of the United States.

"...Alben Barkley was a genial grandfatherly figure -- but with enough life left in him to court and marry a widow half his age and to captivate national attention with their May-December romance. In many ways, Barkley was the last of the old-time vice presidents, the last to preside regularly over the Senate, the last not to have an office in or near the White House, the last to identify more with the legislative than the executive branch. He was an old warhorse, the veteran of many political battles, the perpetual keynote speaker of his party who could rouse delegates from their lethargy to shout and cheer for the party's leaders and platform. His stump-speaker's lungs enabled him to bellow out a speech without need for a microphone. He was partisan to the marrow, but with a sense of humor and a gift of storytelling that defused partisan and personal animosities."

Today is also President Zachary Taylor's birthday, born in 1784, and as such the first president born after Americans won their independence on the battlefield, as acknowledged by the 1783 Treaty of Paris. See March 5 (his swearing in), July 9 (his death) and September 25 (the Battle of Monterrey).

November 1, 1950:Assassins Gun for Truman

In late 1950, President Truman was living at Blair House across Pennsylvania Ave. from the the White House while that structure was undergoing a major renovation. Protecting the president wasn't as easy at Blair House as the White House, since Blair House fronted a busy street, and was without the high iron fence and broad lawn that surround the White House.

Two Puerto Rican extremists, 36-year-old Oscar Collazo and 25-year-old Griselio Torresola, decided to take advantage of the situation and assassinate Truman on November 1, 1950. Stationed in and around Blair House that day, guarding the president and the first family, were seven men, members of the White House Police and the Secret Service. One of these men was 40-year-old Private Leslie Coffelt (pictured), originally from a small town in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. He, along with one of the assassins, were fated to kill each other that day.

According to the Arlington National Cemetery web site (Coffelt is buried there): "At approximately 2:20 p.m., a half-hour before the president's scheduled departure, Collazo and Torresola approached Blair House from opposite directions. Floyd Boring had just stepped outside for a routine check with his detail. He spoke with Private Coffelt, then moved to the other corner of the house, where he reported to headquarters on the phone in Private Davidson's booth. He was chatting with Davidson when Collazo walked by.

"At the front steps, Donald Birdzell, who was facing westward at the time, suddenly heard a sharp click. Collazo had tried to shoot him at point-blank range, but the gun had misfired. Either the first round in the clip was empty, or Collazo's inexperience had caused him to engage the safety lock at the moment of firing. Birdzell whirled around to see Collazo pounding the gun with his left fist, which caused it to fire, striking Birdzell in the right knee. To draw the fire away from the house, the wounded officer limped out into the street before turning to shoot back at Collazo, who had started up the now unguarded steps.

"Davidson halted Collazo by firing at him from the east booth area. Agent Boring also began firing. Collazo sat on the second step and fired a clip of bullets back at the two guards. He managed to reload, despite the bullets ricocheting off the iron picket fence and railing. Collazo's nose and an ear were grazed by bullets, and another tore through his hat. Meanwhile, Stewart Stout grabbed the machine gun and took up a position inside the house, at the door.

"Agent Mroz came out the basement door behind Boring and Davidson, took one shot at Collazo, then raced back into the Lee House basement to meet a new threat at the basement door on the other end of the building, where Torresola had acted with much more effectiveness than his partner. Approaching from the west, Torresola had reached Private Coffelt's sentry box immediately behind Downs, who had been away from Blair House on personal business and arrived at the basement door just as the gunfire erupted. Because tourists often stopped at the box for information, Coffelt was taken completely by surprise as Torresola fired three times into his chest, abdomen, and legs. Mortally wounded, Coffelt sank back into his chair, but managed to draw his gun while struggling to remain conscious. Downs, standing in the doorway, tried to draw his pistol, but Torresola shot him three times. Then, seeing that Officer Birdzell was shooting at Collazo from the street, the skilled gunman disabled that officer with a bullet through his left knee.

"At this crucial point, Torresola might have gone unimpeded through the west door to the basement, but Private Coffelt made a final supreme effort before losing consciousness and killed the assailant instantly with a shot through the head. If Torresola had gone through the door, he would have stood a very good chance of reaching the president, who now was guarded only by Agent Mroz and Officer Stout. Coffelt's heroic act may have saved the president, because no one within range was safe as long as Torresola was shooting. Boring, meanwhile, had shot Collazo through the chest, and the battle was over. Approximately thirty shots had been fired in less than three minutes.

"Leslie Coffelt died in a hospital less than four hours later. Birdzell's wounds were temporarily disabling, but not life-threatening, while Downs survived wounds that would have killed a weaker man. Collazo was not hurt critically.

"When the shooting ended, President Truman rushed to the window but was quickly waved back by Boring, who feared there might be more accomplices in the excited crowd on the street. Ten minutes later, the president left by a back door for his speech in Arlington. 'A president has to expect such things,' he calmly informed an aide. Truman later reassured Admiral William Leahy: 'The only thing you have to worry about is bad luck. I never have bad luck.' "

Collazo, the surviving terrorist, was sentenced to death, but President Truman commuted his sentence to life imprisonment. President Carter pardoned him in 1979 and he lived in Puerto Rico until his death in 1994.

October 18, 1982:Bess Truman Dies

Elizabeth Virginia Wallace Truman, First Lady of the United States, lived to the age of 97, thus living longer than any first lady yet, or any president for that matter. Lady Bird Johnson, who died earlier this year, lived to be 94. Presidents Ford and Reagan lived to be 93. One vice president, however, John Nance Garner, lived a little longer than Bess: he died a little short of 99.

She was a distinct contrast as first lady from her predecessor, Eleanor Roosevelt. According to the White House biography of Bess Truman: "In the White House, its lack of privacy was distasteful to her. As her husband put it later, she was 'not especially interested' in the 'formalities and pomp or the artificiality which, as we had learned... inevitably surround the family of the President.' Though she conscientiously fulfilled the social obligations of her position, she did only what was necessary. While the mansion was rebuilt during the second term, the Trumans lived in Blair House and kept social life to a minimum.

"They returned to Independence in 1953. After her husband's death in 1972, Mrs. Truman continued to live in the family home. There she enjoyed visits from Margaret and her husband, Clifton Daniel, and their four sons. She died in 1982 and was buried beside her husband in the courtyard of the Harry S. Truman Library."

September 4, 1951:The First Transcontinental Television Transmission

Nonstop, 24-hour, wall-to-wall television is our fate in the early 21st century, but as recently as 60 years ago there was no such thing as a national TV broadcast. That changed on September 4, 1951, with the first coast-to-coast television broadcast, and it so happened that the first person featured on such a broadcast was the 33rd President of the United States, Harry Truman.

According to Mass Moments, a web site produced by the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities: "On this date in 1951... a program was transmitted live from coast-to-coast for the first time ever. President Harry Truman's opening speech at the Japanese Peace Conference in San Francisco was broadcast... Both the content and the technology were significant. The Peace Conference would formalize the end of hostilities with Japan, opening the door for Japan's economic recovery, while the broadcast initiated a new era in telecommunications.

"The linking of the country in a simultaneous broadcast evoked the day in 1869 when the Golden Spike was driven to mark the completion of the first transcontinental railroad. Only this time the new connections were carrying words and pictures, not passengers and freight.

"As soon as World War II was over, the number of TV stations, almost all located in cities, began to grow exponentially. In 1946 six stations were broadcasting to about 20,000 households; by 1950, 98 stations were reaching approximately 7,000,000 households — nearly one in every ten...

"But wiring the entire nation was an expensive proposition. In 1948 AT&T invested $40 million in an experiment. The company used microwave radio technology to transmit a television signal from San Francisco to Chicago, and then existing coaxial cables to carry the signal from Chicago to the East Coast. This made it possible for people in over 50 cities across the country to view the same programming at the same time.

"The opening session of the Japanese Peace Convention in San Francisco represented the first trial for the experimental system, and it was a success. Eighty-seven stations all over the U.S. received and broadcast Truman's speech.

"Regular network shows soon followed. Within a month, I Love Lucy debuted on CBS..."

August 25, 1950:Truman Seizes the Railroads

In an age of jet travel and the Interstate system, it's hard to imagine how dependent the United States once was on its railroads, but the nation was in 1950. Two months after the start of fighting in Korea, President Truman took a step that, though probably justified by wartime necessity, seems exceptionally radical today. He ordered the Army to take control of the nation's railroads ahead of a strike that would have shut them down.

"On August 25, 1950, President Harry Truman ordered the Army... to seize control of all major U.S. railroads from the 194 owning companies by August 27," writes Shaun Kirkpatrick, U.S. Army Military History Institute, on Army.mil, homepage of the US Army. "The order came before a national labor strike, scheduled for August 28, would have shut down the country's most important means of transportation.

"Secretary of the Army, Frank Pace Jr., said in a statement that day, 'We must not permit the flow of essential support to the forces in Korea to be interrupted.' Assistant Secretary of the Army, Karl Bendetsen, telegraphed the union presidents and rail companies and asked if labor and management would work under Army control. Both sides agreed to comply with the Army's request for continued operations, and the labor unions called off their strike.

"The strike plans arose out of more than a year of disagreements between unions and rail companies over wage demands and desired rule changes. The sides took another 21 months to reach a settlement; meanwhile, the Army retained control of national rail operations while also handling the Korean War.

"Due to the wartime shortage of troops, the Army spared only 46 officers, one enlisted man (a sergeant), and eight civilian clerks to full-time rail service. It did this successfully by staying in the background when possible, interfering with rail operations only when necessary to maintain uninterrupted service...

"On May 21, 1952, rail companies and the major labor unions finally settled their dispute. President Truman approved return of the rail systems to private ownership on May 23. Secretary Pace formally terminated 21 months of wartime control of America's railroads later that day."

July 15, 1948:Truman Nominated

A good many Democrats weren't especially excited about nominating Harry Truman for a term of his own as president in 1948. In fact, some elements of the party were so discontent with the president that they bolted -- either to the Progressive Party, which nominated former Vice President Henry Wallace for president and the eccentric Sen. Glen H. Taylor as his running mate; or to Gov. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina and Mississippi Gov. Fielding L. Wright of the States' Rights Democratic Party, the Dixiecrats.

Some party bosses also wanted to dump Truman and draft Gen. Dwight Eisenhower for the top spot, a sure winner. But when Eisenhower refused to become a candidate for either party that year, the Democrats turned to the devil they knew, whom they also believed would take them to defeat that November.

President Truman wasn't in a defeatist mood when he gave his acceptance speech, a taste of the famed campaign he ran in '48 that did indeed win him a term of his own, contrary to prediction.

"I can't tell you how very much I appreciate the honor which you have just conferred upon me," the president said. "I shall continue to try to deserve it.

"I accept the nomination.

"And I want to thank this convention for its unanimous nomination of my good friend and colleague, Sen. Barkley of Kentucky. He is a great man, and a great public servant. Sen. Barkley and I will win this election and make these Republicans like it-- don't you forget that!

"We will do that because they are wrong and we are right, and I will prove it to you in just a few minutes.

"This convention met to express the will and reaffirm the beliefs of the Democratic Party. There have been differences of opinion, and that is the democratic way. Those differences have been settled by a majority vote, as they should be.

"Now it is time for us to get together and beat the common enemy. And that is up to you.

"We have been working together for victory in a great cause. Victory has become a habit in our party. It has been elected four times in succession, and I am convinced it will be elected a fifth time in November.

"The reason is that the people know that the Democratic Party is the people's party, and the Republican party is the party of special interest, and it always has been and always will be."

June 27, 1950:Truman and Korea

Some wars have had more than one president preside over them, but only one president has presided over two distinct major wars -- Harry Truman -- though he came to the presidency late in World War II and was out of office before the end of the Korean War. On June 27, 1950, he gave the order for the US armed forces to assist the South Korean government in fighting the North Korean invasion that began on June 24.

A statement from the president that day said: "... in these circumstances I have ordered United States air and sea forces to give the Korean Government troop cover and support. The attack upon Korea makes plain beyond all doubt that Communism has passed beyond its use of subversion to conquer independent nations and will now use armed invasion and war. It has defied the orders the Security Council of the United Nations issued to preserve international peace and security..."

Korea, then, became the hot theater for the Cold War that day. Elsewhere in the statement, President Truman notes that he has ordered the US Seventh Fleet "to prevent any attack on Formosa. As a corollary of this action I am calling upon the Chinese Government on Formosa to cease all air and sea operations against the mainland. The Seventh Fleet will see that this is done." Though skirmishes continued for some time after that between the People's Republic and the Republic of China, that was effectively the end of the Chinese Civil War, and created the political anomaly that Taiwan is today.

Way down in the fifth paragraph, the president also said: "I have similarly directed acceleration in the furnishing of military assistance to the forces of France and the Associated States in Indo China and the dispatch of a military mission to provide close working relations with those forces."

May 18, 1980:Harry Truman Dies

Not that Harry Truman. By a curious coincidence, the best-known victim of the massive eruption of Mt. St. Helens on May 18, 1980, was named Harry Truman. He was born a little later than the 33rd president, 1896 vs. 1884. While the future president was in the US Army in France during the First World War, the future volcano victim was in the US Navy, even surviving the sinking of his ship by a U-boat near Ireland.

He did not, however, survive the onslaught of the blast many years later. Truman had lived near the mountain since the 1920s, and owned a prosperous lodge on a lake. The authorities asked him to leave, but he refused, and even gave TV interviews in the weeks up to the eruption stating his opinion that the whole thing was (so to speak) blown out of proportion. Even if he did think the volcano was going to erupt, he probably had decided to go down with his ship this time.

"[Shirley] Rosen says Truman's unwillingness to leave the mountain had more to do with protecting his property than making a statement," wrote Mike Barber in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer 20 years after Truman's death. "Others say the headlines contributed to his refusal to come off the mountain -- he felt obliged to live up to his press." (Area resident Rosen wrote a book about Truman.)

" 'He felt, like everyone else, that he would be able to see lava start to ooze down and a news helicopter would come in and scoop him up at the last minute.'

Nature had other ideas. The searing blast came at 300 mph.

" 'One scientist told us Truman probably had time to maybe turn his head,' " Rosen said. Moments later, Spirit Lake was buried by landslides and mudflows.

" 'We figure he's 150 feet under the (present) lake,' Rosen said. 'His pink Cadillac, 16 cats, everything is buried with him -- along with probably a lot of loot' from the lodge safe.

May 8, 1884:Harry Truman's Birthday

Harry Truman is an example of how astonishingly unpredictable a rise to the presidency can be. In 1933, he was an experienced, but minor and little-known, Missouri politician. Twelve years later: 33rd President of the United States and commander-in-chief of the mightiest armed force yet assembled by mankind, and known the world over. Each step of the way was marked by contingency.

In 1934, Boss Tom Pendergast of Kansas City needed a compromise candidate for the Democratic nomination for the US Senate, and Truman was probably chosen, as an honest politician, to put a good face on the machine. With his patron Pendergast in prison by 1940, Truman's prospects for re-election weren't good, but he managed to squeak to victory because he had two opponents in the primary who split the vote. In 1944, under circumstances that still aren't quite clear, he become the vice presidential nominee with FDR for his fourth term -- tantamount to nomination for president, though an unspoken one.

Though the people of the United States thought enough of President Truman to re-elect him in 1948 despite polls and educated opinion that said it wouldn't happen, his presidential reputation wasn't as high in office as it would be later. These days he tends to be accorded above-average or near-great status as a capable successor of FDR, who had very big shoes, during a triumphant but difficult time.

April 19, 1951:Truman v. MacArthur

President Truman relived Douglas MacArthur of his twin command positions as Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Japan and Commander of the United Nations forces in Korea on April 11, 1951. During his time in office, probably nothing else Truman did evoked a stronger storm of criticism; MacArthur was popular indeed. On April 19, after a quick trip across the country greeted by many well-wishers, the general gave his famed farewell speech to a joint session of Congress.

It was not a long speech, but it summed up MacArthur's reasoning on why he had advocated taking the war into China. It ended with a most-quoted line about old soldiers fading away. The entire speech is here.

But his dismissal stuck, and Truman is generally given his due these days. As commander-in-chief, a president can't very well have his top general loudly advocating an alternative military strategy in the middle of a war, however wrong the general considers the president to be.

But there may have been more to it than mere insubordination. If author and Korea specialist Bruce Cumings is right, Truman also wanted a more reliable commander in the field in case he -- Turman -- decided to use atomic bombs.

"The US came closest to using atomic weapons in April 1951, when Truman removed MacArthur," wrote Cumings in Le Monde Diplomatique (December 2004). "Although much related to this episode is still classified, it is now clear that Truman did not remove MacArthur simply because of his repeated insubordination, but because he wanted a reliable commander on the scene should Washington decide to use nuclear weapons; Truman traded MacArthur for his atomic policies."

Fortunately, the United States refrained from those "atomic policies," whatever they might have been. The entire article is here.

Interestingly, MacArthur's father, Gen. Arthur MacArthur, had a run-in with civilian authority as well -- namely future president William Howard Taft, the first US civilian governor of the Philippines -- and was ultimately transfered from his command in that new US territory.

March 12, 1947:The Truman Doctrine is Born

Not many presidents before World War II had "doctrines" named after them. You could argue that George Washington's admonition to his countrymen to avoid foreign entanglements was the Washington Doctrine, but no one calls it that, and most of his successors have ignored the advice anyway.

There is, of course, the Monroe Doctrine, which everyone learns about in school, plus Teddy Roosevelt's Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine (take the big stick with you to Latin America, that is). After World War II, however, most of the presidents have proclaimed some sort of foreign policy doctrine that becomes attached to their names. But even most of those -- who among us recalls the details of the Eisenhower or the Carter Doctrine, to name two -- probably won't be remembered as anything but footnotes.

On the other hand, the Truman Doctrine, mostly written by Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson and elucidated 60 years ago today by Harry Truman in a speech to the nation, seems to have more staying power, probably since the containment of the Soviet Union was the cornerstone of US foreign policy for decades. Here is how the New York Times began its report on the speech:

"President Truman outlined a new foreign policy for the United States today. In a historic message to Congress, he proposed that this country intervene wherever necessary throughout the world to prevent the subjection of free peoples to Communist-inspired totalitarian regimes at the expense of their national integrity and importance.

"In a request for $400,000,000 to bolster the hard-pressed Greek and Turkish governments against Communist pressure, the President said the constant coercion and intimidation of free peoples by political infiltration amid poverty and strife undermined the foundations of world peace and threatened the security of the United States.

"Although the President refrained from mentioning the Soviet Union by name, there could be no mistaking his identification of the Communist state as the source of much of the unrest throughout the world. He said that, in violation of the Yalta Agreement, the people of Poland, Rumania and Bulgaria had been subjected to totalitarian regimes against their will and that there had been similar developments in other countries."

January 31, 1950:Truman Goes Hydrogen

In some ways, the power of the modern presidency is mind-boggling. The authority to use nuclear weapons, though it hasn't happened in more than 60 years now, has always been the president's (President Eisenhower began the practice of "predelegation" of that authority to certain field commanders in extreme circumstances, but that's another story).

A milestone in the development of nuclear weapons came 57 years ago today, when President Truman made public that the United States was going to pursue the hydrogen bomb. He said:

"It is part of my responsibility as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces to see to it that our country is able to defend itself against any possible aggressor. Accordingly, I have directed the Atomic Energy Commission to continue its work on all forms of atomic weapons, including the so-called hydrogen or superbomb. Like all other work in the field of atomic weapons, it is being and will be carried forward on a basis consistent with the overall objectives of our program for peace and security.

"This we shall continue to do until a satisfactory plan for international control of atomic energy is achieved. We shall also continue to examine all those factors that affect our program for peace and this country's security."

The first such bomb was tested successfully on November 1, 1952 in the Enewetak atoll (pictured); the Soviet Union had its own program, and tested its first H-bomb in 1953.