Roosevelt Harry S. Truman Dwight D. Eisenhower John F. Kennedy Lyndon B. Bush Bill Clinton George W. Help inform the discussion Support the Miller Center. University of Virginia Miller Center.
Alben W. Breadcrumb U. Presidents Harry S. Truman Alben W. He described the committee's work as protecting the "little man" from the greedy predations of big labor and big business.
While moderately successful on this score, he did garner both popularity and recognition. In the mids, Truman voted for the Neutrality Acts, but this support was politically motivated—his constituents were mildly isolationist—rather than indicative of a deeply-ingrained isolationism.
Indeed, Truman had warned publicly of the threats posed by Germany and Japan and of the need for increased American military preparedness. After the outbreak of hostilities in August , Truman supported initiatives like the "cash-and-carry" and Lend-Lease policies designed to succor American allies in their time of need. He also supported American rearmament efforts and the Selective Service Act. Truman explained his evolving position in early , writing to a Missouri voter, "We are facing a bunch of thugs, and the only theory a thug understands is a gun and a bayonet.
In , President Roosevelt decided to drop Henry A. Wallace, his sitting vice president, from the Democratic ticket in the upcoming general election. Wallace's liberal political views and somewhat bizarre mysticism offended party professionals and conservative Democrats whose support the President needed.
After a set of complicated behind-the-scenes maneuvers orchestrated by Democratic party officials, Truman emerged as the consensus choice for the vice-presidential slot and performed admirably, if not flawlessly, during the national campaign. The Democratic ticket defeated Republican challengers Thomas Dewey and John Bricker by a comfortable margin in the November general election. As vice president, Truman functioned as a "pipeline" between the White House and the Senate, over which he presided.
He also cast the tie-breaking votes to confirm former Vice President Wallace as secretary of commerce and to prevent passage of the Taft lend-lease amendment, which would have forbade the use of lend-lease agreements for post-war relief. Truman, however, was not a major player in the Roosevelt administration and had a superficial relationship with the President. Truman served only eighty-two days in the vice presidency. On the afternoon of April 12, , he was summoned to the White House.
Upon arrival, Eleanor Roosevelt approached him and said, "Harry, the president is dead. Truman took the oath of office to become the thirty-third President of the United States. Grant Rutherford B. Hayes James A. Garfield Chester A. Roosevelt Harry S. Truman Dwight D. Eisenhower John F.
Kennedy Lyndon B. Bush Bill Clinton George W. Help inform the discussion Support the Miller Center. University of Virginia Miller Center. Truman: Life Before the Presidency. Breadcrumb U.
Presidents Harry S. Truman Harry S. In , Truman was elected to the U. Commonly known as the Truman Committee, it saved American taxpayers millions of dollars and propelled Truman into the national spotlight.
In , as Roosevelt sought an unprecedented fourth term as president, Truman was selected as his running mate, replacing Vice President Henry Wallace , a divisive figure in the Democratic Party.
Less than three months later, on April 12, , the president died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage at age Upon assuming the presidency, Harry Truman, who had met privately with Roosevelt only a few times before his death and had never been informed by the president about the construction of the atomic bomb, faced a series of monumental challenges and decisions.
In an effort to end the war in the Pacific and prevent the massive U. In the aftermath of the war, the Truman administration had to contend with deteriorating U. The president adopted a policy of containment toward Soviet expansion and the spread of communism. In , he introduced the Truman Doctrine to provide aid to Greece and Turkey in an effort to protect them from communist aggression.
That same year, Truman also instituted the Marshall Plan , which gave billions of dollars in aid to help stimulate economic recovery in European nations.
The president defended the plan by stating that communism would thrive in economically depressed regions. In , Truman initiated an airlift of food and other supplies to the Western-held sectors of Berlin, Germany, that were blockaded by the Soviets.
He also recognized the new state of Israel. On the home front, Truman was faced with the challenge of transitioning America to a peacetime economy. Amid labor disputes, a shortage of consumer goods and a national railroad strike, he saw his approval ratings plummet. He ran for reelection in and was widely expected to lose to Republican challenger Thomas Dewey.
However, Truman conducted a vigorous whistle-stop campaign in which he traveled by train around the country, giving hundreds of speeches. The president and his running mate Alben Barkley , a U. Dixiecrat candidate Strom Thurmond earned 39 electoral votes and 2. Harry Truman was sworn in for his second term in January ; his inauguration was the first to be nationally televised. The president set forth an ambitious social reform agenda, known as the Fair Deal, which included national medical insurance, federal housing programs, a higher minimum wage, assistance for farmers, repeal of the Taft-Hartley labor act, increases in Social Security and civil rights reforms.
Douglas, and others advertised their availability. But the nomination went to someone who did not want it. Missouri Senator Harry S. Truman had committed himself to nominating Byrnes. When a reporter asked why he did not become a candidate himself, considering that the next vice president might likely "succeed to the throne," Truman shook his head and replied, "Hell, I don't want to be President.
Despite a long record of public service, the always underestimated Truman made an unlikely candidate for national office. He was at heart a farm boy, born in the rural village of Lamar, Missouri, on May 8, His father, John Truman, was a farmer and livestock dealer. For much of their childhood, Harry and his brother and sister lived on their grandmother's six hundred-acre farm near Grandview, Missouri.
Poor eyesight corrected by thick glasses kept him from playing sports but failed to hamper his love of books. When the children were old enough for schooling, the Truman family moved to Independence.
Then, in , after John Truman went bankrupt speculating in grain futures, the family moved to Kansas City, where John Truman took a job as night watchman at a grain elevator. Harry applied to West Point but was rejected because of his poor eyesight. Instead of attending college, he worked as a timekeeper on a railroad construction crew, a newspaper wrapper, and a bank teller. In the parents returned to the Grandview farm, and Harry and his brother followed the next year.
After John Truman died in , Harry Truman assumed the supervision of the farm, plowing, sowing, harvesting, and repairing equipment himself. For the rest of his life, Truman always enjoyed returning to the family's farm now subdivided into suburban housing, although the farmhouse stands as part of the Harry S. Truman National Historical Site. As president, he later asserted: "I always give my occupation as farmer. I spent the best years of my life trying to run a acre farm successfully, and I know what the problems are.
Farming meant hard work and isolation. Nor did it produce sufficient income for Harry to marry his childhood sweetheart Elizabeth Bess Wallace. Truman proposed in , but Bess turned him down. Undaunted, he pursued the courtship for another eight years. After long days on the farm, Harry devoted his evenings to practicing the piano and reading history. He had other dreams as well: as a boy, he and his father had attended the Democratic National Convention in Kansas City in and watched William Jennings Bryan be nominated a second time for president.
The "Great Commoner" always remained one of his heroes. Truman's father loved politics. At thirty-three, Truman was two years over the age limit for the draft and would also have been exempted as a farmer. But he turned the farm over to his mother and sister and enlisted, overcoming his poor eyesight by memorizing the eye chart.
Having served in the National Guard, Truman helped organize a regiment from a National Guard company in Kansas City and was elected first lieutenant. When the th Field Artillery went overseas, he was promoted to captain and placed in command of Battery D. The "Dizzy D" had a wild and unruly reputation, but Captain Harry whipped them into line. They encountered heavy fighting in the Meuse-Argonne offensive, from which Truman emerged with the undying respect of his troops and increased confidence in his own abilities.
His exploits also lifted him in the eyes of Bess Wallace, who at last married him after the war, in June Truman temporarily moved into his in-laws' house in Independence, Missouri, an arrangement that lasted for the rest of his life. Instead of returning to the farm, he started a haberdasher's shop in Kansas City with his Battery D sergeant, Eddie Jacobson.
In the Pendergast machine endorsed Truman for county judge in Jackson County, which was an administrative rather than a judicial function. After narrowly winning the primary, he sailed easily to election as the Democratic candidate that fall. In this and all future elections, Truman could count on the loyal support of the veterans of the th, most of whom lived in the Kansas City vicinity.
In , the year his only daughter, Margaret, was born, Truman lost his bid for reelection when the anti-Pendergast faction of the Democratic party split away and swung its support to the Republicans. He then sold memberships in the Kansas City Automobile Club until he won reelection in During the next twenty-six years of uninterrupted public service, he never lost another election—to the surprise of everyone except Harry Truman. Like most political machines, the Pendergast organization depended upon patronage and government contracts.
Pendergast owned the Ready-Mix Concrete Company and held interests in a variety of construction, paving, pipe, and oil companies that built roads, courthouses, and other public works in and around Kansas City.
As an activist administrator, Truman sought to build roads and public buildings, but he held out against funneling county projects to corrupt contractors. Pendergast's interests got county contracts only when they were the lowest bidders. I never wanted power. I never had any money, and the only woman in my life is up at the house right now. In frustration, Truman poured out his feelings privately on paper:. I had to compromise in order to get the voted road system carried out Was I right or did I compound a felony?
I don't know.
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