Dale Fehringer--Harry S. Truman

Born May 8, 1884, Harry S Truman (“S” was his middle name) led a sheltered childhood in rural Missouri. His poor eyesight required thick glasses and limited his physical activities, and he spent much of his free time reading and playing the piano. After graduating from high school in Independence, he attended business college for one semester, dropped out because of lack of money, and worked in a mailroom, as a timekeeper on a railroad crew, and on his family farm. He joined the Missouri National Guard and served six years as a clerk, managing records, correspondence, and personnel data. He was discharged as a corporal in 1906 and went back to the farm. He seemed destined for a secluded life.

When the U.S. got involved in World War I Harry again volunteered for the Missouri National Guard, despite being 33 and over the draft age. Older and more experienced than most of the men in his field Artillery unit, he was chosen by them as one of their lieutenants. He trained at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, then went to France and was promoted to captain and placed in command of a combat artillery unit. He and his men faced intense combat in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, the largest and deadliest campaign in U.S. history, which involved more than a million U.S. soldiers. Harry’s unit excelled –supporting American advances, avoiding losses, and firing some of the final shots of the war, just before the Armistice on November 11, 1918. He returned from France a war hero, with added confidence from leading men in combat, a built-in political network of the men he had commanded, and a distrust of foreign entanglements.

Back in Missouri, Harry made two life-changing decisions: he married his childhood sweetheart and moved off the farm.

Harry had known Bess Wallace since he was six (she was five), but they were from different social circles, and they were just friends through high school. They reconnected in their 20s, but she turned down his first marriage proposal; he persisted, and they became secretly engaged in 1913. When he returned from France they married and moved in with her mother. Harry was devoted to Bess the rest of his life. They had one daughter, Mary Margaret, who became an author, singer, and radio and television personality.

His second pivotal choice was to leave the family farm and open a haberdashery store (men’s clothing and accessories) with a friend in downtown Kansas City. When it failed during a recession he switched to public service and used his wartime connections and help from a powerful Kansas City political organization known as “the Pendergast machine” to get elected as a Missouri county judge (an administrative rather than judicial position). After ten years of service he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1934. In Washington D.C. he was known as a “Pendergast boy” and largely disregarded by his peers until he gained national recognition for chairing a committee that investigated wasteful World War II defense spending. That acclaim (and the fact that he represented a border state) led to his selection as a vice-presidential candidate to run with Franklin Roosevelt in 1944. After winning the election, he had limited interaction with the president and was largely uninformed of major decisions.

Harry Truman became president when Roosevelt died April 12, 1945. That evening he was summoned to the White House, where Eleanor Roosevelt told him the president was dead. Harry told her he was sorry for her loss and asked if there was anything he could do for her.

“Is there anything we can do for you?” she replied, “for you are the one in trouble now.”

He was in trouble, facing huge challenges and major decisions, including the war in the Pacific, the decision to drop the first atom bombs in Japan, rising Cold War tensions, a deteriorating economy, and the need to restructure post-war Europe. He responded decisively by supporting the United Nations, confronting the Soviet Union, and shifting the U.S. economy from wartime to peacetime production. During it all he was guided by a sign on his desk that read, “The buck stops here.”

Truman also became involved in civil rights. It was a stance that contrasted with his upbringing; he was from a slave state, his ancestors owned slaves, and his parents held racist views. But his perspective changed over time, starting when he was in the Senate. As president, he decided to take action on civil rights after he was told that Sergeant Isaac Woodard, a Black Army veteran returning home from World War II, was taken off a bus, beaten blind by a policeman, and wrongly fined for drunkenness. At a meeting of the NAACP June 29, 1947, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Truman proclaimed civil rights a “moral priority.”

“When a Mayor and a City Marshal can take a Negro Sergeant off a bus in South Carolina, beat him up and put out his eyes, and nothing is done about it, something is radically wrong with the system. I can’t approve of such goings on and am going to try to remedy it, and if that ends up in my failure to be reelected, that failure will be in a good cause.”

“As Americans, we believe that every man should be free to live his life as he wishes. He should be limited only by his responsibility to his fellow countrymen. If this freedom is to be more than a dream, each man must be guaranteed equality of opportunity. The only limit to an American’s achievement should be his ability, his industry, and his character.”

It was the strongest statement on civil rights by a president since Lincoln. Truman put together a Civil Rights Commission and asked them to investigate and make recommendations. Based on their findings, he developed a set of civil rights laws and pushed Congress to enact them. When it became evident Congress wasn’t going to pass any meaningful civil rights legislation, Truman decided to do what he had the power to do on his own. As Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, he had the authority to integrate the military, and on July 26, 1948, he issued Executive Order 9981 which said there shall be “equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin.” It was a landmark act in the civil rights movement.

Harry ran for re-election in 1948, despite public discontent and low approval ratings. During a campaign speech a supporter yelled, “Give ‘em Hell, Harry!” and Truman replied, “I don’t give them Hell, I just tell the truth about them and they think it’s Hell.” The phrase became a rallying cry, and he wound up upsetting New York Governor Thomas Dewey.

After leaving the presidency, Truman returned to Independence, Missouri, where he focused on building his presidential library and writing his memoirs. He lived a modest life with Bess, going for walks in their neighborhood and taking a 2,500 road trip in a 1953 Chrysler to the East Coast and back to visit their daughter, Margaret. He passed away December 26, 1972, in Kansas City, following a short hospitalization for pneumonia. After a private, hometown service he was buried in the courtyard of his presidential library in Independence. There were many glowing tributes to Harry, including from Queen Elizabeth II who praised him for his role in creating the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe, from U.N. Secretary-General Waldheim who called him a “founding father of the United Nations,” and from former U.S. President Lyndon Johnson, who labeled him a “20^th century giant who shaped the world.”

Although Harry Truman’s public approval was low at the end of his presidency, his reputation has improved significantly over time as his achievements are evaluated in retrospect. Today, he is typically rated in the top 10 U.S. presidents and praised for his honesty, decisiveness, and influence on post-World War II international order.

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Harry Truman has appeared on four USPS postage stamps, including an 8-cent stamp in 1973, a 20-cent stamp in 1984 as part of the “Great Americans Series,” a 22-cent stamp in 1986 as part of the “AMERIPEX Presidents Sheet” series, and a 33-cent stamp in 1999 in the “Celebrate the Century” series.