Harry and Bess Truman with Dean Acheson at the Truman Library site in Independence, Missouri, on February 12, 1955. Also pictured is David Lloyd, executive director of the Library Committee.
7
Beginning in the summer of 1959, the approaching presidential campaign became the dominant topic in Truman’s and Acheson’s letters. Acheson worried that Adlai Stevenson might again be the Democratic nominee. He had never much liked Stevenson and didn’t believe he could win in 1960. Truman worried that Nixon, a man he despised and thought dangerous to the country, might become President. He was also troubled by doubts about John F. Kennedy, whom he thought too young and inexperienced, and too linked with his rich father, Joseph P. Kennedy. He wanted the Democratic convention to be open and free to choose the best candidate—which would presumably be someone other than Kennedy; Truman favored Missouri Senator Stuart Symington—but as the convention neared, it was evident to Truman that Kennedy’s people were controlling it and that the outcome was almost predetermined. Acheson worried about what his beloved but sometimes problematic old boss would say and do during the political season, and he sent him the most remarkable letter in all their correspondence (June 28, 1960) in an attempt to head off any embarrassing or harmful behavior on Truman’s part. Truman, despite a somewhat rocky performance during the period leading up to and during the Democratic convention, was a loyal party man afterward, enthusiastically committed to John F. Kennedy, at least publicly. Acheson advised him to go on the attack against Nixon during the campaign. Truman did this especially effectively in one of his most unusual and whimsical speeches—which Acheson partially wrote for him—given in California near the end of the campaign.
Two other important events that appear in Truman’s and Acheson’s letters from this period are the death of General George C. Marshall and the shooting down by the Soviet Union of an American U-2 spy plane.
When the hectic campaign season was over, Acheson traveled to Independence to give a speech, and he and Truman enjoyed a quiet visit together.
· · ·
Truman did not accept the invitation from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy to deliver a series of lectures. Acheson is worried about finding a winning Democratic presidential candidate for the upcoming campaign. “Writing for the Russian vote” probably refers to Averell Harriman, a candidate for President, taking a soft line in U.S.-Russian relations. The “military pamphlet” that columnist Walter Lippmann likes is one of the pamphlets Acheson, and his friend and colleague Paul Nitze in this case, prepared for the Democratic Advisory Council. Titled The Military Forces We Need and How to Get Them, it argues that the country’s defense forces were in desperate need of modernization and increased funding.
June 25, 1959
Dear Mr. President,
I am turning into a nuisance for you. It all comes from people wanting me to intercede for them with you in cases where I should not do so but do not have the courage to tell them so. Now my good friend and old colleague at the State Department, Bob Stewart, Dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, wants you to give the Clayton Lectures next fall or winter. These are three connected lectures on three successive nights for a fee of $1,500 and expenses and a book published by the Harvard Press. I started these off in 1957. Mike [Lester B.] Pearson followed in 1958. Now they want you—very wisely from their point of view. They speak of getting some one to help you if you wish. Bob sent his letter to you via me.
This is a lot of work. I did it only because I had some ideas which I wanted to be driven into writing by a deadline and finishing. As of today I would not do it. Probably when you write another book you will want more time and quiet than 1959–1960 are likely to provide. But if you have some ideas that would, without excessive labor, make a little volume of 200 pages, this is a dignified and worthy way to get them before the intelligent public.
That is about the story. I will not harass you more about it.
I am depressed by the shadow of things to come. It looks to me that, as I feared, drift is the master of our fates. That master seems headed for a ticket of Stevenson and Kennedy. No one else seems to be catching on; and none of our boys have the aura of victory about them. Have you any word of cheer for your despairing friend? Averell seems to be writing for the Russian vote, not that it is not all probably true. I just don’t see where it takes him, though I think I see where he would like it to take him. But not with Adlai as President!
Please give your patient the most affectionate and solicitous messages from Alice and me. We hear good reports of her.
Did you see Lippmann this morning on the military pamphlet? He was positively lyrical about it. We must be slipping.
Affectionately
Dean
Truman is also thinking about the 1960 presidential campaign. Democratic National Committee Chair Paul Butler had recently attacked the congressional leadership, suggesting, some thought, he would try to lessen the grip of congressional Democrats such as Sam Rayburn and John McCormack on the running of the upcoming Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles. This might give some of the more liberal candidates, including the twice-failed candidate Adlai Stevenson, a better chance. “Soapy” is G. Mennen Williams, governor of Michigan.
July 12, 1959
Dear Dean:
My so called promptness is gradually going into the slow-up stage. I am as sorry as I can be to admit it! My darned mail ran up to some 12,000 items when I had a birthday, Margie had another baby and the Boss had to have a ten or twelve pound tumor removed. Then to top it off I had to send my only sister in for a check up and the smartest of the smart M.D.’s could not decide what the trouble is! She is improving and now maybe I can begin to think—if I ever could!
I am very much interested in the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, at Tufts University. Will try to appear. You put me out front at Yale and then Colorado came along and I’m going to have one hell of a time to maintain my standing. I’ve been to Un[iversity] of Cal[ifornia] and Harvard and Missouri and Kansas and Oklahoma and haven’t been shot at yet. But that doesn’t mean I won’t be.
Next week I’m going to try and work things out and you’ll hear immediately soon as it’s done.
Hope you’ve noticed Mr. Butler’s shot from the hip. Sam and Lyndon are boiling over. Humphrey, Stu, Kennedy and Soapy are upset because they didn’t think of it first. Let the pot boil. It won’t hurt anything. Later we’ll try to obtain two men who can lead us to victory—and that we must have.
My best to Alice and all your family. Hope all are well.
Sincerely,
Harry
Truman frets about his relationship with Winston Churchill, about Paul Butler’s leadership of the Democratic National Committee, and about Eisenhower and Nixon. But he had no need to worry about Churchill, who had in fact sent a very understanding letter (May 21, 1959) in response to Truman’s apology letter (May 16, 1959) for his inability to visit Churchill in New York or Washington earlier that month. Three months later, Truman and Acheson had apparently both forgotten about Churchill’s letter. William E. Jenner was a Republican Senator from Indiana and a McCarthy follower. The name “Alibi Ike” probably came from the 1935 movie of that name, which features a baseball player who is always making excuses. On July 9, 1935, when the movie was playing in Washington, Truman wrote to Bess Truman, who was in Independence, “I wanted to see Joe Brown in Alibi Ike but didn’t.” Truman and Acheson did not quit the Democratic Advisory Committee, which became moribund once the Democratic National Convention met in July 1960. It went officially out of existence early in the Kennedy administration.
August 22, 1959
Dear Dean:
I’m in a very bad position. When Winston Churchill paid his last visit, it was not possible for me to be present at the White House, because the invitation came too late—as intended. Then he was in New York as the guest of our “old friend” Barney Baruch.
Averell Harriman called me at the last minute and asked me to go with him to Barney’s house where Winston was a guest. I couldn’t go because I was at that minute packing up to take a train home. Mrs. Truman was due for an operation. So was Margie.
I wrote Winston and explained the situation. Haven’t heard from him and probably won’t. He thinks very much of old man Baruch and I don’t. Of course he’s fond of Ike because he thinks Ike saved the world in 1945. So I suppose I’ve lost a friend whom I have on record as just that. To hell with all that.
Now I have another problem.
You and I are on the advisory committee of the National Democratic Committee at the request of Paul Butler. I was never for him as National Chairman of the Democratic Committee. He owes his position to Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson. He is organizing the L.A. Convention for Stevenson. What can we do? If we don’t have a winner this time, it will take another F.D.R. to put the country on the right track. We are on a switchback now.
Butler was elected at New Orleans on the basis of a statement which he made to the southern block. Now he says he didn’t mean it. He agreed to the Los Angeles site and now he says he didn’t.
Seems to me the Chairman of the Democratic Committee should try to keep things in such shape as to nominate a man who can lead the people to believe that the Democratic Party will give them the best government, nationally and internationally.
Mr. Butler has not done that and as far as I can see does not intend to do it. I suppose we’ll just have to let him lead the party to defeat—but I don’t want to be a party to it.
Ike’s gone to Germany, France, Britain and Russia. He sent the Vice President ahead of him. Mr. Nixon’s background is one of sabotage. By misrepresentation he was able to beat a good Congressman, a good Senator and make himself Vice President. As representative of the President he ran up and down the country calling Democrats, me particularly, traitors. That was in 1954. Ike stood on the platform in Milwaukee and allowed Jenner and McCarthy to call Gen. George C. Marshall a traitor. It was my privilege to peel the hide off him for that in Colorado Springs.
Now Tricky Dick and Alibi Ike are trying to take me into camp. I won’t go. Maybe I’m wrong. But I’m one of these contrary Kentucky feudists by inheritance. We don’t forget our friends and we remember those who lied about us—and I’m afraid don’t forgive them—especially if the objective is to use us to get right with God!—for a purpose.
Should we quit the Advisory Committee or should we not? If Butler has his way we’ll nominate a loser and elect Nixon for President.
I’m against it!
Sincerely,
Harry
My best to Alice in which the Boss joins me.
Acheson analyzes the possible outcomes of the nominating process at the Democratic National Convention. Significantly, he picked Johnson and Kennedy as the most likely winning ticket in 1960, but in reverse order from the ultimate result. “Ziffren” is Paul Ziffren, a California Democratic party leader. Edmund G. “Pat” Brown was governor of California. Florence S. Mahoney was an advocate for health research and programs; her home in Georgetown served as a sort of salon for politicians and scientists. Adlai Stevenson is “this paunchy quipster.” The recent Truman article to which Acheson refers was a NANA syndicated column that ran on or about August 25, in which Truman opposed Eisenhower’s trip to Moscow to meet with Khrushchev and said that if Russia really wanted peace, it should bring its plan before the United Nations. Acheson, who once derisively called the United Nations “the international orphan asylum,” might not have agreed with this view. The “triptych” enclosure Acheson mentions has not been identified.
August 31, 1959
Dear Mr. President:
I find it hard to believe that Winston would be so silly and so rude as intentionally to ignore your letter. He was certainly far from mentally acute when I lunched with him at the Embassy and it seems far more likely that he has forgotten it or that some secretarial failure is responsible. My suggestion is to get Rose to remind you well in advance that Sir Winston’s birthday is Nov. 30 and write him a note in the course of which you can say again how sorry you were to miss him and hope that he got your letter explaining why. Then, at least, you can rest in the belief that you have done all you could to put things right.
I spoke to Sam Rayburn today about your concern over Paul Butler. Sam said he knows that Adlai was right when he wanted to fire Butler and thinks less than nothing of him and of his friend Ziffren of California. But the gossip Sam hears is that neither of them are for Stevenson. One of his authorities for this, so he said, was Pat Brown. Pat told me that the only Democrats who could carry California—aside, I imagine, from himself—were Kennedy and Stevenson.
My mind goes back to our talk the Sunday we lunched together with Florence Mahoney that the fruit of drift would be Stevenson. It still seems to me to be the most likely outcome, and I agree with you that it seems more likely than not that he would be defeated by either Nixon or Rockefeller. My analysis of the convention is that John Kennedy must win, if he wins at all, on a very early ballot. If he does not, there seems to me to be only two realistic next choices, Adlai and Lyndon. Humphrey is only an heir to Stevenson; and Symington, to Johnson. Stevenson would certainly get it if Kennedy would agree (having lost on his bid for first place) to run with him. Tom Corcoran tells me that the only person with whom, according to Joe Kennedy, John would run under the circumstances is Lyndon. If, therefore, Kennedy threw his strength to Johnson, Adlai might be stopped and the Johnson-Kennedy ticket might be nominated. Lesser combinations seem to me of only theoretical interest, because they cannot win.
To me a Johnson-Kennedy ticket would have much more appeal than a Stevenson-Kennedy ticket, though the polls would give the latter a better chance. But the polls gave you no chance in 1948. I say, to hell with the polls, if we have the real stuff against them.
Lyndon is the ablest man in national public life today. He has thousands of faults. But when we really take our hair down, he is a giant among pigmies. So I feel confident that if, with strong support and a united party, he took on the campaign, especially with Kennedy, we would have a chance for a fight in which I could join whole heartedly, because there would not only be a real chance to win, but to win under circumstances where victory might really turn the tide for the great struggle of our time. My constant worry about Adlai is that all we accomplish by electing him is to accept formal responsibility for ultimate defeat. Surely this is better than Nixon or Rockefeller, the inevitable figureheads of the futility and incapacity of the American managerial interest whose Pope is George Humphrey, but it isn’t very good.
If I thought that it might even usher in a golden age before the twilight, like the 30 years of the Antonines, it would be worth while. But this paunchy quipster is no Marcus Aurelius.
As you know, I agree with you about the dangers of the forthcoming visits, though I advised against either of us opposing them now. Because of Ike’s neglect for the basic realities of power he has been forced to substitute improvisation for planning. He feels, as a beautiful woman might, that his charm must carry all. But as Norman Hapgood said of Maud Adams in Chanticleer, “charm never made a rooster.” Averell thinks your recent article was a mistake and that, of all the trips, Ike’s to Russia may be the most important in undermining the picture of the U.S. which Mr. K has been selling to his people and limiting his capacity to build up war scares. But I have told him that he takes too serious a view of the effect of your piece and not to worry himself or you about it. The article has about it some of the mystery of the Virgin birth. I wonder what inspired it.
My own writing is taking varied forms.
I have done an article for American Heritage about Arthur Vandenberg. Another for the N.Y. Times Magazine, called “Time to Think,” stimulated by Ike’s speech on thinking in “the highest echelons” to the Foreign Service Institute. Both of these you will get in due course. Then I have written another story for Harper’s about Italy like the one I had in last June’s issue. It has kept me busy and my mind from rusting. I hear that you are to write two books. This is real ambition and energy.
I am enclosing a triptych which came to me in the mail showing you in the company of your successors. How about a good law suit out of this?
We are off on Sept. 13th for Italy, Germany, and England, part vacation, part meetings. We look forward to it eagerly.
Alice sends her love; and much of it to Mrs. Truman. (I always stumble over calling that dear lady, Bess, as she has bid me), and to you, Excellency and Friend, as do I.
As ever,
Dean
General George C. Marshall, who served President Truman as Army Chief of Staff, special envoy to China, Secretary of State, and Secretary of Defense, died on October 16, 1959. Truman in 1947 judged him “the great one of the age” and greatly valued his friendship and unwavering support. Truman has just read Acheson’s recent article about Marshall—“Homage to General Marshall,” in The Reporter (November 26, 1959).
November 24, 1959
Dear Dean:
That article in the Reporter about General Marshall was “just out of this world.”
I sat and read it and read it again because my spectacles became clouded the first time. Do you suppose any President of the United States ever had two such men with him as you and the General? In my history studies of the Presidency, I haven’t found a single case like it. Presidents had one on whom they could rely—but not two.
I’m getting sentimental again. Please forgive me. My best to Alice and I hope I can see you again soon.
Sincerely,
Harry
Happy Thanksgiving.
Acheson spoke before the fifth annual conference of parliament members of the NATO nations on November 18. He advised the Western alliance not to succumb to meretriciously attractive invitations to negotiate the situation in Berlin and Germany proposed by the Soviet Union. He ridiculed “the incredible view that any sort of a negotiation is good per se.” Acheson regarded “the spirit of Camp David” as a “feel good” concoction that obscured the issues with the Russians. Camp David, in Thurmont, Maryland, on Catoctin Mountain in the Blue Ridge Mountains, was the weekend White House where Eisenhower had extended hospitality to the Russian leadership. Truman and Acheson would be together in New York City on December 5, 6, and 7 for meetings of the Democratic Advisory Council.
November 30, 1959
Dear Mr. President,
Your letter about my tribute to General Marshall and your words about me are about the most cherished that have ever been said to me. I cannot tell you how much they mean to me. In the next mail came a letter from Mrs. Marshall saying that my article “expresses a knowledge of my George that few people had.” I was delighted to have been able to bring her some comfort that others who did not know him could get some understanding of his nature.
To have you class me with him is enough praise for one life time. And it came when it helped a lot—just as I was getting a good measure of abuse for my remarks about Ike’s junket and my speech to the NATO Parliamentarians, which Pravda printed in full. Thank God the Russians say that I have none of the spirit of Camp David. I wonder where the world would be—or, rather, I don’t wonder—I know—where the world would be now if you had had the spirit of Camp David from 1945 to 1953?
I am looking forward to seeing you in N.Y. next weekend. Can we keep Adlai and Co. from “grabbing the peace issue”?
Alice and I send much love to the boss and to you.
As ever,
Dean
December 15, 1959
Dear Mr. President:
When I was walking down 22nd Street to the office this morning, a small, elderly colored man accosted me and challenged me to say who he was. Of course I failed in this endeavor and he told me that he used to open the west door of the White House for me many times a week.
I told him I had seen you very recently and gave him a good account of your spirits and fighting trim. This delighted him.
I had only gone a few yards down the street before he called after me and came running up to say that his name was Harry, too, and to ask me when I wrote to you to tell you that you were his boy.
Do you remember him?
Please give the Boss especially affectionate messages to add to the warmth of the Christmas Season and to those which usually go to you both.
Sincerely yours,
Dean
At a dinner tribute in New York City for Eleanor Roosevelt on December 7, Truman introduced the Democratic presidential candidates, including John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey, and gave a speech in which he said that, for the Democratic candidate for President in 1960, “we need a vigorous, fighting, genuine liberal, and not a hot-house liberal, who talks the game but doesn’t play it.”
December 22, 1959
Dear Dean:
I appreciated your letter of December 15 telling about the messenger boy who stated that he was in the habit of meeting you when you came over to my office from the State Department Building. To tell the truth, I cannot remember him either. We had two men who usually looked after those doors at that office; one, by the name of Jackson and the other was John Mayes and both are dead now. I do not recall this man but I might have been able to if I had seen him. There seems to be a tendency nowadays for everybody who was in sight of the White House at the time you and I were there to give the impression they were exceedingly interested in our welfare. Well, maybe they were.
It certainly was a pleasure to see you at the meeting the other night and I do not know when I have had as good a time as I had introducing the candidates for the Presidency. As you noticed, I have placed a statement in the speech regarding the synthetic liberals which covers the situation in which you are interested.
I am hoping to be in Washington for the meeting on January 23 and I certainly want to have a chance to see you and Alice. I do not know whether or not Mrs. Truman will be with me. It will depend upon how she feels after the visit with these grandchildren of ours. She is having a good time with them and so am I, but we are not in the same position we were when Margaret was their age and we cannot go quite so fast. However, I expect you have had the same experience even though you are a good many years younger than I am.
Sincerely yours,
Harry
Truman encloses an article about an exhibition of works of art, all gifts to Truman, at the Truman Library. Alice Acheson’s Bus Queue was one of the works on display. Truman had lunch with Acheson at his home on January 24. He was in Washington to attend the 1960 Democratic Presidential Campaign Kick-Off Dinner. The artist Thomas Hart Benton painted the mural Independence and the Opening of the West in the main lobby of the Truman Library.
February 5, 1960
Dear Dean and Alice:
I am as tardy as I can be writing you about that lovely luncheon. Don’t know when I’ve had a more enjoyable one—not since your last one.
Glad I was tardy because here is something Alice will like, I hope. This place has stepped up a notch. Even Tom Benton admits it!
Hope to see you again soon.
Sincerely,
Harry
The madam gave me “what for” because I’m late. The best to both of you.
April 10, 1960
Dear Dean:
Haven’t heard from you for some time. I’m at the office in the Library signing piles of mail the girls typed yesterday, sealing them and shall take them to the post office in Kansas City so they’ll go out. You know this five day week doesn’t work with me. I guess I’m old fashioned. I work every day and Sunday too even if Exodus 20:8, 9, 10 and 11 and Deuteronomy 5–13 and 14 say I shouldn’t. I think probably those admonitions were the first labor laws we know about—and see how they’ve made contributions to the greatest Republic in history. But someone has to fix things so the rest can work five days—coffee breaks and all. I’ve often wondered what would have happened to me when I was receiving $35.00 to write up checks for collection on a 12 hour day if I’d stopped at 10 A.M. for a Dutch lunch. You know the Dutch farmer in our old neighborhood had a breakfast at 4:30 A.M., a lunch in the field at 10 A.M., dinner at 12 noon—and it was a dinner, lunch at 4 P.M. and supper after sundown.
That $35.00 was per month—not per day.
I expect to be in Washington the last week in April, probably some time on the 27th. The Boss and I are going to New York tomorrow because Cliff and Margie are going to Europe a couple of days after we arrive. Bess thinks she’ll baby sit while Margie’s gone. They have a wonderful nurse but I wonder how long that “baby sit” will last.
I have a lecture date at Cornell on the 23rd and one at Syracuse U. on the 18th but after a trip home I’ll be in the Capital City, I hope, on the 27th.
I’ve been having a grand time with “sit downs” and broadcasters, foreign policies and Presidential candidates. I want to see you.
Sincerely,
Harry
Adele Lovett was the wife of Robert A. Lovett, Truman’s last Secretary of Defense. Felix was Justice Felix Frankfurter. When Truman heard news of sit-down strikes in segregated Southern eating places, he said publicly that if he owned a store he would throw anyone out who disrupted business. About two years later, he wrote to the head of the United Auto Workers union on this subject. “… I don’t like sit-down strikes.… When you destroy a man’s business, especially a little man, it just isn’t right and you know it as well as I do.”
April 14, 1960
Dear Mr. President,
I shall look forward to April 27th. Would you have dinner with me on that night or the next one? Alice is away on a trip with Adele Lovett to Greece. But we still manage to eat pretty well. If you are free, shall we have a stag party or give the ladies a break?
Your schedule sounds as though you were headed for trouble with the Boss. I have been running a pretty hard one myself and got pretty tired. While Alice is away I am going to ease up a bit and play a bit of hookey out at the farm to which spring has eventually come. One most interesting experience I had in March was a week of lecturing seminars and student consultations at Knox College in Galesburg Illinois, where—as you know—the fifth Lincoln[-]Douglass debate took place and where Carl Sandburg was born. It is a fine and gallant little place, though the town is pretty bad. There were all Republicans when I got there. But we certainly changed that.
What is all this anti-sit-down attitude of yours. Felix was asking me the other day, saying that his brother Whittaker takes the same view. I told him that Missourians are Confederates at heart, and that while they—or some of them—accept the Constitution, and even defend it vigorously, they won’t go a step further. There’s nothing in the Constitution about how to run a drug store’s lunch counter. Only we New England abolitionists find that reasoning irrelevant. Am I about right in my diagnosis.
Now for a prophecy. If Jack Kennedy stubs his toe in West Virginia or elsewhere, the candidate will be Stevenson. I hate to say this but I think the only possible alternative is Stu and I doubt very much, though I am for him, that he can make it. He just doesn’t seem to catch hold. Maybe we should all give Jack a run for his money—or rather for Joe’s.
My warmest greetings to the Boss and to you.
As ever,
Dean
Truman’s response to the question about his “anti-sit-down attitude” makes clear that he thought of himself as a Southerner. Truman spoke at Cornell University on April 18.
April 20, 1960
Dear Dean:
I am also looking forward to April 27th. The dinner invitation is accepted for that night. I shall miss Alice but I’m betting on your cook! I envy her that trip to Greece. Bess is not coming to Washington. Grandma has to oversee and sometimes sit with a couple of obstreperous young men who want what they want when they want it and usually get it. So if you want to make the party stag that will be fine.
Your lecture tour must be as interesting as can be. Wish I’d been in the audience at Knox College. I’m sure I could have cribbed a good lecture for future use. You tell his Honor Felix that your diagnosis of my case is correct. I sometimes become so upset by the yellow half breeds from New York and Chicago that I almost go segregationist. If they’d stay up north and let those of us who know the problem settle it—we could and would do it.
I’ll tell you about a plan when I see you. My meeting at Cornell was a humdinger: 9,900—at the lecture 90% students. Sounded like a Dem convention when I appeared and when I went away.
I’m looking forward to a grand visit with you. That letter of yours gave me a real lift.
Sincerely yours,
Harry
Truman is worried about events in the Caribbean and in Asia, and about how Eisenhower handled the downing of an American U-2 spy plane by the Soviet Union. Acheson’s dinner—a black-tie event—took place on April 27.
May 9, 1960
Dear Dean:
I have been reading the results of our situation in Asia east of the Caribbean Sea and I am very much worried.
It seems to me that the President of the United States ought not to admit that he doesn’t know what is going on. It looks as if we are in a very ridiculous position with our friends. We have always been known for honest and fair dealings as a nation and I really don’t know how we are going to recover from this last blow.
I am still thinking about that wonderful dinner you had and what a grand time I had with you. I wish it were possible for the two of us to sit down and discuss the situation and see what we can do to remedy it. I don’t know whether there is anything that can be done or not. As you know, I am a natural born optimist but I am pessimistic on this situation.
Sincerely yours,
Harry
Acheson analyzes Soviet motives for using the U-2 incident to prevent the convening of a summit conference at Paris in mid-May. Eisenhower had been humiliated by Khrushchev over the incident, and tried to deny the mission, but then the Russians produced the captured American pilot. The article Acheson sends to Truman is “The Persistence of Illusion: The Soviet Economic Drive and American National Interest,” by Townsend Hoopes.
May 23, 1960
Dear Mr. President:
The first sentence of your letter to me of May 9 is a real puzzler. “I have been reading,” you say, “the results of our situation in Asia east of the Caribbean Sea and I am very much worried.” I have been worrying for some time that the Asia problem was creeping up on us, but I had not realized how close it had approached, and here it is now just a bit south of Bermuda. So I am worried too.
However puzzling your geography may have become, your meaning is perfectly clear, and I agree entirely that the President of the United States ought not to admit that he doesn’t know what is going on. And, even more important than admitting this fact, it ought not to be a fact.
The day that our admission about the U-2 flight came out I was lecturing at the National War College and a madder and more disgusted group of officers I never saw. There used to be a saying around in my youth that the Lord took care of children, drunks and the United States of America. But it seems that now we are over-taxing omnipotence.
Shortly before the Summit meeting the official attitude around the State Department was that the Summit would be a pushover. Khrushchev, they said, was under such pressures at home that in order to have a political success he must get an agreement and have Eisenhower in Moscow. So he would agree to a nuclear test ban and then adjourn the festivities to Moscow. I produced a great deal of merriment around town by predicting that the Summit would not last two days. I seem to have overstated it by one.
The official version has now changed. It is still said that Khrushchev was under great pressure, but this time it was pressure in the opposite direction. The State Department tells us that the pressure was not for a success but for a failure and came from the Army and the Chinese allies. Having learned of the firmness of Mr. Eisenhower and the unbreakable unity of the Allies, he had to end the Summit without a test of strength, and, in seizing upon the U-2 incident, he has overplayed his hand.
I think this is as erroneous as the first view. Mr. Khrushchev knew exactly what he was doing, and he was playing the game of the protracted conflict, as the Russians have always played it, alternating tension with detente. Peaceful coexistence is now abandoned for a renewal of the cold war, but the purpose is the same. It is to get us out of Berlin, get Germany out of the Western Alliance, and to get the United States out of Europe.
My guess is that, under the cover of the commotion which will be going on in the U.N., the East Germans will begin to tighten up on civilian traffic with Berlin, and sometime, when we are sufficiently distracted by attempts to prevent majorities or two-thirds majorities in the Security Council or the General Assembly, the treaty with the East Germans will be made.
Mr. Eisenhower, like a weary fighter, is maneuvering for the bell; and, whatever happens, he will do nothing about it, leaving these problems for his successor. The enclosed article from the Yale Review seems to me a pretty sound statement of the situation as it stands at present.
Most sincerely,
Dean
Truman is pessimistic about the situation in several parts of the world. He tells Acheson he’s going to the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles.
May 27, 1960
Dear Dean:
Yours of the 23rd gave me quite a lift. That sentence should have read “west of the Caribbean Sea.” I was thinking of Panama, Guatemala, Chile, Indonesia, Indo-China and the riots in Japan. What started my train of thought was this whiskered nut in Cuba.
He’s buying oil from Russia shipped in Russian ships when his neighbors could furnish it for maybe half the price! He’s selling sugar for a pittance to Kruchie’s agent for less than 3 cents a pound which is sold in Soviet Land for a dollar!
Panama wants to steal the canal as Nasser stole Suez. Chile our former good friend kisses in with our world enemies. Venezuela spits on our Vice President while the President of the United States receives the same treatment in Paris. I’m not a pessimist as you very well know.
But how the hell could we come to this international debacle? And you and I are in a fix where we dare not kick the guy in the ass who is to blame. I wrote an article last September which came out in October I think in which I said what I did yesterday—if the United Nations is expected to work summits are a farce. Now Ike’s reading a prepared U.N. speech.
I’m going to L.A. as a delegate and I suppose I’ll be tongue tied.
It’s a hell of a situation!
You’d better cheer me up or there’ll be a personal explosion.
My best to Alice.
Harry
Acheson had trouble writing this remarkable letter reining in Truman so as not to damage their party’s chances of winning the presidency. He first handwrote a draft, which he heavily altered. He had the edited draft typed, and then handwrote a slightly altered version that he sent Truman. Acheson also telephoned his friend to talk over, perhaps in softer language, what he had said so bluntly in this letter. Acheson’s new salutation “Boss” suggests that Truman had said something to activate this new familiarity, possibly first names, which would have made Acheson very uncomfortable. Hence the compromise: Boss.
June 28, 1960
Dear Boss,
As the Convention approaches and you are likely to become, shall we say, emphatic in your statements to the press, could we make a treaty as to what we shall not say?
On the positive side we can, and doubtless will, say that our candidate—yours and mine—has all the virtues of the Greats from Pericles through Churchill. St. Peter and the Pee-pul. Forgive this innocent though improbable hyperbole. But there are some things that no one should, and few will, forgive.
These fall into several groups, but the common denominator is the harm that comes from allowing the intensity of the personal view to dim a proper concern for the common cause. The list of the “It’s not dones,” as I see it, goes like this:—
I. About Other Democratic Candidates:
(a) Never say that any of them is not qualified to be President.
(b) Never say that any of them can’t win.
(c) Never suggest that any of them is the tool of any group or interest, or not a true blue liberal, or has (or has used) more money than another.
The reason: At this point public argument is too late. Deals may still be possible. I just don’t know. But sounding off is sure to be wrong. If our candidate is going anywhere—which I doubt—it will not be because of public attacks on other candidates. And such attacks can do a lot of harm when they are quoted in the election campaign.
II. About the Negro Sit-in Strikes:
(a) Do not say that they are communist inspired. The evidence is all the other way, despite alleged views of J. Edgar Hoover, whom you should trust as much as you would a rattlesnake with a silencer on its rattle.
(b) Do not say that you disapprove of them. Whatever you think, you are under no compulsion to broadcast it. Free speech is a restraint on the government: not an incitement to the citizens.
The reason: Your views, as reported, are wholly out of keeping with your public record. The discussion does not convince anyone of anything. If you want to discuss the sociological, moral and legal interests involved in this issue, you should give much more time and thought to them.
III. About Foreign Policy
(a) For the next four months do not say that in foreign policy we must support the President.
The reason: This cliché has become a menace. It misrepresents by creating the false belief that in the recent series of disasters the President has had a policy or position to support.
This just isn’t true. One might as well say “support the President” if he falls off the end of a dock. That isn’t a policy. But to urge support for him makes his predicament appear to be a policy to people who don’t know what a dock is.
So, please, for just four months let his apologists come to his aid. We have got to beat Nixon. We shall probably have to do it with Kennedy. Why make it any harder than it has to be? Now if ever, our vocal cords ought to be played by the keyboard of our minds. This is so hard for me that I have stopped using my cords at all. By August they will be ready to play “My Rosary.”
So I offer you a treaty on “don’ts.” Will you agree?
Most sincerely,
Dean
Truman takes Acheson’s strong medicine graciously. He had, however, already violated the “treaty on ‘don’ts.’ ” On July 2, in a televised press conference at the Truman Library, he had said he would not attend the Democratic convention, which was taking on aspects of a “prearranged affair.” He then addressed John F. Kennedy directly. “Senator, are you certain that you’re quite ready for the country or the country is ready for you in the role of President in January 1961?” He asked Kennedy to put aside his personal ambition and allow the convention to select a candidate “with the greatest possible maturity and experience.” He gave a long list of potential candidates who he felt had these qualities, including his own favorite, Missouri Senator Stuart Symington. Truman says in this letter to Acheson that he will depart for the convention the next day, but he did not go.
July 9, 1960
Dear Dean:
You’ll never know how very much I appreciated your call and good letter. I tried my best to profit by both. Whether I did or not is up to you to decide.
Anyway it looks as if things have, to some extent, slowed down and the band wagon isn’t running so fast. I’ve never been so wrought up and if you and the “Madam”—the “Boss”—had not put the brakes on I’d have blown my top—maybe!
Now Butler, the permanent Chairman, the temporary Chairman, Sam Rayburn and all the rest of them are spending money on long winded telegrams urging me to be present at the Convention.
I am taking a plane tomorrow evening for L.A. and intend to have a lot of fun with the guessers and the prophets.
It may not amount to much but you never can tell.
When I return home I’ll owe you more information.
Again thanks to a real friend and a real standby.
My best to Alice.
Sincerely,
Harry
The Achesons are at their farm in Sandy Spring, Maryland. Acheson is pleased—if only tepidly—with the outcome of the Democratic convention and is looking forward to a new Democratic administration led by Kennedy.
July 17, 1960
Dear Boss,
We are here for the summer, and I, a commuter. So your letter of July 9th, by virtue of your extravagance in putting a special delivery stamp on it, lay on the floor at P Street for about a week. Mr. Summerfield forwards ordinary mail but special delivery has him baffled, and it goes into oblivion through the mail drop until Alice or Johnson happens to go in to P Street.
But in this case it was just as well. Your letter told me of your penultimate decision to go to Los Angeles, which was happily reversed by the ultimate one, not to go. Had I gotten your letter I should have wasted the family substance on the telephone urging you not to do what fate was to prevent you from doing. I am sorry that your sister-in-law had to be sacrificed to keep you from so unwise a step. But it was in a good cause and I hope that she is now much improved.
I listened to your press conference and regretted that you felt impelled to say anything, though what you said was better than what you first told me that you intended to say. It seemed quite inevitable that Jack’s nomination would occur and that all that you and Lyndon said you would both have to eat—as you indeed have.
Poor Lyndon came off much worse, since he is now in the crate on the way to the county fair and destined to be a younger and more garrulous—if that is possible—Alben Barkley. It is possible that being a smart operator in the Senate is a special brand of smartness which doesn’t carry over into the larger political field. Lyndon certainly behaved like a high school lad running for class president in 1956, and seems to have retrograded by 1960. Jack and his team were the only “pros” in Los Angeles, so far as I could see.
The ticket seems to me the best which under the circumstances—by which I mean Jack’s determination to go all out for it and the absence of any opposition of comparable capacity and determination—the Party could put up. It will not raise great enthusiasm, but neither could any other ticket, and neither will Nixon on the other side. So far as a Kennedy administration is concerned, it would, I think, be better than what we have, than what Nixon would give: and I see no solid evidence on which to found a belief that Stu or Lyndon would do any better.
One current belief seems to me quite unfounded, that Lyndon as VP will continue to run the Senate and have great influence with Sam. I remember on the Hoover Commission urging on President Hoover that the V.P. should be selected and set up to be the Administration’s agent on the Hill. The old man said, “It won’t work. That is what I thought when I selected Charlie Curtis to be my V.P. But I found the day after the inauguration that no one, including his Senate colleagues, wanted to talk to No. 2.”
Well, we’re off to the races, after a little breather and a little more vulgarity and foolishness at Chicago. I hope that it is still true that the Lord looks benignly after children, drunks and the U.S.A. But he may think it about time that the last of the trio grew out of irresponsibility.
Our warmest greetings to Bess and you.
As ever,
Dean
Truman is unable to accept Kennedy completely as the Democratic presidential nominee or to like the process that selected him. The “Governor of Connecticut” is Abraham Ribicoff.
August 6, 1960
Dear Dean:
Well, you told me what I ought to listen to—and don’t. Your letter of July 17th was a classic. It was most highly appreciated. What I want to know is how much of a damphool can a man be—and still think he might be right. That’s this old man—and he can’t help it!
Now we have the devil and the deep blue sea to choose from and I suppose we’ll have to take the devil. Maybe he won’t be so hard on us as Galilee was to the pigs that were drowned.
You were right, that I would have been in a better position if I’d said nothing. But, Dean, what can you do with a talker when there is a chance to talk. Well, here we are with two men who are problems.
You and I are not able to vote for Nixon. So I suppose we’ll have to vote for the “ticket.” Lyndon has been to see me and the Governor of Connecticut is coming here on Wednesday the 10th to try to persuade me to campaign with Kennedy. Kennedy is expected on the 21st to “pay his respects.” I wonder what I can do that won’t hurt the Party and still be right!
My mail gets bigger and bigger—and most of it is crackpot—but I rather like to read that sort. They’d never let me see it in the White House. It is sometimes entertaining and most times makes you want to aim a good punch at the proboscis—but you can’t.
Hope you’ll always be patient with me because I love your letters and you too.
Sincerely,
Harry
August 12, 1960
Dear Boss,
Your delightfully contrite letter has disarmed me wholly. To add to this, Alice and I read your letter just after looking at the N.Y. Times picture of you and Governor Abe under the caption “Truman Will Stump Coast to Coast for Kennedy.” So I offered the thought that if the Lord is accurately quoted as having remarked “Vengeance is mine,” He probably has a copyright on “I told you so,” also. So I say no more. You have said it all, and said it with all your wry good humor.
Now you are in for it. Just don’t exhaust yourself through sheer nonsense. Here is a thought which you might work in to get you onto the merits of the Party as such. In the U.S. the registration is something like 60–40 in favor of the Democrats. When it comes to enlisting Americans of brains and character for all the multifarious tasks of democratic government, the Republicans proscribe all Democrats. This brings them down to 40% of available material—a minority to start with. Then they proscribe all Republicans who had worked for the Government under Democratic administrators. This brought them down to about 20% (the inexperienced fifth). You were old fashioned enough to believe that all Americans were needed and eligible for the great task which faces our country and you used them all. The Party will do this again. We don’t have a means test in reverse, nor are we limited in our choices to big business executives who can only “afford” a year or two for public service—though that may be all the public can afford of them.
Well, you see. This is known as the “high road.” But it really is, you know. (You have to be ready to explain that Ike and Foster got by, even though they had worked for you, but getting out in time to denounce you.) All of this may make no sense but it could upset the calculation of the “truth squads” which the newspaper tells me will follow you around and read your preconvention statements about Kennedy. As for those, they were obviously made by another fellow of the same name.
I have a very depressed letter from Dirk Stikker. You remember him. He was the Dutch Foreign Minister from about 1949–53, was then Ambassador to London and is now the Dutchman on NATO. He says that the alliance—the only hope against Mr. K.—is floundering for lack of U.S. leadership. Spaak tells him the next ten months will decide NATO’s fate. In the absence of U.S. leadership, de Gaulle, Macmillan, and Adenauer each take their crack at some new idea which weakens the basic conception that it is Europe AND North America which is needed to deal with the U.S.S.R. He urges that both candidates make strong statements that no plans for NATO can or should be made now but that immediately after Jan. 1961 the new president will confer with the NATO powers on an urgent and far reaching strengthening of the alliance.
I have some ideas as to what this should consist of, but now is no time for this sort of thought and, perhaps, ideas from me will not get very far at any time.
So far in 1960 Jack Kennedy seems to have handled himself very well. In his match with you, in his handling of Lyndon (who made quite a goat of himself), Adlai and the whole convention I find it hard to fault him. This is by no means the same thing as saying that he arouses enthusiasm. Neither candidate does that. If their joint appearances don’t stir some interest the campaign may turn out to be one of these pitchers’ duels where neither side gets a hit and the paying customers go to sleep. If enough of us stay awake we can still win.
Alice is 18 today.
Affectionately,
Dean
During his meeting with Governor Ribicoff on August 10, Truman agreed to campaign for John Kennedy, and he arranged with Ribicoff to meet with Kennedy at the Truman Library on August 20. Kennedy flew to Kansas City from Washington that day and met privately with Truman for about thirty minutes. Afterward, they joined Senator Henry M. Jackson, the new chair of the Democratic National Committee, and Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri at a press conference in the library’s auditorium. Truman took Kennedy by the arm and guided him to his place at the speakers’ table. He announced that he would campaign for Kennedy and that, in the midst of an overall Democratic victory on election night, Kennedy would carry Missouri by an “overwhelming majority.” Kennedy replied, “I am happy the President is going to join in, we need all good Democrats. I am delighted he is going to associate himself with us.” When a reporter pressed Truman on his earlier statements about Kennedy’s youth and immaturity, Truman responded tersely that such concerns were “solved by the convention.… That’s all there is to it.”
Acheson will be coming to Kansas City to speak to the Lawyers Association of Kansas City on November 30. Don Jackson is an officer with the association.
August 15, 1960
Dear Dean:
I am enclosing you a copy of a letter I have written in reply to one I received from Don Jackson.
I am as happy as I can be that you are coming here on November 30 and if there is anything in the world that I can do to make your visit pleasant, you may be sure I will do it.
Please give my best to Alice and tell her that the “Boss” is still in charge of my house.
Sincerely yours,
Harry
Acheson is becoming bored by the presidential campaign.
August 23, 1960
Dear Boss,
Many thanks for your letter about the Bar dinner on November 30. I accepted their invitation to get a chance to see you and Bess in Independence without the whole gang around which make Washington visits so hurried and hectic—except at P Street. So I shall get there perhaps the day before, or anyway early enough for a good visit with you.
Do you get a funny sort of sense that, so far at least, there are no human candidates in this campaign? They seem improbable, like very life-like puppets, who, or which, are operated by most skillful technicians. Both are surrounded by clever people who dash off smart memoranda, but it is not all pulled together, on either side, by and into a man. The ideas are too contrived. No one believes a congeries so suited to his apparent “voter need”, as Madison Ave would put it. Even Bob Taft was heretical enough to be for government housing. These two are so perfectly suited to some one’s idea of what they ought to be suited to that they bore the hell out of me.
This session of Congress seems to be bearing out a long held view of Alice’s that Lyndon is not nearly as smart as he and [a] lot of his admirers think.
Whew! What a lot of subversive stuff!
Affectionately,
Dean
Truman wrote two versions of this letter, both presented below. In the second, shorter version, he removed his ramblings about former Presidents. Both versions express his lingering despair at the outcome of the Democratic convention. Regarding his account of earlier presidential elections, it should be noted that Winfield Scott ran for President only once, in 1852, losing to Franklin Pierce.
August 26, 1960
Not Sent
Dear Dean:
Your letters of the 12th and the 23rd really gave me the lift I needed. I have been as blue as indigo since the California meeting in L.A. It was a travesty on National Conventions. Ed Pauley organized it and then Kennedy’s pa kicked him out! Ed didn’t consult me!
That convention should have been helped immensely if it had been in Chicago, St. Louis or Philadelphia. But it wasn’t held at any of those places. You and I are stuck with the necessity of taking the worst of two evils or none at all. So—I’m taking the immature Democrat as the best of the two. Nixon is impossible. So there we are.
When I took the stand I did I hoped to help—but I didn’t. I look at history and the period after Madison and then the one after Jackson. After Jackson we had Martin Van Buren a smart fixer and then William Henry Harrison, a stuffed shirt who insisted on riding a white horse to the Capital—and a month later John Tyler was President. You know that old devil, who was my great grandmother’s uncle, had some ideas of honor. He resigned from the Senate when he was not able to support Jackson’s financial program. Then came James K. Polk, a great President. Said what he intended to do and did it. Then three months after leaving the White House went home and died!
Then old Zach Taylor came along, father-in-law of Jefferson Davis. He became famous at the Battle of Buena Vista by telling Captain Bragg to “give them a little more grape.” Winfield Scott “Old Fuss and Feathers” as anxious as Grant and Ike to be President. Old Zach kept him out. But he ran again and was ingloriously defeated by one of his Brigadier generals Franklin Pierce—who always had the stomach ache or a pain in the neck when there was a shooting engagement in Mexico.
Franklin Pierce agreed to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and signed the Kansas Nebraska Bill. With John Brown and his murders on the border between Missouri and Kansas these events caused the War Between the States—now officially called the Civil War, as was the War of the Roses in England.
I’m afraid I’m boring you but that is not the intention. I’m afraid that this immature boy who was responsible for picking out five great Senators may not know any more about the Presidency that he will occupy, than he did about the great Senators. Only one, Henry Clay, belonged in the list. I sent him a list of a dozen or so but it wasn’t used. So, what the hell, you and I will take it and not like it but hope for the future.
Sincerely,
Harry
August 26, 1960
Dear Dean:
Your letters of the 12th and 23rd really gave me the lift I needed. I have been as blue as indigo since the California meeting in L.A. It was a travesty on the Convention System. I don’t think the end of Conventions is in sight, in spite of what Sam Houston said.
The California Convention was organized by Ed Pauley without any consultation with anyone. He lined 65% of the National Committee and then called me!
In my opinion the Convention should have been held in Chicago, St. Louis, or the “City of Brotherly Love.” But it wasn’t. You and I are stuck with taking the lesser or the worst of two evils—or none at all.
So, I am taking the immature Democrat as the best of what’s before us. Nixon is impossible. There we are. I hoped my stand before the Convention might help—but it didn’t. Maybe I should have been there.
Well, I’ve come to the conclusion that the devil has a hand in most things and he certainly ran the L.A. Convention.
When we look at the history of this great country, we wonder how the hell we arrived at the top notch of things where we are. I am sure that’s what the oldsters thought in 1828, 1840, 1852 and sure enough in 1860. Well, we came out on top in all those dates. Let’s hope to God we’ll do it again. It is going to take Him to do it!
Sincerely,
Harry
The letter to Kennedy that Acheson mentions argues against a concept, much discussed at the time, that the Vice President should be a kind of prime minister, running most of the government’s affairs and leaving the President primarily with the duties of commander in chief. Acheson advises Kennedy to “make it plain that you know enough about American history to know how idiotic this Prime Minister business is.” The article Acheson sent to Truman is titled “The President and the Secretary of State” and concerns the relationship between the two officials. Mr. Citizen was a collection of magazine articles written by Truman, published as a book in January 1960. Acheson’s article was published in a book, The Secretary of State, ed. Don K. Price (Prentice-Hall, 1960).
September 14, 1960
Dear Boss,
Thank you a thousand times for sending me Mr. Citizen with its most appreciated inscription. I read it at once and of course, with the greatest interest. It has a lot of you in it and while that has been known to bring mingled emotions, it is all to the good in this case. Alice, too, was touched by your reference to her in the inscription and her gratitude goes along with mine.
You may be interested in a letter which I have just written to Jack Kennedy and a copy of my article mentioned in it. I have not the slightest doubt that you will agree with every word of the article. Indeed, Mr. Hoover will too, for he expressed the same ideas when we were on the first Hoover commission together.
This campaign is so far a bust. If Kennedy goes on talking about this religious business he will gain few protestant votes and lose a lot of Catholic ones. His strongest point he can’t make. He isn’t a very good Catholic.
Affectionately,
Dean
Acheson advises Truman regarding his upcoming campaign tour. Edward L. Rodden was ambassador to Uruguay from 1951 to 1953.
October 3, 1960
Dear Boss,
Did Charlie Murphy read you a speech, originally written by Ambassador Rodden and revised by me attacking Nixon. I hope he did and that you will deliver it.
Your most effective role in this campaign will be attack. What you say in praise of Jack will carry no weight. But you have the truth on your side and no contrary statements to embarrass you when you lambast Nixon.
The speech is a good speech.
We are back in town today for the winter. It has been lovely in Sandy Spring.
Yours,
Dean
Truman’s tour, which he called his “fall lecture tour,” began October 8. He visited Iowa, Texas, Washington, D.C., North Carolina, and Virginia, then went to Tennessee, Missouri, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Washington State, Nevada, and California, and finally to New York and Pennsylvania. He completed the tour four days before election day with a speech in Pittsburgh on November 4. He gave eighteen speeches in fourteen states in a little less than four weeks. Perhaps Truman’s most famous statement from his campaign tour was made in San Antonio, Texas, on October 11. “If you vote for Nixon,” he said, “you ought to go to hell.” John Kennedy claimed that when he heard about Truman’s remark, he sent him a telegram that read, “I have noted with interest your suggestion as to where those who vote for my opponent should go. While I understand and sympathize with your deep motivation, I think it is important that our side try to refrain from raising the religious issue.”
Truman promises Acheson to give the speech about Nixon, which Acheson partly wrote, in Nixon’s home state of California.
October 9, 1960
Dear Dean:
I was happy to receive your note of the 3rd about the proposed speech on Nixon, which I am expecting to deliver in California without an erasure. It struck me and it struck Mrs. Truman as exactly what ought to be said, but I think California is the place to say it.
I am leaving tomorrow for Texas to talk principally to the Baptists in Waco, although I have an interlude meeting in Texarkana and one in San Antonio. Just bear in mind that I owe you a longhand letter in reply to your beautiful one about my book and as soon as I can sit down and attend to things as I should you will receive it.
I certainly do appreciate the trouble you have gone to to give the facts and figures on Nixon. He is a dangerous man. Never has there been one like him so close to the Presidency.
I had a wonderful farm meeting in Iowa yesterday. In Iowa, which was as enthusiastic as the labor meeting I had in Marion, Indiana, I was overwhelmed. If the Waco, Texas, religious meeting turns out all right I think we will then be on the road.
I have a schedule which takes me from Waco on the 12th to Washington, D.C., by regular plane. Then the next morning I am supposed to leave for Raleigh, North Carolina, and on the 15th I will go from Raleigh to Abingdon, Virginia, and then back home. I thought perhaps if I arrived in Washington at a reasonable hour you and I might have a session on the situation as I have found it, in the various places where I have been.
The trend is very substantially on the mend so far as our side is concerned but, of course, you must understand that this is a statement of a prejudiced witness, in fact a very prejudiced witness.
Please give my best to Alice and say I certainly will be happy when this rat race is over and we can have our usual associations, socially and otherwise.
Sincerely yours,
Harry
Truman gave the Nixon speech on October 28 in Oakland, California, without an erasure, as he promised, but with some additions of his own that increased its punch. He began by telling of many good people and things that come from California. “There is only one product of this state that does not measure up to its high standards,” he said, “and that is Richard Nixon, Trickie Dickie, the political opportunist.” He added the “Trickie Dickie” part in his own hand on the speech draft. He mentions Disneyland, favorably, and then launches on an extended fantasy. “Now I think I have discovered what Nixon can do,” he begins. “He has considerable gifts of showmanship, and the ability to create all kinds of illusions. He should go into this amusement park business and open one of his own, which we could call Nixonland.… Nixon would be in charge of Nixonland personally, and he would be the guide for all the Nixonland rides. Which he would do very well—by the way—as he has been taking the American people for a ride for a good many years already.” He goes on to describe many of the rides in Nixonland, including “the Nixon trip … through Communistland. And you would see stuffed Communists popping out from behind every bush. And Nixon would stand in the bow of the boat, and shoot them dead—with blanks.” This Nixonland is fake, Truman warns. “So, I say, let us leave Nixonland behind us, and leave Nixon there, and face the real world and its problems.… Let us build for the future of the United States of America and for a secure and peaceful world with Jack Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.” One wonders what Truman’s audience thought of this peculiar speech, and how many votes Truman won for the Kennedy-Johnson ticket that night.
On November 8, 1960, John F. Kennedy was elected over Richard Nixon. Truman looks forward to a visit from Acheson, who is giving a speech in Kansas City at the end of the month.
November 21, 1960
Dear Dean:
The campaign is ended and we have a Catholic for President. It makes no difference, in my opinion, what church a man belongs to, if he believes in the oath he takes to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. I have taken it twenty five or thirty times.
I didn’t have to weigh what I was swearing in that oath. I believed in it.
If our new President works at the job, he’ll have no trouble. You know, I wish I’d been young enough to go back to the White House and make Alibi Ike wear a top hat! He spent his time after the election in 1952 trying to show how good he could be. But why worry about what’s past.
We are faced with a situation equal to any we’ve been up against in a hundred years.
I’m looking forward to a visit when you come out here on November 30th.
You know what the “Boss” has done? She’s torn up the whole second floor of this old 1859 House of ours and we are in a hell of a fix. Mrs. R. had to stay at a hotel and I fear you will too. But maybe you and I can have a better time! Don’t tell Alice but let’s see what happens.
Sincerely,
Harry
Two weeks after the election, Acheson speculates about the close results. “Schuman” was French statesman Robert Schuman, president of the European Parliamentary Assembly.
November 22, 1960
Dear Boss:
Many thanks for your post election letter which came this morning. First a word or two about your plans for our meeting in Kansas City. I am planning, if you approve, to stay over on Thursday, December 1st until the 4 o’clock through flight to Washington, to have some quiet time with you. The plane from here on November 30th will not get in until after lunch—1:54 P.M.—and WDAF wants me to record a television interview in the afternoon. So there won’t be much peace on Wednesday.
If you are free on Thursday we might meet at your convenience say at the Library, and from there on do what you wish. If I could see the top Boss it would be a joy for me.
Alice is not coming as she did something to a muscle or nerve in her right leg which has been painful and incapacitating, though now yielding to heat and rest. She will send her messages and get her report through me.
This election is so unbelievably close that I wonder whether we really know the result yet. If the southern conspiracy should flower, and enough delegates—I mean electors—withhold their votes to prevent a majority of the total number, what then? Some electors are pledged by state law and some are not. Can they be ordered by mandamus to vote? To vote for the one to whom they are pledged? Suppose they violate the order and either refused to vote, or vote for Lyndon. What then? I suppose that the court could put them in jail for contempt, but it can’t vote for them. If it invalidates the votes for Lyndon the election goes to the House and Nixon has a majority of states, with one vote each. Or perhaps if Lyndon were on the slate which went to the House he might get a majority should the Kennedy states switch to him.
It is all very speculative, but most interesting.
Do you really care about Jack’s being a Catholic? I never have. It hasn’t bothered me about de Gaulle or Adenauer or Schuman or De Gasperi, so why Kennedy? Furthermore I don’t think he’s a very good Catholic. But a Jehovah’s Witness would bother me badly. The whole public health service would go to hell over night.
Another question. You are quoted as saying that you won’t worry about the farmers any more because they voted for Nixon. But did they? A lot of people in the farm states voted Democratic. What about them? Guilt by association? That ought to stir up the animal.
Affectionately,
Dean
November 26, 1960
HONORABLE DEAN ACHESON
WILL SEE YOU WHEN YOU LAND IN OUR BIG SUBURB. WANT TO HAVE GOOD VISIT WITH YOU THURSDAY. YOU WILL SEE THE BOSS. SORRY ALICE IS NOT WITH YOU.
HARRY S TRUMAN