Harry S. Truman

president harry s. truman
thirty-third president of the united states

interesting facts
During Truman's presidency, two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan. (Hiroshima and Nakasaki). He was also the first President from Missouri.

quote
"I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me." - In response to the overwhelming pressure of war, bomb, etc.

biography
The man who was to guide the United States through this critical period was born May 8, 1884, at Lamar, Mo. He was the son of John Anderson Truman, a cattle trader, and Martha Young Truman.

He was named Harry for his mother's brother, Harry Young. He was given the middle initial "S" (but no name) for his grandfathers, Anderson Shippe Truman and Solomon Young. Truman's great-grandmother, Nancy Tyler Holmes, was a first cousin of John Tyler, tenth president of the United States. It is interesting to know that Tyler was the first vicepresident to become president by succession, and Truman was the seventh. It was Tyler who insisted that the vice-president should actually become the president of the United States and not just acting president when he takes the office of the chief executive.

Shortly after Harry's birth, the Truman family moved to nearby Independence, Mo., not far from Kansas City. There Harry attended grade school and high school. He wore glasses from the age of 9. This kept him from doing many things the other boys did. He preferred to spend his time reading. Mark Twain, stories of the American Civil War, and the lives of great men were his favorites. He had read the Bible through twice before he was 12. There was a small library in Independence, where young Harry spent additional hours reading histories, novels, and encyclopedias. Sometimes he took the encyclopedias home with him to read. Mathilda Brown, Truman's high-school history teacher, said of him: "I doubt if there was a student in any high school in the country who knew more of the history of the United States than Harry did." The smartest boy in that graduating class of 1901, however, was Charles G. Ross. Ross later became President Truman's press secretary.

During the summers Harry, his sister, Mary Jane, and his younger brother, John Vivian, visited their grandparents, the Solomon Youngs, on their farm at Grandview, Mo. There they helped with the farm work, rode horses, and swam. From the age of 13 Harry took piano lessons, first in Independence and later in Kansas City. He became a good amateur pianist. Truman later said he might have become a concert pianist if he had not gone into politics. When he became president, he often played the piano to relax from the cares of office. He also accompanied his daughter, Margaret, when she sang for White House visitors. Chopin and Mozart were his favorite composers.

After graduation from high school Harry tried for an appointment to West Point but was rejected because of poor eyesight. Having no money to pay his way through college, he took a job in a Kansas City drugstore. At the same time he joined the Missouri National Guard. After a brief stay in the drugstore, Truman became a clerk at the Kansas City Star. He then tried working as a timekeeper for a railroad construction gang and a clerk in a Kansas City bank. Five years after he had left high school, Truman was tired of city life. He returned to his father's farm and worked there for the next ten years.

He went to France during World War I as a captain in the Field Artillery. Returning, he married Elizabeth Virginia Wallace, and opened a haberdashery in Kansas City.

Active in the Democratic Party, Truman was elected a judge of the Jackson County Court (an administrative position) in 1922. He became a Senator in 1934. During World War II he headed the Senate war investigating committee, checking into waste and corruption and saving perhaps as much as 15 billion dollars.

As President, Truman made some of the most crucial decisions in history. Soon after V-E Day, the war against Japan had reached its final stage. An urgent plea to Japan to surrender was rejected. Truman, after consultations with his advisers, ordered atomic bombs dropped on cities devoted to war work. Two were Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japanese surrender quickly followed.

In June 1945 Truman witnessed the signing of the charter of the United Nations, hopefully established to preserve peace.

On Dec. 31, 1946, President Truman declared an end to the period of World War II hostilities. Early in 1947 the British said they could not support the Greek government after March 31. Many diplomats feared that the Soviet Union would then spread its power throughout the Middle East. President Truman met the problem by asking Congress for 400 million dollars to aid Greece and Turkey. Congress appropriated the money. This policy of aid, popularly known as the Truman Doctrine, was an American challenge to Soviet ambitions throughout the world.

On June 5, Secretary of State George C. Marshall proposed an even stronger measure. His Marshall Plan would give aid to all the nations of Europe. This plan, officially called the European Recovery Program, was authorized by Congress in 1948. Six billion dollars of aid was provided for the first year of the program. The Soviet Union prevented the nations of Eastern Europe from accepting any aid, so the program was confined to the nations of Western Europe.

During 1947 the Republican 80th Congress passed the Labor-Management Relations Act (Taft-Hartley act) over the president's veto. At Truman's request, Congress changed the order of succession to the office of president of the United States. Congress also replaced the former War and Navy departments with a new National Military Establishment (later called the Department of Defense). In 1948 President Truman faced a difficult year. Both political parties agreed on foreign policy, but no such accord existed on domestic issues. With a presidential election coming up, domestic questions became campaign issues. Meanwhile, the breach between the Soviet Union and the Western powers widened into a "cold war."

Thus far, he had followed his predecessor's policies, but he soon developed his own. He presented to Congress a 21-point program, proposing the expansion of Social Security, a full-employment program, a permanent Fair Employment Practices Act, and public housing and slum clearance. The program, Truman wrote, "symbolizes for me my assumption of the office of President in my own right." It became known as the Fair Deal.

Dangers and crises marked the foreign scene as Truman campaigned successfully in 1948. In foreign affairs he was already providing his most effective leadership.

In 1947 as the Soviet Union pressured Turkey and, through guerrillas, threatened to take over Greece, he asked Congress to aid the two countries, enunciating the program that bears his name--the Truman Doctrine. The Marshall Plan, named for his Secretary of State, stimulated spectacular economic recovery in war-torn western Europe. When the Russians blockaded the western sectors of Berlin in 1948, Truman created a massive airlift to supply Berliners until the Russians backed down. Meanwhile, he was negotiating a military alliance to protect Western nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, established in 1949.

In June 1950, when the Communist government of North Korea attacked South Korea, Truman conferred promptly with his military advisers. There was, he wrote, "complete, almost unspoken acceptance on the part of everyone that whatever had to be done to meet this aggression had to be done. There was no suggestion from anyone that either the United Nations or the United States could back away from it."

A long, discouraging struggle ensued as U.N. forces held a line above the old boundary of South Korea. Truman kept the war a limited one, rather than risk a major conflict with China and perhaps Russia.

Deciding not to run again, he retired to Independence; at age 88, he died December 26, 1972, after a stubborn fight for life.