He listed the gains for farmers, for labor and the poor achieved under sixteen years of Democratic leadership, and he tore into the Republican-dominated 80th Congress for holding up progress on housing, aid to education, medical care, and yes, civil rights.
Everybody knows that I recommended to the Congress the civil rights program. I did that because I believed it to be my duty under the Constitution. Some of the members of my own party disagree with me violently on this matter. But they stand up and do it openly. People can tell where they stand. But the Republicans all professed to be for these measures. But the Congress failed to act….
Indeed, he said, there was a long list of promises in the new Republican platform, things of great importance that the Republicans claimed they wanted but that the Republicans who controlled Congress had prevented his administration from doing.
It was then he unveiled his surprise, his bombshell, and speaking so rapidly the words seemed to run together, as though all joined by hyphens.
I am, therefore, calling this Congress back into session July 26.
On the 26th of July, which out in Missouri we call “Turnip Day,” I am going to call Congress back and ask them to pass laws to halt rising prices, to meet the housing crisis—which they are saying they are for ‘in their platform…. I shall ask them to act upon…aid to education, which they say they are for…civil rights legislation, which they say they are for….
The cheering and stomping in the hall was so great he had to shout to be heard.
Now, my friends, if there is any reality behind the Republican platform, we ought to get some action from a short session of the 80th Congress. They can do this job in 15 days, if they want to do it. They will still have time to go out and run for office.
He was calling the Republicans’ bluff—“Let ’em make good!”—and the delegates were ecstatic. He had “set the convention on fire,” said The New York Times. “He walked out there,” remembered Clark Clifford, “and reached down within himself, found the strength and the inspiration to make that fiery speech which was necessary to put him over.”
Critics on the left and the right found themselves grudgingly moved by such nerve and audacity in the face of the odds and by his effect on the crowd. “They sensed,” wrote Max Lerner, “that this was the most militant Presidential acceptance speech in either party since Bryan. They liked the fact that he came out of his corner fighting…. It was a great speech for a great occasion, and as I listened I found myself applauding.”
Even The New Republic bestowed the ultimate compliment: the speech was as “cannily suited” to the time and setting as any Franklin Roosevelt might have made. “For that night at least, Harry Truman was a real leader.”
“You can’t stay cold about a man who sticks out his chin and fights,” Time reported one delegate exclaiming.
Truman was likened to the brave sea captain who rallies the crew to save the sinking ship. In fact, he was exactly like the Missouri artillery captain in the Vosges Mountains in 1918 who when his battery panicked under enemy attack stood by his guns and with a fierce harangue got his men back in order again.
The Republicans charged him with crude politics. The call for a special session of Congress was “the act of a desperate man,” “the last hysterical gasp from an expiring administration.”
“Of course, it was politics,” wrote Jonathan Daniels, “and effective politics, tough and native.”
What it did above all, as Truman intended, was to put the focus on Congress and thus on the split between those Republicans who, like Dewey and Earl Warren, favored much that had been set in motion since the 1930s by the New Deal, and those Republicans who remained obstructionists. It made the 80th Congress the issue, put the Republicans on the defense, and left Dewey with the dubious choice of either standing up for the 80th Congress, and thereby assume a share of responsibility for its failings, or remain aloof, which would seem less than courageous for a standardbearer.
As a political strategist Truman had been “devilishly astute,” Speaker of the House Joe Martin later conceded. No President had called an emergency session of Congress in an election year since 1856. “On the 25th of July,” went an old Missouri saying, “sow your turnips wet or dry.” The Congress that met on the 26th (the 25th was a Sunday) would be known as the Turnip Congress.
“Arrived in Washington at the White House at 5:30 A.M., my usual time getting up,” Truman jotted on his calendar for July 15, after the return from Philadelphia.
But go to bed at 6:00 and listen to the news. Sleep until 9:15, order breakfast and go to the office at 10:00. I called a special session of the Congress. My, how my opposition screams. I’m going to attempt to make them meet their platform promises before the election. That is according to the “kept” press and the opposition leadership “cheap politics.” I wonder what “expensive politics” will be like!
In a red-brick auditorium in Birmingham, Alabama, two days later, a hurriedly assembled conference of states’ rights Democrats, “Dixiecrats” as they now called themselves, waved Confederate flags and cheered Alabama’s former Governor Frank M. Dixon as he denounced Truman’s civil rights program as an effort “to reduce us to the status of a mongrel, inferior race,” then unanimously chose Governor Strom Thurmond of South Carolina to be their candidate for President, and for Vice President, Governor Fielding L. Wright of Mississippi. The Dixiecrat platform called for “the segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race.” Their hope was to deny both Truman and Dewey a majority and thus throw the election into the House of Representatives.
Asked why he was breaking with the Democratic Party now, when Roosevelt had made similar promises as Truman on civil rights, Strom Thurmond responded, “But Truman really means it.”
On July 27, once again at the Philadelphia Convention Hall, Henry Wallace’s Progressive Citizens of America, with more than three thousand delegates—far more than at either the Republican or Democratic conventions—rallied to acclaim Wallace their candidate for the presidency, and Senator Glen H. Taylor, the “Singing Cowboy” of Idaho, as their improbable choice for a running mate. (Taylor, a Democrat, had campaigned for the Senate in 1944 singing, “Oh, Give Me a Home by the Capitol Dome.”)
Black delegates were present in impressive numbers. Nearly a third of the delegates were women. Youth predominated. The average Progressive on hand in Philadelphia was described as twenty years younger and 30 pounds lighter than his or her Democratic or Republican counterpart. Comparably little alcohol was consumed and there were no “smoke-filled rooms” this time. But there was also a noticeable absence of political experience on hand, and though neither Wallace nor Taylor, nor any but a small minority of delegates, were Communists, the conspicuous presence of such celebrated pro-Communists as Paul Robeson and New York Congressman Vito Marcantonio, plus the obvious dominating presence of Communists throughout the whole new helter-skelter Progressive organization, was to many observers and much of the country deeply disturbing.
As he had from the start of his “crusade,” Wallace refused to repudiate his Communist support. He would not repudiate any support that came to him, he said, “on the basis of interest in peace.” Senator Taylor stressed the distinction between “pink” Communists and “red” Communists, telling reporters that the pink variety wished to change the American system through evolution rather than revolution, and that they would support the Progressive cause. In contrast, the red variety would be backing Dewey on the theory that revolution would inevitably follow another Hoover-style administration.
The Progressive platform that emerged from the convention was virtually no different from the Communist Party platform in its denunciation of the Marshall Plan, the Truman Doctrine, the new draft law, and called for the destruction of American nuclear weapons, which were still the only nuclear weapons known to exist. When a Vermont farmer named James Hayford introduced an amendment saying it was not the Progressive Party’s intention to endorse the foreign policy of
any other country, the idea was denounced as “the reflection of pressure from outside” and voted down—which Wallace knew to be a mistake but did nothing to stop.
Wallace delivered his acceptance speech at Philadelphia’s Shibe Park before an exuberant crowd of more than thirty thousand people who had paid for their seats, a Progressive innovation to meet expenses. He blamed American policy for most of the world’s troubles and tensions, never once criticizing the Soviet Union. Concerning Berlin, he said, there was nothing to lose by giving it up in the search for peace. “We stand against the kings of privilege who own the old parties…[who] attempt to control our thoughts and dominate the life of man everywhere in the world.”
IV
In the stifling, relentless heat of summer in Washington, the Turnip Congress got reluctantly under way. Tension over Berlin increased almost by the hour. And to Truman’s extreme annoyance, James Forrestal launched a campaign behind closed doors to turn custody of the atomic bomb over to the military chiefs.
From testimony being given before the House Un-American Activities Committee by a woman named Elizabeth Bentley and a Time magazine editor named Whittaker Chambers, both former Communists, it also appeared a major spy scandal was unfolding.
Visitors to the President’s office found him looking tired and preoccupied. Bess and Margaret having made their annual summer departure for Missouri, he was feeling particularly alone again. “It is hot and humid and lonely,” he wrote the night after putting them on the train. “Why in hell does anybody want to be a head of state? Damned if I know.”
He had had no change of heart about Berlin. American forces would remain. That was his decision, he said again, meeting with Marshall and Forrestal on July 19, and he would stand by it until all diplomatic means had been tried to reach some kind of accommodation to avoid war. “We’ll stay in Berlin—come what may…. I don’t pass the buck, nor do I alibi out of any decision I make,” he noted privately. He was convinced, as was Marshall, that the future of Western Europe was at stake in Berlin, not to say the well-being of the 2.5 million people in the city’s Allied sectors. Stalin was obviously determined to force the Allies out of Berlin. “If we wished to remain there, we would have to make a show of strength,” Truman later wrote. “But there was always the risk that Russian reaction might lead to war. We had to face the possibility that Russia might deliberately choose to make Berlin the pretext for war….” The Allies had all of 6,500 troops in Berlin—3,000 American, 2,000 British, 1,500 French—while the Russians had 18,000 backed by an estimated 300,000 in the east zone of Germany.
With the airlift now in its fourth week, heavily laden American and British transports were roaring into Berlin hundreds of times a day, and in all weather. They came in low, one after another, lumbering just over the tops of the ruined buildings, as crowds gathered in clusters to watch. German children with toy planes played “airlift” in the rubble as the real drama went on overhead.
It had been General Clay’s initial estimate that possibly 700 tons of food could be delivered to the beleaguered city by air in what would be a “very big operation.” Already some days the tonnage was twice that and now, too, almost unimaginably, coal was arriving out of the sky by the planeload. Pilots and crew were making heroic efforts. At times planes were landing as often as every four minutes—British Yorks and Dakotas, American C-47s and the newer, much larger, four-engine C-54s, which had been dispatched to Germany from Panama, Hawaii, and Alaska. Most planes averaged three flights a day from Frankfurt to Berlin’s Gatow or Templehof fields, a distance of 275 miles. Ground crews worked round the clock. “We were proud of our Air Force during the war. We’re prouder of it today,” said The New York Times. Already, three American crewmen had been killed when their C-47 crashed.
Still, the effort was not enough. On July 15, a record day, 1,450 tons were flown into Berlin. Yet to sustain the city 2,000 tons of food alone were needed every day, plus 12,000 tons of fuel and supplies. In winter, the demands for fuel would be far greater. The mayor of Berlin had said it would be impossible to provide the necessary food and coal supplies by air. “But every expert knows,” reported a London paper, “that aircraft, despite their immense psychological effect, cannot be relied upon to provision Berlin in the winter months.” Allied officials in Berlin worried about the increased activity of Russian Yak fighter planes in the air corridors.
Secretary of the Army Royall ordered General Clay to fly home to Washington to report to the President, which Truman thought a mistake. (“My muttonhead Secretary [of the] Army ordered Clay home from Germany and stirred up a terrific how-dy-do for no good reason,” he wrote to Bess.) At a National Security Council meeting on July 22, Clay said the people of Berlin would stand firm, even if it meant further hardships. Probably the Russians would try to stop any attempt by an armed convoy to break through at this stage, but they were not likely to interfere with air traffic, unless, of course, they were determined to provoke a war. Did the Russians want war, Truman asked. Clay did not think so. No one could be sure. Truman rejected the convoy idea.
When Truman inquired what problems might result from increasing the airlift, General Hoyt Vandenberg, Air Force Chief of Staff, voiced concern that American air strength elsewhere in the world would dangerously be reduced. But that was a risk Truman would take. The airlift would be vastly increased, he decided, expressing again his “absolute determination” to stay in Berlin. More of the big C-54 transports would be sent. Clay ordered another Berlin airfield built and in response to his call, 30,000 Berliners went to work to clear the rubble and grade the runways.
“There is considerable political advantage to the Administration in its battle with the Kremlin,” James Rowe had written in his effort to outline a political strategy for 1948. “In time of crisis the American citizen tends to back up his President.” So by such reasoning, the Berlin crisis, if kept in bounds, was made to order for Truman. Yet in nothing he said or wrote is there a sign of his playing the situation for “political advantage.” Rather, the grave responsibilities he bore as President at this juncture seem to have weighed more heavily on him than at any time since assuming office. He felt the campaign and its distractions, the drain it put on his time and strength, could not be coming at a worse time, as he told Churchill in a letter on July 10:
I am going through a terrible political “trial by fire.” Too bad it must happen at this time.
Your country and mine are founded on the fact that the people have the right to express themselves on their leaders, no matter what the crisis….
We are in the midst of grave and trying times. You can look with satisfaction upon your great contribution to the overthrow of Nazism and Fascism in the world. “Communism”—so-called—is our next great problem. I hope we can solve it without the “blood and tears” the other two cost.
Only the day before the National Security Council meeting about Berlin On July 21, at the meeting arranged by Forrestal to discuss the custody of the atomic bomb, Truman had looked dreadful and in a moment of annoyance revealed as vividly as he ever would how much more he dwelt on the horror of the atomic bomb than most people, even those close to him, imagined, or than he wished anyone to know.
“The President greeted us rather solemnly. He looked worn and grim; none of the joviality that he sometimes exhibits, and we got right down to business,” wrote David Lilienthal in his diary that night, when the whole scene and everything said were still fresh in his mind.
It was an important session, and a kind of seriousness hung over it that wasn’t relieved a bit, needless to say, by the nature of the subject and the fact that even at that moment some terrible thing might happen in Berlin…. I rather think it was one of the most important meetings I have ever attended.
Present besides Truman, Forrestal, and Lilienthal were the four other members of the Atomic Energy Commission, plus Secretary of the Army Royall, Secretary of the Air Force Stuart Symington, and Donald F. Carpenter, an executive of the Remington Ar
ms Company who was chairman of the Military Liaison Committee of the National Military Establishment.
It was Carpenter who opened the discussion by reading aloud a formal letter requesting an order from the President that would turn custody of the atomic bomb over to the Joint Chiefs, on the grounds that those who would be ultimately responsible for use of the weapon should have it in their possession, to increase “familiarity” with it and to “unify” command. Truman, who did not appreciate being read to in such fashion, cut him off, saying curtly, “I can read.” He turned to Lilienthal, who said the real issue was one of broad policy and that the bomb must not be the responsibility of anyone other than the President, because of his constitutional roles as both Commander in Chief and Chief Magistrate. Civilian control was essential, Lilienthal said.
But then Symington spoke, delivering an incongruously lighthearted account of a visit to Los Alamos where “our fellas” told him they should have the bomb just to be sure it worked, though one scientist had said he did not think it should ever be used.