Phoenix was wild about Harry

Before we get out of campaign season, it's worth remembering one of the most riveting contests in American political history: Harry Truman's run for president seven decades ago.

In 1948, Truman was serving out FDR's fourth term, having become the unexpected vice president to the ailing president four years before. Roosevelt died within months of winning the election, leaving Truman to lead the nation through the conclusion of World War II. Truman was untested and, compared with the suave FDR, came off as a country bumpkin. Also, after 16 years of Democratic triumphs, Americans were ready for a change. Republicans won control of Congress in 1946. The well-regarded New York Governor Thomas Dewey, who ran well against Roosevelt in 1944, was widely expected to win the presidency in 1948.

But the GOP misjudged their opponent in the White House. A fierce partisan with a volcanic temper, Truman famously ran against the "Do Nothing" Republican Congress. Even so, he remained the underdog. Thus, Truman embarked on a 30,000-mile whistle-stop campaign, criss-crossing the nation in a special train.

Truman visited Phoenix in September, where 7,000 people crowded around the rear platform of the armored presidential railcar Magellan to hear a "Give 'em hell" speech. The 17-car presidential special traveled east on the Southern Pacific. It previously stopped in Yuma, where 6,000 heard Truman speak and Arizona dignitaries boarded for the ride to the capital and Tucson. 

Among them: Gov. Dan Garvey, state Democratic chairman E.T. Cusick, Sen. Ernest McFarland, Rep. Harold "Porque" Patton, and Air Force Capt., department store heir and Phoenix City Council candidate Barry Goldwater. While in Phoenix, Truman reserved a special place for Phoenix civil engineer Vic Householder, who had served with the president in the Great War. Some of them joined him on the platform, along with his wife Bess and daughter Margaret.

This was friendly ground. Arizona had long been a Democratic state (and would remain so in this election). Truman had visited before. For example, writing from the Westward Ho in April 1944, when he was still a Missouri Senator, Truman told Bess:

...Sen. Hayden, Vic Householder and the National Committeeman met me along with the usual newsmen. But Hayden was kind to me. Brought me to the Hotel and let me rest. Got here about 3 o'clock took a bath and a sunbath! They gave me the Pent House way up above the town, with a sun porch and a cot for the sunning. Called up Mrs. Finch and talked to her for 10 minutes. She was very much pleased and said she'd love to have that letter but didn't believe she'd ever get it. She wanted to be remembered to your mother, asked all about Margie, said her eldest was home on leave for 4 days and she couldn't come down. That they were all well etc. etc. Had a nice meeting here and Martha Ann came down and had dinner with me and Hayden and the dignitaries. She teaches at a little town 20 miles east. She had a day off and was going to the Grand Canyon.

Loads of love. Harry.

In 1948, America boasted the largest and best passenger-train system in the world. It had handled the enormous strain of World War II and the railroad companies were rolling out fast, luxurious new streamliners to accommodate an expected surge in postwar ridership. Every town and city had railroad stations. These became campaign stops for Truman (and Dewey, who also whistle-stopped nationwide, crossing northern Arizona on the Santa Fe). In Phoenix, Union Station handled about a dozen scheduled passenger trains every day.

Handling the campaign specials, especially for the president, was a major logistical undertaking, to ensure on-time performance, crowd safety, and protection of the reporters, politicians, officials, and Truman himself. Crowds would surge around the back of the Magellan, despite efforts to keep a them a safe distance away. Secret Service agents inspected the line ahead and sometimes, especially on the single-track Western lines, a pilot train ran ahead in case trouble awaited. America's railroads pulled off the feat with no injuries or serious incidents. (The photo above shows a typical Truman stop, but not in Phoenix).

The Magellan, an armored Pullman car, had been built for FDR, who would take the train to his home in Hyde Park, N.Y., and to his winter retreat of Warm Springs, Ga. He also used it on an inspection tour of the West Coast during the War.

Despite Truman's frenetic campaigning, Republicans seemed to hold an edge. In their Philadelphia convention that nominated the moderate Dewey, they selected as his running mate the moderate governor of California Earl Warren (future Chief Justice of the United States). The GOP adopted a platform calling for the Equal Rights Amendment, integration of the armed forces, and abolition of the poll tax. Dewey was an internationalist, too, a sharp break from the isolation that still existed in the conservative wing of the party led by Sen. Robert Taft.

This was also a time of anti-communist anxiety. Many Americans disliked the Yalta agreements, feeling FDR had conceded too much to Stalin. The Soviets gradually took over Eastern Europe, despite pledges of free elections. Two years earlier, Churchill had delivered his "Iron Curtain" speech in Missouri (traveling there with Truman on the Magellan). The communists were winning the Chinese Civil War. In August 1948, Whittaker Chambers denounced Alger Hiss, the embodiment of the Eastern New Deal establishment, as a communist spy. This fevered atmosphere hurt Truman badly and saw the election of Sen. Joseph McCarthy. But is wasn't all paranoia. Stalin was dangerous. Hiss, as post-Cold War access to Moscow archives conclusively proved, was a Soviet agent.

Also, contrary to the narrative of some progressives today, the New Deal and Democratic ascendency was a devil's bargain seen through the lens of presentism. The coalition consisted of liberals and union workers, yes, but also Southern segregationists, crooked labor leaders, and big city political bosses in the pre-sprawl era when American big cities were unchallenged in power. This unwieldy alliance looked on Truman with ambivalence, at least until the bellicose campaign speeches given from the rear platform of the Magellan fired them up.

Dewey wasn't as inevitable as he seemed, even at the time. Advisers in this clean-shaven era pleaded with the governor to lose his mustache; he demurred "because Mrs. Dewey likes it." He may also have been fatally wounded when Alice Roosevelt Longworth (TR's precocious daughter) called him "the little man on the wedding cake." (Longworth was only less cutting with Truman: "I'm just mild about Harry.") In any case, Truman's whirlwind train tours made the difference on Election Day. When the Chicago Tribune's early edition made journalism's most famous mistake, Truman happily showed it off from the platform of the Magellan.

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My book, A Brief History of Phoenix, is available to buy or order at your local independent bookstore, or from Amazon.

Read more Phoenix history in Rogue's Phoenix 101 archive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dewey defeats Truman

 

Comments

[Jon7190]

Interesting story! Politics was so different...

[John Kanelis]

My favorite Truman story involves the Manhattan Project. He took office in April 1945. A few weeks later, the Joint Chiefs briefed him about a big bomb under development in NM. The president knew only sketchy info on it. He was told it could save thousands of lives, but at a terrible cost for certain. He ordered the bombs dropped in August 1945. WWII ended. President Truman would say many times over the course of the rest of his life that he didn't regret dropping the bombs. The man had tremendous grit and courage.

[soleri]

1948 was politically riven by factions but the main show was still in the center ring. Both Thomas Dewey and Harry Truman were center-left candidates. Another, Henry Wallace, was hard left while yet another, Strom Thurmond, was hard right and a spirit guide to the current Republican Party based on racial and cultural grievances.

I had to go to Wikipedia to refresh my failing memory about this campaign. It includes the standard electoral map and one with a breakdown of the vote by county. Arizona, for example, went completely to Truman, while a state like California was Republican on its coast and Democratic in its interior. San Francisco was red and Bakersfield was blue! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1948

There were no deep-seated differences between the parties then and the campaign itself was little more than a stylistic difference between the earthy Truman and the indistinct if high-toned Dewey. Truman fought hard while Dewey coasted and the rest is history.

It's tantalizing to look back and see a nation that was politically functional and basically sane. That was probably a result of having survived two epic crises, the Great Depression and World War II, where government delivered the goods without offending the basic sense of cultural identity. Republicans carried on for another 20 years or so as a party based in economic reality and internationalism. Eventually, the marriage of Republican paleo-conservatives and southern segregationists reshaped both the GOP and America. Today, we're haunted by hungry ghosts we cannot begin to feed or placate.

Dewey's running mate, California governor Earl Warren, was appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in 1953 by Dwight Eisenhower, In 1967, his court unanimously overthrew anti-miscegenation laws in Loving vs Virginia. Those states were all in the South and border states like Missouri. A reporter tracked down an aged Truman and asked him for his reaction. He angrily stated that the Bible forbids such sinfulness and that America will pay a steep price for flouting its edicts. Today, 16% of all marriages in America are interracial. Things change! Missouri is now a deep-red state and California is deep blue.

[Ramjet]

I was one of the people at that "whistle stop" It was, at the age of 11 the beginning of my interest in politics.
Arizona was reliably democratic in those days. A republican had trouble being elected to any office.
It was also the last time Arizona voted for a democrat for President until Bill Clinton's first run.
Truman had been underestimated his entire life. He displayed incredible courage by ordering the atomic devastation of Japan.
He kept MacArthur from starting WW III in Korea and becoming the first American Emperor.

I shudder to think what the current part-time occupant of the WH would do under similar circumstances.

[Anon]

Arizona was reliably Democratic along with Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and the rest of the South in those days. No indication at all that Arizona was anything other than politically right of center throughout its history as a state. Truman’s statement on racially mixed marriages isn’t a surprise to those who have roots in the states of real America: states which actually participated in the American Civil War.

[Cal Lash]

Not much has changed since the muderous rampage and pillaging of the Americas by filthy europeans beginning around 1450.

[Rogue Columnist]

Murder, rampage and pillage (and slavery) were hardly contained to the white tribe. I recommend reading "The Comanche Empire" by Pekka Hämäläinen for starters.

[Cal Lash]

I have and more.
So!! Thats no excuse.

[Cal Lash]

How about Aztec human sacrifice?
My point is "not much has changed."
To quote ee cummings, "manunkind".

[Cal Lash]

And then the Comanches would likely not have been the power they became as a result of their success in using stolen Spaniard horses.

[Cal Lash]

I apologize for getting off subject.

Harry: Truman was a good guy.
I always thought he was probably one of the most “Honest” presidents the USA had.
He reminded me of my frugal Scottish farmer grandfather. A solid basic down to earth person. That toiled every day of his life in the black Iowa soil and never regretted it nor complained. I never heard him say a more vulgar word than Gosh Darn.
Harry made some tough decisions and probably struggled with them mentally his entire life
However I do not believe he regretted most of his time as president.
Maybe Anon is right politics has changed but at 78 I am not so sure.
“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”
Honest Abe

[Cal Lash]

OOPs that was Jon7190 not Anon that said politics was so different.

[Joe Schallan]

Murder, rampage, and slavery are what human beings do. Northern Europeans have proven to be historically adept at these things, along with Genghis Khan, Julius Caesar, Timur, Attila, et al., et al. (And Kyrsten Sinema, if Martha McSally's ads are to be believed.)

I am hard pressed to think of a group that hasn't embraced murder, rampage, and slavery at some point in its "development." Unitarians??

Now, how in the heck did we get here from Harry Truman?

[Jon7190]

Thanks Cal for the shout out to my shortest post ever! Your grandfather sounds like a great character.

I was also thinking that I appreciated Rogue's acknowledgement of the often overlooked postscript to the Hiss/Chambers affair that it's been proven post-Cold War that Hiss actually was a Soviet agent. It has also been shown, with historical insight, that the contemporary hysteria about Communists in the government was not completely unfounded.

Politics would be much easier if we could have the insight we get from decades of experience, discovery and hindsight, but have it right now for today's issues!

[Cal Lash]

Back in 76 while backpacking to D.C. i spent some time on top of a mountain with some Unitarians. Seemed to be nice folks.

How did we get here from gentle
Harry?
Hiroshima!

Jon 7190, i don't think politics has changed much since humans learned about forming society by watching wolf packs.

[Cal Lash]

PS, i approve of ALL the above and no animals were hurt during my postings.

[Cal Lash]

Then there are those that believe
"killing provides what is
needed in after life. "
Jayang Fan