Truman (126 page)

T
hursday, January 20, 1949, was chill and dazzling in Washington, with a stiff wind out of the north and “100 percent” sunshine, as the National Weather Bureau reported. The cloudless sky over the city was a vivid sea blue. Colors everywhere stood out in the sparkling winter atmosphere. Everything gleamed in sunlight—white marble, band instruments, scarlet tunics, brass buttons, long lines of polished black official cars. From Capitol Hill to the White House, along the whole length of Pennsylvania Avenue, hundreds of flags whipped in the wind like the flags in patriotic films.

It was a day made to glorify the occasion, “a perfect Inaugural Day,” as the President’s daughter wrote in her diary. The temperature by noon was in the high 30s, though with the wind, it felt colder.

There had been no full-scale inaugural festivities in Washington since before the war, and this was to be the biggest, most costly inauguration on record, the parade the greatest in the city’s history. The year before, when their return to presidential power had seemed such a certainty, the Republicans who controlled the 80th Congress had voted an unprecedented $80,000 for the most lavish inaugural day ever. Now the jubilant Democrats, with delighted approval from the President, had decided to spend it all.

The size of the crowds was astonishing. More than a century before, in 1829, on a comparably bright winter day, Democrats had descended upon the city from “every point on the compass” to see Andrew Jackson take the oath in front of the East Portico of the Capitol. It was the first time the ceremony had been held there, and fifteen to twenty thousand people attended. At Jackson’s famous White House reception afterward, the mob had grown so unruly that to relieve pressure and save the building, pails of whiskey had been carried out onto the lawn. Now, to see Harry S. Truman, the modern Jacksonian, another “man of the common people” and “hero of the great political drama of 1948,” ride to the Capitol and take the same oath at the same place, more than a million people were gathered, more than ever before in history.

They had been pouring into the city for days, whole delegations in western hats, big-city politicians with their retinues, labor bosses, committeewomen, delegates from the American Legion, the NAACP, Boy Scout troops, Florida bathing beauties, and fifty extremely proud residents of Independence, Missouri, led by Mayor Roger Sermon, as well as ninety-eight veterans of Battery D of the 129th Field Artillery, with Monsignor Curtis Tiernan as their nominal leader. Entertainers and screen stars arrived—Gene Kelly, Jane Powell, Jane Froman, Lena Horne, Edgar Bergen, Abbott and Costello—and the big bands of Benny Goodman and Lionel Hampton, in addition to Phil Spitalny and his All-Girl Orchestra.

Most hotels were sold out, some at triple the normal rate, and for the first time in the city’s history black guests were staying at several of the best hotels, since Truman, as no President before, had ordered that black Americans were to be as welcome as anyone at the main events of the inaugural.

The “invited guests” for the East Portico ceremony alone, those with seats beneath the inaugural stand, numbered 17,740, and another 44,000 paid $2 to $10 for seats in the wooden grandstands along the parade route.

It was also to be the first inauguration broadcast on television. As great as were the crowds on hand, another audience ten times greater would be watching—an estimated 10 million in fourteen cities connected by coaxial cable. This would make it the largest number of people ever to watch a single event until then. Indeed, more people would see Harry Truman sworn in as President on television on January 20, 1949, than had witnessed all previous presidents taking the oath since the first inauguration of George Washington. (As far away as St. Louis, the western limit of the cable, the pictures, like the day in Washington, were reported “bright and clear.”) And 100 million more would be listening by radio.

Yet, as often said afterward, there was no one who took part, no one watching the parade, no one at the dinners and dances, who had a better time than the man at the center of the spectacle, for whom, by all signs, it was the happiest day of his life, “his day of days,” as his daughter would say. “Weather permitting, I hope to be present,” Truman had written in high spirits, in answer to his own invitation to the ceremonies.

It had been two months since the Key West vacation in November, and much had transpired. Because of conditions at the White House, the President and his family were now living across the way in Blair House, at 1651 Pennsylvania Avenue. The old Executive Mansion, as Truman had been informed the day of his return to Washington after the election, was in such a “dangerous” state it could collapse any moment. Ironically, the only safe place in the building was his new balcony. (“Doesn’t that beat all!” he said.)

The facts of the situation were made public for the first time; the White House was closed to visitors. The President, the First Lady, and Margaret all departed for Key West—for Bess and Margaret it was a first visit to the “Little White House” in Florida—and with painters and decorators working night and day, Blair House was made ready, furniture moved in, in time for the family’s return at Thanksgiving.

Privately Truman could not have been happier with the change and for the chance to make sure the White House was restored as it should be. With his love of building, love of history, he was genuinely interested in every detail of the project. “It is the President’s desire that this restoration be made so thoroughly complete that the structural condition and all principal and fixed architectural finishes will be permanent for many generations to come,” wrote Lorenzo Winslow, the architect in charge. At the time, it was thought the job would take a year.

The West Wing, built by Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, remained sound and would continue in service. So again Truman was “commuting” to the Oval Office on foot from across Pennsylvania Avenue, as he had in the first weeks after Franklin Roosevelt’s death. Flanked by Secret Service agents, he would cross the street in the morning, twice again at lunchtime, and again at day’s end. Traffic stopped, tourists gaped. Once, in early December, when a car with Virginia plates nearly ran him down, the driver, after a screeching stop, pressed his hands to his head, pondering what he had nearly wrought, but Truman walked on unconcerned. It was obvious from the President’s stride, wrote
Life,
reporting the incident, that he was “a new and very happy man…[who] knew where he was going….”

Shortly after Thanksgiving, Truman had made one of the most fateful decisions of his presidency. George Marshall, who was soon to undergo surgery for the removal of a kidney, had said he wished to retire, and Truman, after some deliberation, picked Dean Acheson to be the next Secretary of State, beginning with the new term. Truman had made the offer to Acheson privately at Blair House. At first speechless, Acheson had said he was not qualified to meet the demands of the office. This, responded Truman, was undoubtedly so, but then he could say the same for himself, or any man. The question was whether he would do the job?

Often in informal conversation, Truman would say there were probably a million men in the country who could make a better President than he, but that this was not the point. He, Harry Truman,
was
the President. “I have the job and I have to do it and the rest of you have to help me.”

The Berlin Airlift, still proceeding with great effect, was never far from his mind. China was a worry, more and more, as the forces of Mao Tse-tung won one smashing victory after another. From Tokyo, General MacArthur was warning that the “fall” of China imperiled America, while at home, the Red scare grew worse. On December 15, Alger Hiss had been indicted for perjury.

In Independence for Christmas, Truman took his daily walks, tipped his hat to neighbors, and, as reporters noted, carefully knocked the snow from his boots before going into the house. Between Christmas and the inauguration, his days grew increasingly crowded. Up regularly before dawn, he was busy every hour, except for a brief nap after lunch. Members of Congress and the Cabinet made a steady parade in and out of his office. He approved the withdrawal of the last American troops from Korea—a decision to which no great portent was attached by anyone at the time—and, on New Year’s Day, issued a statement recognizing the new Republic of Korea. On Wednesday, January 5, 1949, he went to the Hill to deliver his State of the Union message to the new 81st Congress, calling again for the same progressive social measures he had championed the year before, except now he had a new name for his domestic program, “the Fair Deal,” a name he had coined himself; and, unlike January 1948, when almost no one was listening, everyone now paid close attention.

At a news conference on January 7, visibly moved, he announced the retirement of Marshall and Acheson’s appointment. Another day, he slipped out of the West Wing to fly to Pinehurst, North Carolina, to visit with the convalescing Marshall.

There was the new budget to present, calling for $41.9 billion, the largest ever in peacetime, half of which was to go for defense and foreign aid. There was his inaugural address to work on, meetings to prepare for, more press conferences, a Truman-Barkley Club dinner, and, the night before the inauguration, at the Mayflower Hotel ballroom, a full-dress Presidential Electors dinner, where he surprised and delighted his audience with an impromptu impersonation of H. V. Kaltenborn declaring on election night, in his hard, clipped style, that, “While the President is a million votes ahead in the popular vote…when the country vote comes in, Mr. Truman will be defeated by an overwhelming majority.” The audience exploded with laughter and applause. Truman seemed to glow with vitality and confidence.

He was a man with much to be pleased about, and at age sixty-four, after nearly four years in office and the most arduous political campaign ever waged by a President, he looked as he said he felt, “fit as a fiddle.” His personal popularity, according to the latest polls, had bounced back up to 69 percent, as high as it had been in three years. Congress had raised his salary, from $75,000 to $100,000, and added an extra $50,000, tax-free, for expenses. Bess, all through the week before the inauguration, is said to have positively “bubbled” with good humor.

But there was also a strain of somber obligation in what he said to the crowd at the Mayflower. “I was not in any way elated over the election. In no sense did I feel anything unusual had happened to me. I felt only the responsibility, and that is what we are faced with now.” Privately he worried about the dangers of being in the midst of such immense power and influence as to be found in Washington. “Every once in a while I notice it in myself,” he confided to some of his staff, “and try to drag it out in the open.”

His inaugural day had begun at 6:45, when, having had four and a half hours sleep following the gala of the night before, he stepped out onto the front stoop at Blair House. It was still dark. Pennsylvania Avenue was quiet. A pale moon hung over the great granite confection of the Old State Department Building across the street.

“Happy Inauguration Day, Mr. President,” a reporter called from the sidewalk.

“Wonderful, wonderful,” Truman said, glancing at the sky. “Looks like old man weather is going to be with us again.”

He was wearing a dark overcoat, gray suit and gray fedora. He looked alert and rested. Secret Service men moved up and down the steps, or stood at the curb beside his waiting limousine. The move to Blair House was causing them increased concern, since the four-story building fronted directly on the busy avenue, nearly flush with the sidewalk, the front door only ten steps above street level. Scores of pedestrians passed by at all hours of the day. Every time the President came out the door he would be an easy mark. His bedroom, on the second floor, faced the street.

In minutes he was off in the car, again to the Mayflower for a reunion breakfast of Missouri ham and grits with “the boys” from Battery D, who, to the tune of “Tipperary,” sang: “You’re a great, great guy—Harry Truman, for you we’d march through hell.” He didn’t give a damn what they did after one o’clock that afternoon, he told them, but until then they were to stay sober.

“These boys are real,” he told reporters. “They have no axes to grind. They don’t want any jobs. They’re just here. They don’t call me Mr. President. They call me Captain Harry.” He wanted them with him today, as a “kind of honor guard.”

From the Mayflower the big car sped to the White House, flags snapping from the front fenders. Already crowds were converging on Lafayette Square. People waved as the car passed, or shielded their eyes against the morning sun, trying to catch a glimpse of him. From the West Wing, after perhaps fifteen minutes at his desk, he returned to Blair House to change. At ten on the dot, in inaugural attire, frock coat and striped trousers, and accompanied now by Bess and Margaret, he drove the two blocks to St. John’s Episcopal Church on Lafayette Square, the historic “Church of the Presidents,” for a prayer service. Only a small number attended—the Cabinet, a few friends, a few parishioners—since at Truman’s request there had been no prior announcements of the service. Sitting in pew 63, traditionally reserved for the President since the time of James Madison, he joined in the opening hymn, “O God, Our Help in Ages Past,” and read responsively from the 122nd Psalm:
“Pray for peace…Peace be within thy walls…Peace be within thee…”
During the prayers, as Bess and Margaret, both Episcopalians, knelt beside him, Truman sat with his head bowed. “With Thy favor…behold and bless Thy servant, Harry, the President of the United States, and all others in authority.”

It was a day in which he would fill many roles, from Captain Harry to Servant Harry to President of the United States. For a time, technically, he was not even President but plain Citizen Harry again, for by law his term of office expired at noon and as the morning wore on, things began falling behind schedule.

He rode to the Hill with Alben Barkley, the two of them now in white silk scarfs and top hats, sitting up for all to see in the back of the huge open Lincoln. At the Capitol, the ceremonial greetings inside the Rotunda took longer than expected. By the time everyone was in place outside on the inaugural platform, by the time the invocation had been delivered, by Dr. Edward Pruden of Washington’s First Baptist Church (Truman’s church), the national anthem sung by tenor Phil Regan, and Alben Barkley, looking like an old Roman, sworn in as Vice President by Justice Stanley Reed, and another prayer spoken by Rabbi Samuel Thurman of the United Hebrew Congregation of St. Louis, it was approaching 12:30.