Truman(15)

He did neither. He waived his right to formal objection, but launched a most violent attack on the whole administration of justice in Jackson County. Of course, he said, he did not defend voting frauds. (He could hardly have said otherwise.) Those responsible should be prosecuted. But not by the methods employed. Milligan was corrupt because he accepted bankruptcy fees outside his salary. His witch hunting made him the cheap hero of the Kansas City Star and the St Louis Post-Dispatch. He was supported both in his corruption and in his prosecutions by two Republican judges, the strength of who’s impartiality could be deduced from the facts that one was appointed by President Harding and the other by President Coolidge. Milligan and they could only get convictions by excluding inhabitants of Jackson County from juries in federal cases in the district. His conclusion was as extreme as it could be: ‘I say to this Senate that a Jackson County Missouri Democrat has as much chance of a fair trial in the Federal District Court of Western Missouri as a Jew would have in a Hitler court or a Trotsky follower before Stalin.’

Truman’s speech was hardly designed to make friends, either in Missouri or on Capitol Hill. It did not. It was heard with impatience by his opponents and with embarrassment by his normal allies. No one voted with him. He cast a single ‘nay’ vote. What was his motive? To support Pendergast, most people said. To revive the humiliating label of being his ‘office boy’ after three years of working to rub it off? And to do so at a time when Pendergast was manifestly no longer in a position to do anything more for Truman? The explanation does not begin to make sense.

Was it then just spleen against Roosevelt’s disregard of him? Probably he was offended at the time. But nineteen months later he was writing to his wife with a remarkable calm wisdom about his relations with the President on exactly this type of issue. And this was when it was becoming depressingly clear to him that F.D.R. was probably for Stark, and certainly not ringingly for Truman, for renomination in 1940. ‘I am most happy you are back in line,’ he wrote on September 24th, 1939. ‘You should not have gotten out seriously. [Presumably Mrs Truman had not unnaturally gone a little cool on Roosevelt.] My patronage troubles were the result of the rotten situation in Kansas City and also the jealous disposition of my colleague. While the President is unreliable, the things he’s stood for are, in my opinion, best for the country, and jobs should not interfere with general principles. With most people they do.’3

More probably Truman just acted almost on impulse, although he must have prepared his speech over at least a few hours, without advice or any clearly worked-out objective. He was irritated, he was frustrated, he hated to trim, he could stand isolation and disapproval, so he lashed out without much thought of the consequences. It was a similar reaction to that which he exhibited in the letters of expostulation, a few privately posted but the majority fortunately not sent, with which he relieved his feelings during his presidency. However this speech was neither suppressed nor privately posted, but indelibly inscribed in the records of the Senate and impressed, although fortunately not indelibly, upon the memories of many of those who heard it. If the qualities he exhibited on this occasion, rashness, ill-judgment, pig-headed lack of concern for his own immediate interest, had to be weighed against each other and the balance measured as a test of fitness for the highest office the result would have been an almost unanimous adverse view.

However, in the second part of his first Senate term, the last thing that Truman himself, or anyone else, was thinking about was his fitness for the highest office. It began to seem increasingly unlikely that he would be able to continue in the Senate. The indictment of Pendergast in April 1939 was a major blow. Although Truman had slowly shaken off the slur of being the boss’s office boy, the gain was substantially offset by the boss turning out to be not merely a boss but a crook, who was sent to serve 15 months in Leavenworth, which had one of the most symbolic names of the Federal penitentiaries, as well as the disadvantage of sitting on the doorstep of Kansas City. There was no question of Truman being directly involved in the scandals, but apart from inevitable guilt by association the collapse of the Kansas City machine threatened him with a substantial loss of votes in any primary contest.

From the early summer of 1939 it was obvious that there was going to be such a contest. Governor Stark previously had alerted Truman, so the latter always subsequently asserted, by assuring him that, although he might be pressed, he would never run against him. Soon after the Pendergast débâcle, Stark declared himself a candidate. (Later Milligan, the disputed US Attorney, came into the contest too.) A year or so before Truman had been doubtful about how much he wanted to continue in the Senate, with the dreary Washington apartment life that it involved for him. Stark’s emergence concentrated his mind. ‘I’m going to lick that double-crossing, lying governor if I can keep my health,’ he wrote to his wife from Washington on July 5th.3 ‘If I do then I can really do something here for Missouri. I know I could if old Jack or Wheeler should happen to be the fair-haired boy.’4