Truman(51)

Eisenhower’s behaviour in 1948, let alone 1952, fully bore out the truth of this statement. But still the extraordinary wave of liberal support for him rolled on. It was joined by two major tributaries: some of the most important machine politicians in the northern cities and the leaders of the disaffected South. As the General persistently said he had no intention of being a candidate he had no need to declare his position on any issue from civil rights to Taft-Hartley to farm support. All who wanted to get away from Truman could cluster under his branches.

As late as the first week of July, with the Convention opening on July 12th, a group, including in addition to those already mentioned, Hubert Humphrey, then Mayor of Minneapolis, Strom Thurmond, Governor of South Carolina and soon to be ‘Dixiecrat’ candidate against the ticket, two other southern governors, Chester Bowles, former head of Roosevelt and Truman’s Wages and Prices Administration and successful aspirant to the governorship of Connecticut, Mayor O’Dwyer of New York City, and ‘Boss’ Hague of New Jersey, came together in a last minute appeal for the Convention to offer, and Eisenhower to accept, a draft. It was a remarkable coalition by any standards. Walter Reuther of the Automobile Workers, David Dubinsky of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers, and Philip Murray of the CIO, had also been involved at earlier stages in moves for the promotion of the General and the demotion of the President.

On July 9th, in reply to a final ploy of Pepper’s which was that he should be drafted by the Convention, not as a Democrat but as a ‘national’ candidate, Eisenhower issued a refusal sufficiently comprehensive and categoric to bring everyone at last to their senses so far as he was concerned. Arvey and O’Dwyer, as ‘pros’, responded by immediately endorsing Truman. Pepper responded by announcing his own candidature, which lasted for little more than 24 hours. The chairman of ADA responded by trying to launch Douglas. Douglas killed that on the Sunday (July 11th). On the Monday he killed Truman’s attempt to get him to accept the vice-presidential nomination. ‘I can’t be a No. 2 man to a No. 2 man,’ he was reported to have said.13 On the Tuesday there was a brief ‘Barkley for President’ boomlet; he had made a notable keynote speech on the previous night, and it still did not take much to set some people flapping towards anyone but Truman. On the Wednesday Truman himself, having disposed of Barkley by getting him to accept the vice-presidential nomination, for which it was alleged that he had been angling at every Convention since 1928, made the short train journey to Philadelphia and arrived at 30th Street Station ‘in the rain at 9.15,’ as he recorded. Margaret Truman put it more graphically: ‘Philadelphia on that night of July 14th seemed to be wrapped in a huge suffocating blanket of heat and humidity.’14

It was nearly five hours before he could make his acceptance speech. This was because of the general incompetence with which this despondent Convention was run rather than because of any particular difficulty at this stage over his nomination or that of Barkley. His dangerous rivals had eliminated themselves. Irwin Ross, the authoritative chronicler of the 1948 campaign,5 thinks that even had Eisenhower entered the contest, the sundering of his totally disparate coalition, which must have followed from a declaration of his position on civil rights, would probably just have given Truman the edge. But it would at best have been a very close run thing. As it was Truman cantered to a formal victory, with 947½ votes to 2636 for Senator Russell of Georgia, who, as an anti-civil rights candidate had a strictly limited constituency, the more so as Mississippi and Alabama had already walked out of the Convention.

Truman’s nomination was not then made unanimous as was customary. Rayburn, in the chair, although pro-Truman, could not risk it. The South was too adamant, and had been made more so by the main excitement of the Convention, which had occurred earlier that day. The liberals, deprived of Eisenhower, compensated with an amendment for a stronger civil rights commitment, moved by Hubert Humphrey, and carried against the platform by 651½ votes to 582½. The Truman forces-McGrath, Clifford, Niles, the Missouri delegation—had all been against the amendment, so it was perhaps a little hard of the South to deny him the unanimity which they had always given to Roosevelt and which they gave to Barkley on this occasion. His daughter suggests that he had already said enough and that they (Thurmond at least) paid him the compliment of believing that, unlike Roosevelt, he meant what he said on the issue.

The absence of unanimity was however the last of the series of insults which the Democratic Party had been delivering to Truman. His speech, to a packed audience in a foetid convention hall in the middle of the night, was a remarkable success. He used his new technique, which he had been developing under advice since early May, of speaking not from a text, of which his reading was always deadening, but from a series of headings. These left room for improvisation and animation, and the fact that they gave a certain staccato quality to his speaking suited his style: