Inevitably, of course, the ‘confidential’ discussions with the broadcasting companies leaked, and Truman came near to getting the worst of both worlds. He had no vote-winning peace mission, but he was portrayed as having sought to play politics with major issues of national security. There was general dismay around him, but he himself treated the matter with some equanimity. He thought that there might be advantages in appearing as a man of peace who had nonetheless subordinated his instincts (and his need for votes) to the imperatives of General Marshall’s orderly foreign policy. This was not a position compatible with high presidential authority, and could not conceivably have been held to be helpful had he been running as an unruffled incumbent. But as he and Dewey had spontaneously reversed roles, leaving the President to be the cheeky challenger, he was possibly right in hoping that the incident had done him little harm. And he was almost certainly right in thinking that Dewey’s principal campaign gaffe, made a week later, was more damaging with the public, because it was much less sympathetic. In rural Illinois, where the Governor of New York was making one of his relatively rare back platform appearances, the train suddenly moved a few feet into the crowd during the speech. Dewey snarled with ill-humour: ‘That’s the first lunatic I’ve had for an engineer. He probably ought to be shot.’ The words do not sound too serious, but they were enough to move a lot of public sympathy from the imperious little candidate to the engine driver, and Truman subsequently kept the incident skilfully on the boil.
For the last three weeks of the campaign Truman concentrated on the eastern half of the continent. Some of it proved to be stony ground for him, and the foundations of his success came from the West (beyond the Mississippi Dewey carried only Nebraska and Oregon), but the broad tactic was nonetheless right for it enabled him to make a major impact on two of the three most marginal states which were crucial to victory: Ohio and Illinois. His October 10th to 16th trip was particularly productive. Not only did he cover these two states but also three others—Wisconsin, Minnesota and West Virginia—which he won fairly comfortably. Then he went to Miami for the convention of the American Legion, where he gave a good explanation of his Vinson initiative. Then he had a day in Pennsylvania, which he failed to sway, even though he made one of his most successful anti-Dewey speeches in Pittsburgh.
On Sunday evening, October 24th, he left Washington for what most of those around him still thought was the last time before another president was elected. He went to Chicago (another visit to Illinois), Cleveland (another visit to Ohio), Boston (the centre of one of the only two north-eastern states that he carried), New York (a predictable waste of effort in view of the strength there of Dewey and Wallace, but obligatory), and then home to St Louis and Independence. In Harlem, on the Friday before the poll he made his only civil rights speech of the campaign. In Madison Square Garden the previous evening he had made his strongest commitment to Israel and claimed full credit for the United States victory in the race to recognize. Everywhere he continued to berate the Republicans without much respect for restraint or even truth. In Chicago he appeared to compare Dewey to Hitler as a tool of reactionary big business interests. In Boston he boxed the compass and denounced him as being the one the Communists wanted to win. It was however all done with considerable good humour. Even his prepared big city rally speeches were by this stage interlaced with successful passages of mocking raillery.
Truman’s last meeting was in St Louis on the Saturday evening. Then he went to Independence and eschewed campaigning for the last two days. He had travelled 21,928 miles and delivered 275 speeches.18 On the Tuesday he voted in the Independence Memorial Hall, before attending a luncheon for about thirty old friends given by the Mayor at the Rock wood Country Club. He reminisced about Missouri politics in a relaxed and expansive mood. Then he left, unaccompanied by anyone other than three Secret Service agents, and drove secretly to a hotel in Excelsior Springs, a small resort thirty miles north-east of Kansas City. There he had a Turkish bath, a sandwich and a glass of milk and went to bed and to sleep early in the evening.
At midnight he awoke and listened to the radio for a few minutes. He was a little ahead in the popular vote, but was still predicted to lose. At 4.00 a.m. he was awake again, to be greeted by the news that Ohio, Illinois and California had been left holding the balance and that he had already won Illinois. He decided that that was it, had a harder drink than milk, and motored to the Muehlebach Hotel in Kansas City, where his staff were installed and where he arrived in dapper condition at 6.00 a.m. He had to wait another four hours for Dewey’s concession. This was not due to any ill-grace on Dewey’s part (indeed his concessionary press conference was one of the most gracious of his career) but to the fact that he had gone to bed very late, with the issue still unresolved, but with his hopes draining away as fast as his disappointed supporters were leaving the ballroom of the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City, and had not awakened until 10.30 a.m.