The Memoirs of Harry S. Truman

A Reader's Edition

Raymond H. Geselbracht

• Publisher: University of Missouri
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780826221957
• eBook ISBN: 9780826274380
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Political Biographies
• Index: History

This new "Reader's Edition" of Harry Truman's memoirs removes the overload of detail and reproduced historical documents, reduces the bloated cast of characters, clarifies the often confusing balance between chronological and thematic presentation, and corrects some important problems of presentation that made the two volumes of Truman's memoirs, published in 1955 and 1956, difficult to read and enjoy.  This new edition, reduced to half the length of the original text, offers a new generation of readers the thrill of hearing the unique and authentic voice of Harry S. Truman, probably the most important president of the last seventy-five years, telling the story of his life, his presidency, and some of the most important years in American history.

CHAPTER 1

Childhood, Boyhood, Youth

1884–1901

Childhood memories on my grandfather’s farm—we move to Independence—friends and neighbors, and Bess Wallace—”a very happy time”—school days—my love of history—my first job—graduation from high school

. . . I was born in Lamar, Missouri, at four o’clock in the afternoon on May 8, 1884. When I was about a year old, the family moved to Cass County, Missouri, south of Harrisonville, where my father ran a farm and where my brother Vivian was born on April 25, 1886. In 1887 we moved to the Sol[omon] Young farm [—my mother’s father’s farm—] in Jackson County, two miles south of Hickman’s Mill and six miles north of Belton in Cass County. Later on, a railroad promoter by the name of Blair built a rail line from Kansas City to Springfield, Missouri, and established a station a mile south of the Young farm. It was named Grandview because it was on a high point of land, the highest point in the vicinity, in fact. Lawrence, Kansas, is visible forty miles west, Kansas City eighteen miles north, Lee’s Summit eight miles east, and Belton six miles south. The site would have made a wonderful observatory from which to study the heavens.

My sister Mary Jane was born there on August 12, 1889.

My [paternal] grandfather [Anderson Shipp] Truman lived with my father wherever he went, and I remember him very well. He was a dignified, pleasant man, particularly with Vivian and me. I fear he spoiled us. My grandfather Young and our lovely grandmother [Harriet Louisa Gregg Young], who had beautiful red hair and who made wonderful cookies, also gave us free rein. My grandmother [Mary Jane Holmes] Truman had died before my parents were married.

We had the whole . . . [six hundred] acres [of the Grandview farm] to play over. . . . Some of my happiest and most pleasant recollections are of the years we spent on . . . [this] farm when I was between the ages of three and six.

I had a bobtailed Maltese gray cat and a little black-and-tan dog not much bigger than the cat. The old cat was named Bob, because one day when he was asleep in front of the big fireplace in the dining room a coal of fire popped out, lit on the end of his tail, and burned off about an inch of it. I can well remember his yowls, and I can see him yet as he ran up the corner of the room all the way to the ceiling. The little dog was called Tandy because of his black-and-tan color. These two animals followed Vivian and me everywhere we went, and me alone when Vivian was asleep or too tired to wander over the farm. I was missed on one occasion and was discovered in a cornfield a half mile from the house, enjoying the antics of the cat and dog catching field mice.

On another occasion, we were playing south of the house in a beautiful pasture with a lovely maple grove in front of it. We had a new little wagon all painted red. I would pull Vivian and a neighbor boy our age named Chandler, and then the Chandler boy, with Vivian’s help, would pull me. We discovered a mud hole at the end of the grove, and I pulled the wagon with the two boys in it into the hole and upset it. It seemed a good thing to do, and it was repeated several times, taking turn about. When my mother found us, we were plastered with mud and dirty water from head to foot. What a grand spanking I got as the ringleader!

Then there was a long porch on the north side of the house which made a great race track, a swing in the front hallway for rainy days, and a big one in the yard for sunny ones.

My grandfather Young would take me to the Belton Fair, when it was running, in a big two-wheeled cart with high wheels. . . . I would sit in the judges’ stand with Grandpa and watch the races, eat striped candy and peanuts, and have the best time a kid ever had.

We had an old bachelor uncle named Harrison Young who visited us once in a while. He lived in Kansas City, which seemed a long way off, and he would bring Vivian and me the most wonderful things to play with and all kinds of candy, nuts, and fruit. When he came it was just like Christmas.

My grandfather Young had a half sister in St. Louis who would visit us about once a year. When she came, she would take us over to the back pasture, which seemed miles away but wasn’t more than a half mile. We would hunt birds’ nests in the tall prairie grass and gather daisies, prairie wild flowers, and wild strawberries. When we returned to the house we’d require a good scrubbing and a long nap.

In the fall, when the apples and peaches were ripe, they were picked, the peaches dried and the apples buried in the ground with straw and boards above them. In midwinter the apples would be dug up, and were they good! My mother and grandmother dried a lot of peaches and apples, and what fine pies they would make in the winter. There were peach butter, apple butter, grape butter, jellies and preserves, all made in the kitchen by Mama, Grandma, and the German hired girl. All were good cooks. Later, after the fall freeze, came hog-killing time, with sausages, souse, pickled pigs’ feet, and the rendering of lard in a big iron kettle in the smokehouse. Vivian still has that kettle. Mama used to tell me that the only reason it was there was because it had been too heavy for the Kansas Red Legs to carry when they robbed the house during the Civil War, burned it, and killed all the four hundred fat hogs, taking only the hams.

We had a cousin, Sol Chiles, who lived with us at the time. He was about eighteen years old, and he really made life pleasant for us. About the time we moved to Independence, he went to live with his mother, my mother’s older sister, Aunt Sally. She was a lovely person, as were all my many aunts.

There was Aunt Sue, who lived in Arizona. She was my mother’s oldest sister and the best talker of them all. Later on, she taught me to play cribbage. Aunt Ada, Mama’s youngest sister, lived in Illinois. She taught me how to play euchre. Aunt Laura, Mama’s other sister, lived in Kansas City, and we always enjoyed visiting her.

My father had three sisters and a brother. The youngest was Aunt Matt who was a schoolteacher. She’d come to see us, and it was an event, sure enough. She taught us all sorts of outdoor games. Aunt Ella lived in Independence. She was my father’s oldest sister, and we saw a lot of her and her three daughters after we moved to Independence. We grew and went to school with cousins Nellie and Ethel Noland, Aunt Ella’s daughters. Nellie would translate my Latin lesson for me when I was in high school, and I would escort Ethel to parties and learn how to be polite from her. I was always afraid of the girls my age and older. Aunt Emma, Papa’s other sister, lived on a farm about four miles northeast of the Young farm. There were four children in her family, and we really had a grand time when we spent the day with them.

Those were wonderful days and great adventures. My father bought me a beautiful black Shetland pony and the grandest saddle to ride him with I ever saw. Vivian has just had that lovely saddle rehabilitated for his granddaughter, sixty years later. My father would let me ride over the farm with him beside his big horse. He and Grandpa Young were partners in the operation of the farm and the handling of herds of cattle and mules as well as hogs and sheep. I became familiar with every sort of animal on the farm and watched the wheat harvest, the threshing and the corn shucking, mowing and stacking hay, and every evening at suppertime heard my father tell a dozen farm hands what to do and how to do it. In addition to the six hundred acres where we lived, there was another farm of nine hundred or a thousand acres four miles away, which had to be operated too.

When we moved to Independence in December 1890, my father bought a big house on South Crysler Street with several acres of land, a wonderful strawberry bed, and a fine garden. At the same time, he was operating a farm southeast of town and went into buying and selling hogs, cattle, and sheep. We began making acquaintances with neighbor boys as soon as we were settled. We had an old Negro woman who washed for us every week and sometimes cooked for us. She had three boys and two girls, and what a grand time we had. There was also another family of Negroes who were friends of our cook. There were a boy and a girl in that family.

With our barns, chicken house, and a grand yard in which to play, all the boys and girls in the neighborhood for blocks around congregated at our house. We always had ponies and horses to ride, goats to hitch to our wagon, which was made like a big one. An old harness maker in Independence made Vivian a set of double harness just like the big set. We would harness two red goats to the little wagon and drive it everywhere around the place. . . .

About this time my parents decided that we should start attending Sunday school. My mother took us to the nearest Protestant church, which happened to be the First Presbyterian at Lexington and Pleasant streets, and we attended regularly every Sunday for as long as we lived in Independence.

We made a number of new acquaintances, and I became interested in one in particular. She had golden curls and has, to this day, the most beautiful blue eyes. We went to Sunday school, public school from the fifth grade through high school, graduated in the same class, and marched down life’s road together. For me she still has the blue eyes and golden hair of yesteryear.

My mother had taught me my letters and how to read before I was five years old, and because I had a hard time reading newspaper print I was taken to an oculist for an eye examination. I was fitted with glasses and started to school in the fall of 1892, when I was eight years old. The glasses were a great help in seeing but a great handicap in playing. I was so carefully cautioned by the eye doctor about breaking my glasses and injuring my eyes that I was afraid to join in the rough-and-tumble games in the schoolyard and the back lot. My time was spent in reading, and by the time I was thirteen or fourteen years old I had read all the books in the Independence Public Library and our big old Bible three times through. . . .

I have one or two vivid recollections of the Crysler Street place that deserve mention. In the fall of 1892, Grover Cleveland was re-elected over Benjamin Harrison, who had defeated him in 1888. My father was very much elated by Cleveland’s victory. He rode a beautiful gray horse in the torchlight parade and decorated the weather vane on the tower at the northwest corner of the house with a flag and bunting. The weather vane was a beautifully gilded rooster.

In 1896, my father sold the house on Crysler Street and bought one at 909 West Waldo Avenue at North River Boulevard. North River was the road to Wayne City Landing, which was the river port for Independence before the railroad came.

My first year in school was a happy one. My teacher was Miss Mira Ewin, with whom I became a favorite, as I eventually did with all my teachers. When I started the second grade, my teacher was Miss Minnie Ward. In January of 1894, my second year at Noland School, Vivian and I had severe cases of diphtheria from which I had difficulty recovering. My legs, arm, and throat were paralyzed for some months after the diphtheria left me, but Vivian made a rapid and complete recovery. My father and mother had sent Mary Jane back to the farm, and she did not have the disease. She also missed the measles and the mumps when we had them later.

The school board had decided to build a new school on South River, just back of the present auditorium of the Latter-Day Saints, and I never returned to the Noland School. The new school was the Columbian, and I went to summer school to Miss Jennie Clements the summer after my sickness to catch up. I skipped the third grade and went directly into the fourth, Miss Mamie Dunn was my teacher.

We found West Waldo Street to be a most pleasant neighborhood, and there were boys and girls our age all around us with whom we became acquainted at once. Next door, to the east, lived the Burrus family. There were three boys and five girls, three of the girls the ages of Vivian, Mary, and me. Next door east of the Burrus family lived the Wrights. Miss Emma and Miss Florence were lovely ladies. Miss Florence was a schoolteacher at the Ott School and Miss Emma taught music. Arthur Wright was the oldest boy and was a partner with his father in a tailor shop in Kansas City. Lofton Wright was the second boy in the family and died after an operation for appendicitis. The youngest boy was named James, who became a very good friend of mine and who died of a heart attack at the age of thirty-five. West on Waldo lived the Pittman family. There were Miss Maud, a schoolteacher, and Miss Ethel, then an older boy, and Bernard, who was Vivian’s age and his pal. South and west of us on Blue Avenue lived the Smith boys, and at the other end of the block, just back of us on White Oak Street, lived the Chiles family with two boys, Henry and Morton, just the ages of Vivian and me. At the corner of Delaware and Waldo, east of us, were the Sawyers, the Wallaces, and the Thomases. Lock Sawyer was older than we were, and the Wallaces were a year or two younger. Bess, Frank, and George Wallace all belonged to the Waldo Avenue gang. Across the street at Woodland College were Paul and Helen Bryant. Paul and Vivian were great friends and raised pigeons and game chickens in partnership.

We had wonderful times in that neighborhood from 1896 to 1902. Our house soon became headquarters for all the boys and girls around. We had a large front yard, and our back yard was surrounded by a high board fence to keep the stock safely off the street. Usually there were goats, calves, two or three cows, my pony, and my father’s horses to be taken care of. The cows had to be milked and the horses curried, watered, and fed every morning and evening. In the summertime the cows had to be taken to pasture a mile or so away after morning milking and returned the same evening. The goats and calves had to be taken to the big public spring at Blue Avenue and River, two blocks south of our house, for water. There was a wonderful barn with stalls for horses and cows, a corncrib and a hayloft in which all the kids met and cooked up plans for all sorts of adventures, such as trips to Idlewild, a sort of wilderness two blocks north, and pigtail baseball games which I umpired because I couldn’t see well enough to bat.

It was a very happy time, not fully appreciated until a long time afterward. There was a woodpile on which my brother and I had to work after old Rube, a good old colored man with a limp, had sawed the cord wood into the proper length for the cooking stove. The wood had to be split and carried to the wood box in the kitchen for “Aunt” Caroline’s use in making cookies, corn bread, and all sorts of good things to eat.

Like us, Jim Wright and the McCarrolls were interested in raising pigeons. We had fantails, pouters, and many kinds of common everyday pigeons. We carried on quite a trading business in pigeons, chickens, cats, and pups. My mother was very patient with us and our pals and always came to our defense when we went a little too far and the various fathers decided to take a hand. We also had a garden, which had to be weeded in season and a yard to be mowed and raked too. Somehow we managed to get most of the chores done which had been laid out by my father and still have time to play and enjoy the company of our pals too.

After a while we began to grow up. The gang scattered here and there, and shortly the serious business of education, jobs, and girls began to take all our time.

Education progressed, and we learned geometry, music, rhetoric, logic, and a smattering of astronomy. History and biography were my favorites. The lives of great men and famous women intrigued me, and I read all I could find about them. We had an excellent history teacher, Miss Maggie Phelps, and an English teacher, Miss Tillie Brown, who was a genius at making us appreciate good literature. She also made us want to read it. Our science teacher was Professor W. L. C. Palmer, who became principal of the high school and afterward superintendent of all the schools. He married our mathematics and Latin teacher, Miss Adelia Hardin. I do not remember a bad teacher in all my experience. They were all different, of course, but they were the salt of the earth. They gave us our high ideals, and they hardly ever received more than forty dollars a month for it.

My debt to history is one which cannot be calculated. I know of no other motivation which so accounts for my awakening interest as a young lad in the principles of leadership and government. Whether that early interest stemmed partly from some hereditary trait in my natural make-up is something for the psychologists to decide. But I know that the one great external influence which, more than anything else, nourished and sustained that interest in government and public service was the endless reading of history which I began as a boy and which I have kept up ever since. In school, history was taught by paragraphs. Each great event in history was written up in one paragraph. I made it my business to look up the background of these events and to find out who brought them about. In the process, I became very interested in the men who made world history. The lives of the great administrators of past ages intrigued me, and I soon learned that the really successful ones were few and far between. I wanted to know what caused the successes or the failures of all the famous leaders of history.

The only way to find the answers was to read. I pored over Plutarch’s Lives time and time again and spent as much time reading Abbott’s biographies of famous men. I read the standard histories of ancient Egypt, the Mesopotamian cultures, Greece and Rome, the exploits of Genghis Khan and the stories of oriental civilizations, the accounts of the development of every modern country, and particularly the history of America. Reading history, to me, was far more than a romantic adventure. It was solid instruction and wise teaching which I somehow felt that I wanted and needed. Even as a youth I felt that I ought to know the facts about the system of government under which I was living, and how it came to be. It seemed to me that if I could understand the true facts about the growth and development of the United States government and could know the details of the lives of its presidents and political leaders I would be getting for myself a valuable part of the total education which I hoped to have someday. I know of no surer way to get a solid foundation in political science and public administration than to study the histories of past administrations of the world’s most successful system of government.

While I was still a boy I could see that history had some extremely valuable lessons to teach. I learned from it that a leader is a man who has the ability to get other people to do what they don’t want to do, and like it. It takes a leader to put economic, military, and government forces to work so they will operate. I learned that in those periods of history when there was no leadership, society usually groped through dark ages of one degree or another. I saw that it takes men to make history, or there would be no history. History does not make the man. . . .

Especially in reading the history of American presidents did I become aware of the value of knowing what has gone before. I learned that the idea of universal military training, which was being hotly debated when I was in my teens, had first been recommended by President Washington in 1790. I learned of General McClellan, who traded his leadership for demagoguery and eventually defied his commander in chief, and was interested to learn how President Lincoln dealt with an insubordinate general. These lessons were to stand me in good stead years later, when I was to be confronted with similar problems. T...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Editor’s Preface
• Introduction. Harry Truman Writes a Book: The Making of Memoirs by Harry S. Truman
• Editor’s Note
• Preface by Harry S. Truman: Why I Have Written These Memoirs
• Chapter 1: Childhood, Boyhood, Youth: 1884–1901
• Chapter 2: Banker, Farmer, Soldier, Haberdasher: 1901–1922
• Chapter 3: County Judge: 1922–1934
• Chapter 4: Senator: 1934–1944
• Chapter 5: Vice President: 1944–1945
• Chapter 6: Being President
• Chapter 7: President—First Days: April 12–30, 1945
• Chapter 8: The United Nations Conference: April–June 1945
• Chapter 9: The End of the War in Europe: April–May 1945
• Chapter 10: Martha Ellen Truman Visits the White House: May 1945
• Chapter 11: Preparing to Meet with Churchill and Stalin: May–August 1945
• Chapter 12: The Potsdam Conference: July 6–August 3, 1945
• Chapter 13: Ending the War against Japan: May–September 1945
• Chapter 14: International Challenges at War’s End: April–October 1945
• Chapter 15: The Cabinet: 1945–1946
• Chapter 16: Demobilization and Universal Military Training: May–October 1945
• Chapter 17: The Budget
• Chapter 18: Postwar Economic Problems: 1945–1948
• Chapter 19: Atomic Energy after Hiroshima and Nagasaki
• Chapter 20: Foreign Aid: Lend-Lease, the British Loan, Food Aid, the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, Point Four
• Chapter 21: Reorganizing for National Security: 1945–1949
• Chapter 22: NATO: 1948–1952
• Chapter 23: The Berlin Airlift: 1948–1949
• Chapter 24: Israel
• Chapter 25: Civil War in China: 1945–1949
• Chapter 26: The Fair Deal: The 21-Point Message, Full Employment, Civil Rights, Housing, Agriculture, Health Care
• Chapter 27: The Election of 1948
• Chapter 28: Communism, Anti-Communism, and Civil Liberties
• Chapter 29: Seizure of the Steel Mills: 1951–1952
• Chapter 30: The Korean War 1—Invasion: June–October 1950
• Chapter 31: The Korean War 2—Chinese Intervention: October–December 1950
• Chapter 32: The Korean War 3—MacArthur is Removed from His Commands; Stalemate and Negotiations: 1950–1953
• Chapter 33: Campaign and Transition: 1952
• Appendix. People Mentioned in The Memoirs of Harry S. Truman, A Reader’s Edition
• Index