THAT LETTER WAS written only ten days before the 1944 Democratic Convention opened. The pressure on my father to run for vice president was obviously growing intense. Most important, the comment about the back door of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue made it very clear Dad had been told what almost everyone in the White House circle - and not a few Democrats outside it - knew. Franklin D. Roosevelt was a sick man.

For someone with my father’s knowledge of the past, this created a very unpleasant prospect. It was obviously on his mind when he remarked to a Post-Dispatch reporter: “Do you remember your American history well enough to recall what happened to most vice presidents who succeeded to the presidency? Usually, they were ridiculed in office, had their hearts broken, lost any vestige of respect they had had before. I don’t want that to happen to me.”

In his struggle to avoid the nomination, my father was hampered by some previous appointments of his own, and several unexpected twists of fate. The most important of the appointments was his choice of Robert Hannegan as national chairman of the Democratic Party. President Roosevelt had offered the job to Dad, in 1943, but he had declined, preferring to continue as head of the Truman Committee. He had recommended Bob Hannegan, who, thanks largely to Dad’s influence, had become Commissioner of Internal Revenue.

Hannegan did not want the job either. He even asked Dad how he could avoid it.

“Don’t take it unless the President calls you personally,” Dad said.

A few days later FDR phoned and made the request very personal. Hannegan called Dad. “What do I do now, coach?” he asked.

“You take it,” Dad said.

Before many more months went by, Bob Hannegan was working almost full time to make my father vice president. It was not just sentiment. One of the shrewdest politicians, Bob - and many other leading Democrats - had become convinced that with Henry Wallace on the ticket, the Democrats were in serious danger of being beaten. As vice president, Wallace had been a calamitous failure. An aloof, intensely shy man, he had made no attempt to ingratiate himself with members of the Senate - the one important service a vice president can provide a President. His ultra-liberal pronouncements alarmed conservatives and moderates alike and he made enemies by the score within the party by a much-publicized political brawl with Jesse Jones. At this point, the Democrats needed all the friends they could find. A Gallup poll in July showed Roosevelt beating Thomas E. Dewey, whom the Republicans had nominated in June, by only 51 percent to 49 percent of the popular vote.

My father’s solution to this Democratic dilemma was a return to the kind of ticket that had helped the party sweep the country in 1932 and 1936 - a Texan for vice president. His choice was Speaker Sam Rayburn. Toward the end of March 1944, Dad was at a cocktail party in San Francisco with Sam, and he proposed a toast to him as the next vice president of the United States. He repeated the proposal during his speech at a Democratic Party dinner, and he was delighted when he got an enthusiastic response. A week later, he repeated the performance in St. Louis. But Sam’s fellow Texans torpedoed him a few weeks later. Conservatives, already restive about the New Deal’s support of black rights, turned the state convention into a donnybrook between pro- and anti-Roosevelt Democrats. The liberal wing of the party plumped for Sam but the so-called regulars would not even name him a delegate to the convention. When a man cannot deliver his own state, his potential as a candidate withers very fast. Regretfully - he really did want the nomination - Sam withdrew his name from contention.

Although my father stubbornly refused to recognize it, he had all the qualifications which he saw in Sam - and even a few more. Missouri and Texas were very similar when it came to both political and ideological geography. His achievements as head of the Truman Committee had given him a national reputation. But Dad continued to backpedal furiously from the job, while others, notably Jimmy Byrnes and Henry Wallace, were working mightily to obtain FDR’s blessing.

Jimmy Byrnes was an interesting man, suave, decisive, and energetic. He had won FDR’s admiration as his “assistant president” in charge of the war effort in the White House. Byrnes wanted to be vice president very badly because he knew with far more certainty than Dad it was going to lead to the presidency. Few men were in a better position to see President Roosevelt’s weariness and declining vitality. Henry Wallace was equally eager for the nomination. At this point, he saw himself as a savior figure, the man best qualified to keep the Democratic Party faithful to the New Deal. In January 1944, he had proclaimed: “The New Deal is not dead. If it were dead the Democratic Party would be dead and well dead. . . .”

There would seem to be considerable evidence that President Roosevelt did not want either one of them. The story has long been told that FDR finally yielded to the hostility of the city bosses - notably Ed Kelly of Chicago and Frank Hague of Jersey City - who assured him they could not deliver their heavily Catholic constituencies for Byrnes, because he had abandoned Catholicism in his youth and become a Protestant. James Farley recently told me the true story is the exact reverse - it was the President who ordered the bosses to spread this story, to eliminate Byrnes. As for Vice President Wallace, FDR sent him off on a trip to China on May 20, which kept him out of the country for the vital two months before the convention.

President Roosevelt, ever the astute politician, did not want to alienate either one of these powerful men. He was also acutely conscious of the need to create the illusion, at least, of an open convention because the Republicans were trumpeting the charge of one-man rule, and many segments of the party, notably the South, were restive under his no longer vigorous leadership.

Vice President Wallace did not allow his absence from the country to damage his position. He had powerful supporters, notably Sidney Hillman and his associates in the CIO, who worked day and night to line up delegate support for him. Jimmy Byrnes, a shrewder and tougher man, took a more direct approach. First, he had his good friend, Bernard Baruch, sing his praises almost continuously, while the President was vacationing at Baruch’s South Carolina estate, Hobcaw Barony. On June 13, the President told Bob Hannegan he would prefer Byrnes above any other candidate, and Byrnes extracted from him something very close to an endorsement.

But over the next month, Byrnes had several more conversations with the President which made it clear he did not have FDR’s unqualified support. The best he could get out of the weary Chief was a promise he would not express a preference for anyone. Byrnes then demonstrated his shrewdness - perhaps duplicity is a better word - by phoning my father in Independence.

In 1949, when Byrnes had turned to the right and begun attacking the policies of the Truman Administration, Dad made the following memorandum about that phone call: “As to the nomination in Chicago in 1944, Mr. Byrnes called me from Washington Friday morning at 8:00 a.m. before that Convention was to meet, after he heard that Mr. Roosevelt was about to ask me to go on the ticket with him, and told me (I was in Independence, Mo.) that Roosevelt wanted him for Vice President. Mr. Byrnes asked me to nominate him. I agreed to do it. . . . I was very fond of him . . . until I found out the facts about Chicago, which was only on Friday of last week!”

From Byrnes’s point of view, this was a very neat, though unethical, move. If the backstairs fighting had been limited to these maneuvers, the 1944 convention would have been a battle between Wallace and Byrnes. The “assistant president” had, on paper at least, eliminated Harry Truman from the race. But other men had been getting other things down on paper that would undo this devious plan. FDR had been talking to many people. Sidney Hillman told him he and other leaders of the labor movement were unalterably opposed to Byrnes. Ed Flynn, the Democratic boss of the Bronx and one of Roosevelt’s closest friends, reported to the White House after a personal cross-country survey and told the President Wallace was certain to cost the Democrats several large states. Sam Rosenman, architect of Roosevelt’s New Deal speech and numerous other FDR talks, and Harold Ickes, both men with impeccable liberal credentials, also told him Wallace had to go. The President and Flynn, huddling on July 6, decided that my father was by far the best candidate. Truman “just dropped into the slot,” Ed Flynn wrote later.

Still dreading a convention fight - the President told Sam Rosenman it would “kill our chances for election this fall” - FDR ordered Flynn to convene the party’s top brass on July 11 and casually mention Dad as a candidate, to see what would happen. The brass included Bob Hannegan; Frank Walker, the postmaster general; Ed Pauley, the treasurer of the Democratic National Committee; Ed Kelly, Democratic boss of Chicago; and George Allen, the secretary of the Democratic National Committee. All were totally opposed to Wallace, and before the meeting was over, each of them was convinced he had suggested Dad as the best man. Such was the magic of FDR’s political expertise.

As the leaders were leaving, Frank Walker, knowing the President’s penchant for changing his mind, suggested Bob Hannegan get something in writing. Pretending he had misplaced his coat, Hannegan returned to the White House second-floor study and asked him for a written endorsement. On the back of an envelope, the President scribbled: “Bob, I think Truman is the right man. FDR”

Earlier on this fateful day, the President had had lunch with Henry Wallace. He showed Roosevelt a Gallup poll which gave him 65 percent of the rank and file Democratic vote for vice president and claimed he had 290 first-ballot convention votes - almost half what he needed for nomination. The President could have solved the whole thing on the spot by telling Wallace he was not the White House candidate. But, again, he preferred to avoid a confrontation. Instead he gave Wallace a letter, addressed to Senator Samuel Jackson, the chairman of the convention. In it he said:

. . . I have been associated with Henry Wallace during his past four years as Vice President, for eight years earlier while he was Secretary of Agriculture, and well before that. I like him and I respect him, and he is my personal friend. For these reasons I personally would vote for his renomination if I were a delegate to the convention.

At the same time, I do not wish to appear in any way as dictating to the convention. Obviously the convention must do the deciding. And it should - and I am sure it will - give great consideration to the pros and cons of its choice.

This was another example of Roosevelt’s magnificent political guile (I say magnificent because I admire politics and politicians and appreciate the agonizing situation in which the President found himself that July). FDR reiterated his “personal feelings” for Lloyd Stark after my father had defeated him in Missouri. He was saying the same thing here, in a more oblique way.

Meanwhile, Bob Hannegan was collecting another letter from the President, which he wrote while his special car was on a siding in Chicago:

July 19, 1944

Dear Bob:

You have written me about Harry Truman and Bill Douglas. I should, of course, be very glad to run with either of them and believe that either one of them would bring real strength to the ticket.

Always sincerely,

Franklin Roosevelt

Other versions of the story have the President writing the letter in the White House on July 11, before he left for the West Coast via Chicago. Grace Tully in her memoir maintains the President originally put Bill Douglas first, and Bob Hannegan had her retype it, reversing the order of the names. There is no evidence for this in the files of the Roosevelt Library, and Bob Hannegan denied it in a conversation with Sam Rosenman only a few weeks before his death in 1949. The letter was dated July 19 so Hannegan could make maximum use of it when the convention opened. Whether the President wrote it in Chicago or in Washington, it is very clear he was reaffirming his decision to back my father for the vice presidency. The addition of William O. Douglas’s name was designed to make it appear he was not dictating anything to the convention. At this point, Douglas had no organized support whatsoever, and the nomination was totally beyond his grasp.

Harry Hopkins confirmed this conclusion in conversations with several persons. “People seem to think,” he told Jonathan Daniels, then a White House press aide, “Truman was just suddenly pulled out of a hat - but that wasn’t true. The President had had his eye on him for a long time and . . . above all he was very popular in the Senate. That was the biggest consideration. The President wanted somebody that would help him when he went up there and asked them to ratify the peace.” Hopkins later told Robert Sherwood, “I’m certain that the President made up his mind on Truman months before the convention.”

Meanwhile, Dad, Mother, and I drove to Chicago totally oblivious to all this frantic backstage warfare. My father was convinced he had finally and totally squelched the attempt to make him vice president, and if he hadn’t, he intended to stamp out the last few flickers of it in Chicago. Just before we left Independence, he told my cousin Ethel Noland’s mother: “Aunt Ella, I’m going up there to defeat myself.”

My personal feelings were rather mournful. Vice President Wallace’s daughter, Jean, was a personal friend of mine, and I knew she must feel hurt, as I would have been if my father was being jettisoned. But twenty-year-olds are not long on sympathy, and I must confess I was also looking forward eagerly to seeing a national convention, in which Dad would play a pretty big role. I had no idea - and neither did he - how big his role would become.

So Dad could do his politicking without depriving us of sleep, he had reserved a suite on the seventeenth floor of the Stevens Hotel. Mother and I were installed in the Morrison Hotel and told to enjoy ourselves in the standard female style when visiting a big city - shopping. I had a Washington girlfriend with me, and we managed to inspect every department store in Chicago before the convention ended.

Over in the Stevens Hotel, Bob Hannegan was working on Senator Truman and getting nowhere. He kept insisting he was not a candidate for vice president. He was for Byrnes. Not even the scribbled note Hannegan had obtained from FDR convinced Dad. He noted it had no date, and simply assumed that since it was written, Roosevelt had changed his mind and endorsed Jimmy Byrnes. At one point, Hannegan gave up in despair and informed an astonished Ed Flynn, as he arrived on the scene, “It’s all over, it’s Byrnes.” Flynn, who, more than anyone else, knew FDR’s choice was Truman, immediately put through a long-distance call to FDR, en route to California aboard his special train, while another conclave of party leaders gathered in the room. After listening to Flynn and Hillman tell him Jimmy Byrnes would bring political disaster to the party, the President reiterated Dad was his final choice.

My father, meanwhile, was making even more desperate efforts to avoid the inevitable. He summoned his friend Tom Evans from Kansas City to Chicago and told him to go around and inform delegates that Senator Truman was not a candidate. He already had Eddie McKim and John Snyder doing the same thing. But all three friends soon found they were fighting a very strong tide flowing in the opposite direction. Eddie McKim decided Dad needed some straight-from-the-shoulder advice. Late Monday night, Dad reiterated to him and several friends that no one could persuade him to be vice president. As Eddie recalled it, he, Roy Roberts of the Kansas City Star, and John Snyder began disagreeing with Dad. They described the political situation and pointed out to him the many reasons why he was valuable to the Democratic ticket.

Dad shook his head. “I’m still not going to do it.”

“Senator,” Eddie said, “I think you’re going to do it.”

“What makes you think I’m going to do it?” snapped Dad.

“Because there’s a ninety-year-old mother down in Grandview, Missouri, that would like to see her son President of the United States.”

Dad walked out of the room and refused to speak to Eddie for the next twenty-four hours. Late the following day, Eddie, irrepressible as ever, tackled him once more.

“I don’t care whether you ever speak to me again or not,” he said. “I only told you what I believed. I think you should take this nomination.”

Dad just looked at him.

“Okay,” said Eddie. “Let’s call it quits right now.”

“I apologize for my action,” Dad said. “I was mad at you. But I’m still not going to do it.”

The following morning, Dad had breakfast with Sidney Hillman. He told the powerful labor leader he wanted his support for Byrnes. Hillman shook his head. “Labor’s first choice is Wallace. If it can’t be Wallace, we have a second choice, but it isn’t Byrnes.”

“Who then?” Dad asked.

“I’m looking at him,” said Hillman.

This was the man my father had abused rather vehemently on the floor of the Senate, for playing labor politics with war contracts. But Sidney Hillman was not the kind of man who held a personal grudge. His first concern was a man’s position on labor’s rights, and he knew Dad was on the good side of that issue. My father got the same response from other labor leaders that day, particularly from his old Railroad Brotherhood supporters, A. F. Whitney and George Harrison. William Green, head of the American Federation of Labor, went even farther and told Dad bluntly, “The AFL’s for you and will support no one else.” By this time, Dad must have felt like a man running backwards on a platform that was moving ahead at about sixty miles an hour. He didn’t feel any better after he went before the Maryland delegation and asked them to support Jimmy Byrnes. Governor Herbert F. O’Connor of Maryland told him, “You’re crazy as hell!”

The next day, the various state delegations caucused to name vice presidential candidates. Dad was still backpedaling, but the Missouri delegation simply refused to let him get away with it. A resolution was introduced endorsing him as their candidate. As the chairman of the delegation, Dad immediately ruled it out of order. Sam Wear, one of the faithful few who had supported him in the 1940 primary campaign, shouted, “There is no one out of order here but the chairman of this delegation.” Another plotter asked Dad to come to the door, to rule on whether a non-delegate could be admitted to the room. While Dad was distracted with this minor bit of business, Sam Wear reintroduced the resolution, and it was voted unanimously.

That afternoon, Bob Hannegan administered the coup de grâce. He summoned Dad to his hotel room and sat him down on the bed while he put through a call to President Roosevelt in San Diego. He wanted my father to speak to the President personally. Dad, whose Missouri dander was way up by now, refused. But he sat there, listening with astonishment while FDR’s always formidable telephone voice came clearly into the room.

“Bob, have you got that fellow lined up yet?”

“No,” said Hannegan. “He is the contrariest Missouri mule I’ve ever dealt with.”

“Well, you tell him if he wants to break up the Democratic Party in the middle of a war, that’s his responsibility.”

There was a click and the phone was dead. My father got up, walked back and forth for a moment, and then said, “Well, if that is the situation, I’ll have to say yes. But why the hell didn’t he tell me in the first place?”

It was the first, but by no means the last, indication of the radically different political styles of the two men. In politics, and in every other kind of relationship, Dad believed in dealing straight from the shoulder whenever possible. Roosevelt obviously enjoyed juggling friends and potential enemies, to keep them all within the charmed political circle on which he rested his power.

While this conversation was taking place, Henry Wallace’s backers were making a major effort to win the nomination for him in the convention hall. They had adopted the daring strategy of attempting to stampede the convention. Wallace himself had made a brilliant, rousing speech, seconding FDR’s nomination for the Iowa delegation. It was unprecedented for a candidate for either the presidency or vice presidency to address a convention before the voting began. But breaking precedents often pays off in politics, and the party leaders became very alarmed by Wallace’s tactics. They told Dad they wanted to nominate him that very night - Thursday, the twentieth - immediately after Roosevelt made his acceptance speech by radio from the West Coast.

Dad decided there was really only one man who should do the nominating job for him - his fellow senator from Missouri, Bennett Clark. While Bob Hannegan, Ed Pauley, and the others departed for the convention hall, Dad went searching for Senator Clark. He was not in the room assigned to him at his hotel, and it took several frantic hours of scurrying around to discover he was hiding out, for some unknown reason, in another hotel. There my father found him fast asleep. He pounded desperately on the door, with absolutely no success. Then a valet arrived delivering a suit. Dad walked into the room behind him, awoke Senator Clark, and asked him to nominate him. Of course, he said yes, but he was a little panicky at the thought of getting together a speech on about an hour’s notice.

Meanwhile, Mother and I had been told what was happening - or more correctly, I had been told. Mother and Dad had discussed the topic of his nomination exhaustively, and she had helped him decide against it. I later found out a large part of their reason was me. They dreaded the thought of what might happen to an already skittish and rather independent twenty-year-old suddenly catapulted into the dazzling glare of White House publicity. They had seen the unhappiness it had caused in President Roosevelt’s children. I don’t claim to have been the main reason for their reluctance, of course. But I was another negative factor, in the many other negatives that added up to their original no.

Soon after we arrived at the convention hall, it became obvious my father was not going to be nominated that night. The Wallaceites were in charge. Ed Kelly, the boss of Chicago, was, I have since been told, playing his own shrewd political game. He had allowed the Wallace supporters to pour into the convention hall in staggering numbers, to create a stampede for their candidate. Kelly’s secret hope was a deadlock between Wallace and Truman, which might have resulted in the choice of an alternate candidate. The one he had in mind was Senator Scott Lucas of Illinois. Isn’t politics wonderful?

Even the convention hall organist capitulated to the Wallace crowd and played “Iowa, That’s Where the Tall Corn Grows,” the Iowa state song, so many times it’s a wonder his fingers didn’t sprout kernels. Ed Pauley became so infuriated that he ordered Neale Roach, another Democratic Party official, to chop the wires leading to the organ’s amplifiers unless the keyboard virtuoso came up with another song immediately. Meanwhile, Bob Hannegan threw open the outer doors of the stadium, and more people poured into the arena. It was already about 120 degrees on the floor of the hall. People began to collapse from lack of oxygen, and a panicky Ed Kelly, realizing he had helped to create a monster demonstration that was in danger of devouring him, screamed that there was a fire hazard. Chairman Jackson gaveled the convention into recess, and the Wallace stampede collapsed.

The rest of the night was devoted to intensive politicking. At least a dozen state delegations lined up behind favorite sons. There was a very real chance that Dad and Wallace might deadlock now. A number of prominent New Dealers were working for Wallace. Part of the New York delegation split away from Ed Flynn’s control. When the convention reassembled on Friday, July 21, there was tension in the air. Mother, beside me, looked exhausted. She was probably the only person (from Missouri anyway) in the convention hall who wouldn’t have been brokenhearted if Dad lost. Oblivious to the problems ahead, I had no such inclination. I wanted my father to win, and I writhed through the long afternoon.

Nothing seemed to go right at first. Bennett Clark gave a very brief, limp, nominating speech, and response from the delegates was tepid. Then a delegate from Iowa was on his feet and California yielded to him. In an exciting speech, Wallace was called the personification of Democratic vision. There were five seconding speeches, all equally ecstatic, and the galleries, well packed with CIO-led Wallace supporters, whooped and screamed after every one of them. Ten other candidates were nominated and seconded - a total of twenty speeches that consumed the better part of three hours. Ed Kelly put his man, Senator Scott Lucas, into contention and gave the Wallace-packed gallery a chance to shout him down.

“We want harmony at this convention,” Kelly said.

“We want Wallace,” screamed the galleries.

“We want a ticket,” Kelly said.

“We want Wallace.”

Until this point, my father had been in Bob Hannegan’s private Room H, under the speaker’s stand, talking to delegates and state leaders. He had not had anything to eat all day. Since he is a very light breakfast man, he was hungry, and as the chairman intoned, “The clerk will call the roll of votes,” Dad emerged from his underground headquarters and bought a hot dog, which proved he was starving, because he normally loathes hot dogs. He sat down with the Missouri delegation. I kept my eyes on him as the count began.

Alabama gave its twenty-four votes to its favorite son, Senator John Bankhead.

Arizona and Arkansas went for Truman.

California’s delegation said it would like to wait.

Then, to everyone’s amazement, nine of Florida’s eighteen votes went to Wallace and all of Georgia’s twenty-six. The South was supposed to be solidly against the vice president. But Ellis Arnall of Georgia was not a typical Southern governor. In the Midwest, Wallace did well, taking his home state of Iowa and also Kansas, likewise expected. Nobody from Kansas votes for anybody from Missouri if he can help it. Thanks to his labor backing, the vice president also swept Michigan and Minnesota. Suddenly, at the one-third mark, Wallace was 100 votes ahead.

Missouri remained faithful to Dad, but other states began dividing in weird ways. New York couldn’t even agree on who was voting for whom. Ohio went in six different directions. Pennsylvania gave forty-six and a half to the vice president and only twenty-three and a half to Dad. The Wallace-weighted galleries were going wild. By the time the vice president had swept Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin, the clamor was close to the stampede proportions of the previous night.

At the end of the roll call, two of the biggest states, California and New York, had not yet announced their totals. The Golden State came first, and my heart sank at the count: Wallace, thirty; Truman, twenty-two. The vice president was ahead, 406 1/2 to 244. The galleries stamped and screamed.

Now New York with ninety-two and a half votes was the only state left. There was plenty of Wallace support in New York, we knew. A furious argument was raging inside the New York delegation. Someone challenged the figures that the chairman, Senator Jackson, was about to announce; he ordered the delegation to be polled. This took thirty-five minutes - but the final count stopped the slide to Wallace. It was sixty-nine and a half for Truman, twenty-three for the vice president. Puerto Rico gave its six votes to Dad, and the final count, at the end of the first ballot, was: Wallace, 429 1/2; Truman, 3l9 ½; Bankhead, ninety-eight; Lucas, sixty-one; and Barkley forty-nine and half. Eleven other favorite sons also held handfuls of votes.

The chairman asked the required question: “Does any delegation wish to alter its vote?” There were no takers. Most of the favorite sons were still hoping for a deadlock. By now, it was about six o’clock. The convention had been in session over six hours, and several delegations were screaming they were famished. I remember feeling a few pangs of hunger myself. I started to envy my father, who had found himself another hot dog, somewhere down on the convention floor and was cheerfully munching it and chatting with his fellow Missourians.

Normally, the convention would have adjourned at this point and resumed balloting in the evening. But Bob Hannegan, with unerring tactical instinct, decided this would be a mistake. Aides had told him there were huge crowds of Wallace supporters outside waiting eagerly to grab a majority of the seats for the evening session. Inevitably they would make another attempt at a stampede, in the style of the previous night. Ignoring the cries of the hungry delegates, Hannegan ordered Chairman Jackson to start a second ballot.

It was a terrific gamble. If this ballot ended with Dad still behind, chances of a Wallace victory or a deadlock and a bolt to a favorite son were very strong.

At first the vice president was ahead, but so many delegations were splitting and passing it was hard to tell what was happening for a while. The big disappointment among Dad’s supporters was Alabama’s refusal to switch from Senator Bankhead. That had been the original plan, but Senator Bankhead was sniffing the wind, and he thought it was starting to blow in his direction. Illinois and Kentucky also stayed with their favorite sons, Lucas and Barkley.

Then came the first switch. Maryland’s Governor O’Connor, who had told Dad he was crazy on Monday, threw his eighteen votes to Truman. Michigan and the CIO remained loyal to Wallace, but New York did not hesitate this time. They delivered seventy-four and half for Truman and only eighteen for Wallace. Dad was now ahead, 246 to 187.

Now came the swing vote, the one that started the Truman landslide. Governor Robert Kerr, on direct orders from Democratic Party treasurer Ed Pauley, switched Oklahoma’s twenty-two votes to Dad. Ed Pauley later recalled that Bob Kerr paled when he pointed his finger at him. Bob had been the keynote speaker of the convention and had given a magnificent talk. He would have made an ideal compromise candidate. But he was a good Democrat, and he sacrificed his personal ambitions without a moment’s hesitation, when he got the signal.

But in the W’s, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, the vice president rallied amazingly. He cut Dad’s lead to a half vote, and then with six votes from Indiana and sixteen from Kansas, both of whom had passed, Wallace edged ahead by twenty and a half. But Massachusetts, Mississippi, and Montana came through for Dad, and the count finally stood at 477 1/2 for Truman and 473 for Wallace.

There was a pause. Thousands of voices rose and fell, some murmuring, some shouting. The chairman asked the delegates if the count was to be made official. Before a motion could be made, Senator Bankhead rose and swung Alabama’s twenty-two votes to Dad. South Carolina boosted him to 501. Then Indiana and Illinois announced they were caucusing to change their votes. In a moment, Indiana was declaring twenty-two votes for Truman, and Illinois, New York, and a dozen other states were screaming for recognition. I can’t believe anybody really knows who voted what in the ensuing pandemonium. But when I heard Kansas swinging sixteen votes to Truman, I knew it was all over. By the time the final tally was announced by the befuddled clerks, at least forty-four state delegations had changed their votes, and Truman was the winner, 1,031 to 105.

A phalanx of policemen seized my father and fought their way through the roaring crowd to the platform. Bob Hannegan held up Dad’s arm while the convention hall went insane. They seemed ready to scream all night, and Dad finally seized the chairman’s gavel and banged for order. “Give me a chance, will you please?” he begged them. Then he delivered one of the shortest acceptance speeches on record.

You don’t know how very much I appreciate the very great honor which has come to the state of Missouri. It is also a great responsibility which I am perfectly willing to assume.

Nine years and five months ago I came to the Senate. I expect to continue the efforts I have made there to help shorten the war and to win the peace under the great leader, Franklin D. Roosevelt.

I don’t know what else I can say except that I accept this great honor with all humility.

I thank you.

Everyone yelled some more, and the chairman recessed the convention. My father fought his way off the platform and, aided by another phalanx of police, soon reached the box where we were sitting. There we were practically besieged by a horde of shouting, sweating photographers, who begged us ad infinitum for “just one more” until Dad had to call a very firm halt and concentrate on getting us out of the stadium alive. The crowd was still frantic with excitement, and he was genuinely concerned for our safety.

It was a thoroughly justified concern. People in crowds do things which they would never dream of doing if they were alone with you. One woman who shall out of charity remain nameless - she was the wife of one of Dad’s close friends - threw herself practically on top of me in a hysterical hug and I felt - I swear I even heard in that cauldron of sound - my neck crack. Everyone wanted to touch us. We were pushed and pounded and battered until I thought for a moment I would collapse with sheer fright. To this day, the sight of a large crowd terrifies me (except across the footlights).

Thank goodness, there were enough police to form a defensive ring around us. Otherwise, I am sure one of us would have been seriously hurt. As we got to the street and the waiting car, Mother turned to Dad and said, “Are we going to have to go through this for all the rest of our lives?”

Dad wisely declined to answer her. I don’t remember much else of what happened that night. It took hours for the fear I felt in the middle of that crowd to wear off.

The next morning, Saturday, July 22, Mother held a press conference and answered as patiently as she could all sorts of silly questions about Dad’s eating habits, clothing styles, work routines, and the like. I stood beside her, hoping no one was going to ask me anything. Suddenly, into the room charged Dad, saying, “Where’s my baby? I have a telegram for her.” That was the beginning of my real antipathy for the word “baby.”

Dad soothed my wrath by giving me as a souvenir a telegram from President Roosevelt:

I SEND YOU MY HEARTIEST CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR VICTORY. I AM OF COURSE VERY HAPPY TO HAVE YOU RUN WITH ME. LET ME KNOW YOUR PLANS. I SHALL SEE YOU SOON. FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT

That same day, we started back to Independence, and Dad stayed with us until August 1, primary day in Missouri. Roger Sermon, the mayor of Independence, was running for governor, and Bennett Clark was up for reelection. Dad did some politicking for them, but they both lost. Bennett Clark stubbornly refused to abandon his isolationist views, and by 1944, they were hopelessly out of date.

Dad went back to Washington immediately after the election, and from there he wrote me an interesting letter about a meeting with the Republican nominee and his forecast of the campaign: “I was going into the Union Station (in St. Louis) to take the B&O as Dewey came out. There were not ten people there to meet him. More people came and spoke to your dad accidentally than came to meet Dewey on purpose. That can’t be so good and I just now happened to think of its significance. . . . This is going to be a tough, dirty campaign and you’ve got to help your dad, protect your good mamma. Nothing can be said of me that isn’t old and unproven - so this little “deestric attorney” will try to hit me by being nasty to my family. You must remember that I never wanted or went after the nomination - but now we have it, (to save the Democratic Party - so the Southerners and the AF of L and the RR Labor say) we must win and make ‘em like it. Maybe your dad can make a job out of the fifth wheel office. . . .”

On August 18, my father met President Roosevelt at the White House, and wrote me a letter about it later in the day. It tells the story in somewhat circular fashion, but I think it is best to print it exactly as he wrote it.

Washington, D.C.

Aug. 18, 44.

My dear Margie - Today may be one in history. Your dad had a most informal luncheon with Mr. Roosevelt on the terrace behind the White House, under a tree set out by old Andy Jackson. Mrs. Boettiger [the President’s daughter, Anna] was also present. She expected your mother to come with me. When I went to leave the Pres. gave me a rose out of the vase in the center of the small round table at which we ate for your mother and Mrs. B. gave me one for you. You should have seen your Pa walking down Connecticut Ave. to the Mayflower Hotel, where a date with Mr. Hannegan was in prospect with his hat blown up by the wind (so he looked like a college boy - gray hair and all) and two rose buds in his hand. He should have been arrested as a screwball but wasn’t.

I told the President how very grateful ? I was for his putting the finger on me for V.P. and how I appreciated the honor ? etc., etc. ad. lib. and then we discussed “sealing wax and many things” to make the country run for the Democrats.

You should have been with me at the press conference in the front room of the White House Offices. Hope I made no hits, no runs, no errors - particularly no errors.

We had roast sardines (think they were Maine baby halibut) on toast, peas, beans, tomatoes, asparagus all mixed up in a salad - very nice when you left out the peas & carrots, and lots of good brown toast, then pickled clingstone peaches and a teaspoon full of coffee all served on beautiful White House china and with lovely silver and butlers etc. galore.

When we first sat down there were movie cameras set up all around. We were in our shirt sleeves. The Pres took his coat off and I had told him if I’d known that was what he intended to do I’d have put on a clean shirt and he said he had that very morning. Well so had I. Then the flash light newspaper picture boys had an inning equal almost to the box at Chicago. The President got tired or hungry and said “Now boys one more that’s enough” and it ended.

You’ll see it all in the movies and in the papers. Hope to see you Monday. Keep up those music lessons and I’m anxious to know what the surprise is. Chopin’s Ab Opus 42? Rigaudon? Polacca Brilliante? What?

Kiss mamma. Here’s some expenses.

Lots & lots of love,

Dad

Mother and I were in Independence, but President Roosevelt was not aware of this fact, and that is why he gave Dad the roses. The purpose of this letter was mainly to give me a thrill. My father did not set down here what he really thought after he left the luncheon with the President. Nor did he tell the whole truth to the reporters who were waiting for him outside the White House. “He’s still the leader he’s always been and don’t let anybody kid you about it. He’s keen as a briar,” Dad said.

In private, he was appalled by Roosevelt’s physical condition. The President had just returned from a Pacific inspection trip. It had been an exhausting ordeal for him, and he had suffered, we now know, at least one cardiac seizure during the journey. My father later told close friends how the President’s hands shook so badly at the luncheon he could not get the cream from the pitcher into his coffee. He spilled most of it into the saucer. He talked with difficulty. “It doesn’t seem to be any mental lapse of any kind, but physically he’s just going to pieces,” Dad said. “I’m very much concerned about him.” The President alluded only once, and then obliquely, to the seriousness of his condition. He asked Dad how he planned to campaign, and Dad said he was thinking of using an airplane. The President vetoed the idea. “One of us has to stay alive,” he said.

My father saw President Roosevelt only two more times between that August date and the inauguration. On September 6, he went to the White House with Governor Coke Stevenson of Texas to discuss the problem of keeping rebellious Texas Democrats in the party. After the election, he attended a White House reception with Eddie McKim at which there was no chance to discuss politics or anything else with the President.

My father kicked off his campaign with a rally at his Missouri birthplace, Lamar. That was a day to remember - or forget - depending on your point of view. Missourians were enormously proud to have one of their own on the national ticket. There had only been two previous nominations, both for vice president in 1868 and 1872, and both had lost. Everyone who had a few spare gallons of gas for dozens of miles around poured into the little town. No less than nine U.S. senators escorted Dad to the rally. Estimates on the size of the crowd varied wildly, from a low of 12,000 to a high of 35,000. One thing was certain, it was too big for Lamar. Toilet facilities and the sewage system broke down. The parking field was turned into a huge mud hole by a heavy rainstorm the previous day. Poor Harry Easley, who was the chairman in charge of the day, almost went crazy. “All I can say,” he muttered, summing it up, “is never have a big affair in a small town.”

But everyone was good-natured about the inconveniences, and Tom Connally gave one of his old-fashioned, oratorical-fireworks-style speeches that had everybody ready to parboil Republicans, or eat them raw if necessary, before it was over. Dad made no attempt to top that untoppable Texas flamboyance. He simply stated the basic issue of the campaign - Thomas E. Dewey was not qualified either to direct a global war or to win the peace.

As my father had predicted, the campaign was dirty, and a lot of the dirt was thrown at him. The Republicans knew they had no real issues. To attack President Roosevelt’s conduct of the war sounded unpatriotic. So they concentrated on Dad and a few other people in the White House circle, especially poor Sidney Hillman. As one magazine writer noted, “The competence of Mr. Roosevelt’s current running mate is the nearest thing the country has to a burning issue.” Some of the stories were just plain silly. Time magazine described how Dad had supposedly broken down and wept, pleading his incompetence, when he was nominated for vice president. Other tales were more on the ugly side. The Republicans revived the 1940 canard that Dad was one-fourth Jewish, and his middle initial stood for Solomon. “I’m not Jewish, but if I were I would not be ashamed of it,” Dad said to the delight of his many Jewish friends. But one attack Dad did not dismiss lightly was the snide remarks Clare Booth Luce made about Mother.

For the seven and three-quarters years the Trumans were in the White House, Mrs. Luce was never invited to attend a single social function there. One day, about in the middle of that long freeze, her husband, Henry Luce, the publisher of Time, visited Dad and asked him for an explanation, obviously hoping to negotiate a truce. Dad pointed to the picture of Mother he always keeps on his desk and gave Luce a brief history of its travels to France and back with him during World War I. Mrs. Luce stayed uninvited.

In the closing hours of the campaign, the Hearst papers unleashed the biggest smear of them all: Harry S. Truman was an ex-member of the Ku Klux Klan. They based their stories on obvious lies told by a few of Dad’s enemies in Jackson County - especially one whom he had helped to send to jail for embezzlement. This story was quickly refuted by on-the-spot testimony from other friends back home.

Dad received the following telegram from his brother Vivian on October 27, 1944, while he was staying at the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago. It shows how the smear artists were operating - and how Harry Truman’s friends remained faithful to him:

STATEMENT OF O L CHRISMA. MY NAME IS O L CHRISMAN. I AM 77 YEARS OLD AND HAVE LIVED IN JACKSON COUNTY MISSOURI SEVENTY FIVE YEARS. I HAVE KNOWN SENATOR HARRY S TRUMAN SINCE HE WAS A BOY OF TWELVE TO FIFTEEN YEARS OLD. . . . ON OR ABOUT OCTOBER 11TH 1944 BRUCE TRIMBLE CAME TO MY HOME WITH ANOTHER MAN WHO HE INTRODUCED AS A REPRESENTATIVE OF A NEW YORK NEWSPAPER. MR TIMBLE AND THE NEWSPAPER MAN INTERROGATED ME AT GRAT LENGTH RELATIVE TO MY KNOWLEDGE OF SENATOR TRUMAN’S RELATIONSHIP WITH THE KLAN. I TOLD THEM THAT I HAD SEEN HIM AT A MEETING OF THE KLAN IN CRANDALLS PASTURE MORE THAN TWENTY YEARS AGO. I TOLD THEM THAT THERE WERE MORE THAN FIVE THOUSAND MEN AT THIS MEETING AND THAT THERE WERE HUNDREDS OF THEM WHO WERE NOT MEMBERS OF THE KLAN. I TOLD THEM THAT I DID NOT KNOW OF SENATOR TRUMAN EVER HAVING BEEN A MEMBER AND THAT I NEVER KNEW OF ANYONE THAT CLAIMED TO KNOW THAT HE HAD BEEN A MEMBER OF THE KLAN. TRIMBLE AND THE NEWSPAPER MAN TRIED REPEATEDLY TO GET ME TO SAY THAT I KNEW THAT HARRY TRUMAN HAD BEEN A MEMBER. THESE MEN CAME TO MY HOUSE AT SEVEN OCLOCK IN THE EVENING JUST AS I WAS ABOUT TO GO OUT TO MILK MY COW. AFTER TWO HOURS OF QUESTIONING I SIGNED A STATEMENT TO THE EFFECT THAT I HAD SEEN HARRY S TRUMAN AT A KLAN MEETING AS STATED ABOVE AND THAT IF HE EVER BECAME A MEMBER OF THE KLAN I DID NOT KNOW IT . . . THE NEWSPAPER MAN TRIED REPEATEDLY TO GET ME TO SAY THAT TRUMAN HAD APPEARED ON THE PLATFORM AND HAD MADE SPEECHES AT KLAN MEETINGS. THIS WAS NOT TRUE AND I HAVE NEVER HEARD OF HIM MAKING SPEECHES OR APPEARING ON THE PLATFORM AT ANY KLAN MEETING. SIGNED O L CHRISMAN SENT BY J V TRUMAN

My father did his campaigning aboard a special car, the Henry Stanley. Mother stayed in Washington with me because I had a few dozen courses in college to pass. My first contact with the campaign was a late October trip to New York with Mother to hear Dad speak in Madison Square Garden. By accident, we happened to be on the scene for the most dramatic episode of his campaign.

In a show of Democratic unity, Harry Truman and Henry Wallace were to occupy the same platform. New York had numerous Wallace sympathizers, and there was good reason for suspecting they would make up a heavy percentage of the audience. My father and his entourage arrived, already worried about this problem. The crowd was large and restless. They waited several minutes, and there was still no sign of Wallace. Several eager pro-Wallace Democrats urged Dad to go onstage and let Wallace arrive late. But George Allen, who was handling the political arrangements for Dad’s tour, immediately saw what the Wallace men were planning to do. Dad would get the bare minimum of applause - or perhaps a few boos - when he appeared. Then, when Wallace came down the center aisle, they would tear the roof off the Garden, and the story would make headlines.

“Mr. Truman goes on when Mr. Wallace goes on,” said George Allen grimly.

Meanwhile, desperate efforts were being made to locate Wallace. Word reached them that he had left his hotel, and then they were told he had returned to his hotel because he forgot his glasses. Then he had left his hotel once more but was walking to the Garden, a strange performance if there ever was one. Eddie McKim, who was there with Dad, later said, “When Wallace came in and was shown back into the Garden offices [where Dad was waiting], he was mad as a wet hen. The only one he spoke to was Truman and he [Wallace] was in a very sour mood. Finally, they walked out through the entrance onto the platform arm in arm and smiling at each other, but I think they were about ready to cut each other’s throats.”

It was an ominous sign of things to come, but my father, who hates to think the worst of anyone, hesitated to pass judgment on the incident.

“Do you think that thing was planned, staged deliberately?” he asked Eddie McKim on the way back to the hotel.

“I think it was,” Eddie said.

“Well,” Dad said, “that’s a funny deal, but it didn’t work.”

We joined Dad for the last leg of his tour. It was my introduction to whistle-stop campaigning, and I loved it. We paused for an exciting torchlight parade at Parkersburg, West Virginia. At Pittsburgh, we had a twenty-six-man motorcycle escort for a dash to nearby McKeesport for lunch. I was awed by the crowds, who were very well behaved, and even more impressed by meeting Orson Welles, who had dinner with us and spoke on the same platform with Dad that night.

In Missouri, instead of going home to Independence, we took a suite at the Muehlebach Hotel in Kansas City. My father yielded to the pleas of his Battery D boys and other Missouri friends who journeyed to Kansas City to be on hand for the victory celebration. This was one election where he did not pull his early-to-bed routine. Instead, he stayed up with his friends and played the piano for them while they huddled around the radio, nervously listening to the returns, which gave the Republicans an early lead. Dewey did not concede until 3:45 a.m. By that time, I was completely exhausted and much too excited to sleep. I was up for the rest of the night.

My father finally got rid of his friends and threw himself down on a bed in the suite where they had been celebrating. His old friend from southwest Missouri, Harry Easley, stayed with him. For the first time, the full reality of what he was facing struck Dad. “He told me that the last time that he saw Mr. Roosevelt he had the pallor of death on his face and he knew that he would be President before the term was out,” Easley recalled. “He said he was going to have to depend on his friends. He was talking about people like me, he said. We sat there and had quite a long deal.”

Whenever I think of this moment in my father’s life, I am always profoundly touched by it. There is something intensely American about it, this picture of a man close to assuming the most awesome responsibility in the world’s history, talking it over with a man not unlike himself, from a small Missouri city, a friend who had stood loyally by him whenever he needed help. If there is a more lonesome feeling in the world than being President, it must be facing the near inevitability of getting the job in the worst possible way - coming in through the back door, as Dad put it. That night his mind was obviously filled with the history of the other men who had reached the White House that way. Would he end as most of them had ended, beaten men, physically, spiritually, and politically?

While other Democrats - including his daughter - celebrated on that election night in 1944, Vice President-elect Harry S. Truman lay awake in Kansas City, worrying.