During the first few weeks of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s fourth administration, I saw what the long years in the presidency had done to him. He had occupied the White House during twelve fateful years - years of awful responsibility. He had borne the burdens of the reconstruction from the great depression of the thirties. He shouldered the heavier burdens of his wartime leadership. It is no wonder that the years had left their mark.

The very thought that something was happening to him left me troubled and worried. This was all the more difficult for me because I could not share such feelings with anyone, not even with the members of my family. I kept saying to myself that this man had often demonstrated amazing recuperative powers. Only a few months earlier, during the closing days of the 1944 presidential campaign, he had ridden for four hours in an open car through a driving rain in New York City and had seemed none the worse for it.

Knowing something of the great responsibilities he was forced to carry, I did not want to think about the possibility of his death as President. The rumors were widespread but not publicly discussed. But there had always been baseless rumors about Franklin D. Roosevelt.

We all hoped that victory against our enemies was near. Under Roosevelt’s inspiring leadership the war was approaching its climax. The things he stood for and labored for were about to be realized. The world needed his guiding hand for the coming transition to peace.

On February 20, 1945, while I was presiding over the Senate, a rumor that the President was dead swept through the corridors and across the floor. I left my place at once and headed for the office of Les Biffle, Secretary of the Senate. As I entered, I said to Biffle, “I hear the President is dead. What will we do? Let’s find out what happened.”

Biffle called the White House and was informed that it was Major General Edwin M. Watson – “Pa” Watson, the appointment secretary to the President - who was dead. He had died at sea aboard the U.S.S. Quincy while returning with President Roosevelt from the Yalta conference. And later that same day I received a wireless message from the Quincy. In it President Roosevelt asked me for my opinion and advice about his appearing before a joint session of Congress to make a personal report on the results of his just completed conference with Churchill and Stalin.

I met with the President a week later and was shocked by his appearance. His eyes were sunken. His magnificent smile was missing from his careworn face. He seemed a spent man. I had a hollow feeling within me, for I saw that the journey to Yalta must have been a terrible ordeal.

I tried to think how I could help him conserve his strength. With Mrs. Roosevelt and their daughter Anna, who was the President’s close confidante, I had already discussed the problem of the strain of appearing before Congress. I recalled the expressions of pain I had seen on the President’s face as he delivered his inauguration speech on January 20 on the south portico of the White House. Apparently he could no longer endure with his usual fortitude the physical pain of the heavy braces pressing against him.

With that in mind, and in order to spare him any unnecessary pain, I urged that he address Congress seated in the well of the House, and I explained that I had already cleared this unusual arrangement with the congressional leaders. He had asked for no such consideration, but he appeared relieved and pleased to be accorded this courtesy.

I shall never forget that day. The President’s appearance before a joint meeting of the Senate and the House was a momentous occasion both for him and for the country. He was to report directly to Congress on the outcome of the deliberations at Yalta - deliberations that were bound to have a profound effect on the future peace of the world. He was anxious for bi-partisan support and wanted the full and sympathetic backing of Congress on foreign policy.

The speech was arranged for Thursday, March 1, 1945, and Mrs. Roosevelt, as well as Anna and her husband, Colonel Boettiger, were with him as he drove from the White House. Princess Martha and Crown Prince Olaf of Norway were also in the presidential party, which reached the Capitol just a little after noon.

The President was met in the same way he had always been met. Formerly, however, he had spoken from the rostrum of the House of Representatives, with the stenographers for the Congressional Record in their usual places before him, and with the presiding officers of the Senate and the House side by side behind. This time, however, the microphone-laden table that had been set up for his use stood in the well of the House chamber within little more than arm’s length of the first curved row of seats.

The chamber was filled as he entered, and Speaker Rayburn and I, together with the others who had met him, followed him in and took our places on the rostrum. The justices of the Supreme Court were in the places they always occupy on such occasions. The rows of seats were solidly filled with senators and representatives. I vaguely caught a glimpse of the many members of the diplomatic corps. Here and there a uniform was visible, and I remember looking up into the gallery for Mrs. Roosevelt and daughter, and for Mrs. Truman and our daughter, while the audience, which had risen in honor of the President as he entered, resumed their seats. The President looked about him and at the papers that lay before him.

Even before Speaker Rayburn let the gavel fall and introduced “the President of the United States,” it was plain that this appearance of the nation’s leader before Congress was to have about it an unusual atmosphere.

“Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, and members of the Congress,” he began, “I hope that you will pardon me for the unusual posture of sitting down during the presentation of what I want to say, but I know that you will realize it makes it a lot easier for me in not having to carry about ten pounds of steel around on the bottom of my legs, and also because of the fact that I have just completed a 14,000-mile trip.”

Everyone present was intent on his words, but unhappily the famous Roosevelt manner and delivery were not there. And he knew it. He frequently departed from his prepared script. At one point he brought in a mention of “a great many prima donnas in the world who want to be heard,” and he interrupted his text at another point to warn his listeners that “we haven’t won the war.” But these attempts to get away from his excellent script with lighthearted references and more thoughtful asides were not of much help.

Congress was stirred. Many members of both Houses were awed by his dramatic display of sheer will power and courage, and there were very few who were critical of what he said.

I saw the President immediately after his speech had been concluded. Plainly, he was a very weary man.

“As soon as I can,” he said to me, “I will go to Warm Springs for a rest. I can be in trim again if I can stay there for two or three weeks.”

He left Washington for the South on March 30, 1945.

I never saw or spoke with him again.

Shortly before five o’clock in the afternoon of Thursday, April 12, 1945, after the Senate adjourned, I went to the office of House Speaker Sam Rayburn. I went there to get an agreement between the Speaker and the Vice President on certain legislation and to discuss the domestic and world situation generally. As I entered, the Speaker told me that Steve Early, the President’s press secretary, had just telephoned, requesting me to call the White House.

I returned the call and was immediately connected with Early.

“Please come right over,” he told me in a strained voice, “and come in through the main Pennsylvania Avenue entrance.”

I turned to Rayburn, explaining that I had been summoned to the White House and would be back shortly. I did not know why I had been called, but I asked that no mention be made of the matter. The President, I thought, must have returned to Washington for the funeral of his friend, Bishop Atwood, the former Episcopal Bishop of Arizona, and I imagined that he wanted me to go over some matters with him before his return to Warm Springs.

On previous occasions when the President had called me to the White House for private talks he had asked me to keep the visits confidential. At such times I had used the east entrance to the White House, and in this way the meetings were kept off the official caller list. Now, however, I told Tom Harty, my government chauffeur, to drive me to the main entrance.

We rode alone, without the usual guards. The Secret Service had assigned three men to work in shifts when I became Vice President. However, this guard was reinforced, as a routine practice, during the time President Roosevelt was away on his trip to Yalta and again when he went to Warm Springs. A guard had been placed on duty at my Connecticut Avenue apartment, where I had lived as Senator and continued to live as Vice President, and another accompanied me wherever I went. These men were capable, efficient, self-effacing, and usually the guard who was on duty met me at my office after the Senate had adjourned. But on this one occasion I slipped away from all of them. Instead of returning from Speaker Rayburn’s office to my own before going to the car that was waiting for me, I ran through the basement of the Capitol Building and lost them. This was the only time in eight years that I enjoyed the luxury of privacy by escaping from the ever- present vigil of official protection.

I reached the White House about 5:25 p.m. and was immediately taken in the elevator to the second floor and ushered into Mrs. Roosevelt’s study. Mrs. Roosevelt herself, together with Colonel John and Mrs. Anna Roosevelt Boettiger and Mr. Early, were in the room as I entered, and I knew at once that something unusual had taken place. Mrs. Roosevelt seemed calm in her characteristic, graceful dignity. She stepped forward and placed her arm gently about my shoulder.

“Harry,” she said quietly, “the President is dead.”

For a moment, I could not bring myself to speak.

The last news we had had from Warm Springs was that Mr. Roosevelt was recuperating nicely. In fact, he was apparently doing so well that no member of his immediate family, and not even his personal physician, was with him. All this flashed through my mind before I found my voice.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” I asked at last.

I shall never forget her deeply understanding reply.

“Is there anything we can do for you?” she asked. “For you are the one in trouble now.”

The greatness and the goodness of this remarkable lady showed even in that moment of sorrow. I was fighting off tears. The overwhelming fact that faced me was hard to grasp. I had been afraid for many weeks that something might happen to this great leader, but now that the worst had happened I was unprepared for it. I did not allow myself to think about it after I became Vice President. But I had done a lot of thinking about it at the Chicago convention. I recall wondering whether President Roosevelt himself had had any inkling of his own condition. The only indication I had ever had that he knew he was none too well was when he talked to me just before I set out on my campaign trip for the vice-presidency in the fall of 1944. He asked me how I was going to travel, and I told him I intended to cover the country by airplane.

“Don’t do that, please,” he told me. “Go by train. It is necessary that you take care of yourself.”

Sometime later, too, Mrs. Roosevelt had seemed uneasy about the President’s loss of appetite. She remarked to me at a dinner shortly after the elections, “I can’t get him to eat. He just won’t eat.”

She was very devoted to the President, as he was to her. Mrs. Roosevelt was also close to the President in his work. In a way, she was his eyes and ears. Her famous trips were taken at his direction and with his approval, and she went on these long, arduous journeys mainly in order to be able to inform and advise him.

But now, as I stood there with her, I was thinking of a letter I had written to my mother and my sister a few hours earlier. They had not received it yet - would not receive it until this terrible news of the President’s death had reached them. But once my letter had arrived, they would know how little I had anticipated this overwhelming hour.

Dear Mamma & Mary [I had written]: I am trying to write you a letter today from the desk of the President of the Senate while a windy Senator . . . is making a speech on a subject with which he is in no way familiar. The Jr. Sen. from Arizona made a speech on the subject, and he knew what he was talking about. . . .

We are considering the Mexican Treaty on water in the Colorado River and the Rio Grande. It is of vital importance to Southwestern U.S. and northern Mexico. Hope we get it over some day soon.

The Senators from California and one from Utah and a very disagreeable one from Nevada (McCarran) are fighting the ratification. I have to sit up here and make parliamentary rulings - some of which are common sense and some of which are not.

Hope you are having a nice spell of weather. We’ve had a week of beautiful weather but it is raining and misting today. I don’t think it’s going to last long. Hope not for I must fly to Providence, Rhode Island, Sunday morning.

Turn on your radio tomorrow night at 9:30 your time, and you’ll hear Harry make a Jefferson Day address to the nation. I think I’ll be on all the networks, so it ought not to be hard to get me. It will be followed by the President, whom I’ll introduce.

Hope you are both well and stay that way.

Love to you both.

Write when you can.

Harry

That is what I had written only a few hours earlier, but now the lightning had struck, and events beyond anyone’s control had taken command. America had lost a great leader, and I was faced with a terrible responsibility.

It seems to me that for a few minutes we stood silent, and then there was a knock on the study door. Secretary of State Stettinius entered. He was in tears, his handsome face sad and drawn. He had been among the first to be notified, for as Secretary of State, who is the keeper of the Great Seal of the United States and all official state papers, it was his official duty to ascertain and to proclaim the passing of the President.

I asked Steve Early, Secretary Stettinius, and Les Biffle, who now had also joined us, to call all the members of the Cabinet to a meeting as quickly as possible. Then I turned to Mrs. Roosevelt and asked if there was anything she needed to have done. She replied that she would like to go to Warm Springs at once, and asked whether it would be proper for her to make use of a government plane. I assured her that the use of such a plane was right and proper, and I made certain that one would be placed at her disposal, knowing that a grateful nation would insist on it.

But now a whole series of arrangements had to be made. I went to the President’s office at the west end of the White House. I asked Les Biffle to arrange to have a car sent for Mrs. Truman and Margaret, and I called them on the phone myself, telling them what had happened - telling them, too, to come to the White House. I also called Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone, and having given him the news, I asked him to come as soon as possible so that he might swear me in. He said that he would come at once. And that is what he did, for he arrived within hardly more than fifteen or twenty minutes.

Others were arriving by now. Speaker Rayburn, House Majority Leader John W. McCormack, and House Minority Leader Joseph W. Martin were among them. I tried personally to reach Senator Alben W. Barkley, Senate majority leader, but I could not locate him. I learned later that word of the President’s death had reached him promptly and that he had gone at once to see Mrs. Roosevelt. In fact, he was with her in the White House while the group about me was gathering in the Cabinet Room.

There was no time for formalities and protocol. Among the people there were a score or so of officials and members of Congress. Only three women were present - Mrs. Truman and Margaret and Secretary Frances Perkins.

The Cabinet Room in the White House is not extensive. It is dominated by the huge and odd-shaped table, presented to the President by Jesse Jones, at which the President and the members of the Cabinet sit, and by the leather-upholstered armchairs that are arranged around it.

Steve Early, Jonathan Daniels, and others of the President’s secretarial staff were searching for a Bible for me to hold when Chief Justice Stone administered the oath of office.

We were in the final days of the greatest war in history - a war so vast that few corners of the world had been able to escape being engulfed by it. There was none who did not feel its effects. In that war the United States had created military forces so enormous as to defy description, yet now, when the nation’s greatest leader in that war lay dead, and a simple ceremony was about to acknowledge the presence of his successor in the nation’s greatest office, only two uniforms were present. These were worn by Fleet Admiral Leahy and General Fleming, who, as Public Works Administrator, had been given duties that were much more civilian in character than military.

So far as I know, this passed unnoticed at the time, and the very fact that no thought was given to it demonstrates convincingly how firmly the concept of the supremacy of the civil authority is accepted in our land.

By now a Bible had been found. It was placed near where I stood at the end of the great table. Mrs. Truman and Margaret had not joined me for over an hour after I had called them, having gone first to see Mrs. Roosevelt. They were standing side by side now, at my left, while Chief Justice Stone had taken his place before me at the end of the table. Clustered about me and behind were nine members of the Cabinet, while Speaker Rayburn and a few other members of Congress took positions behind Chief Justice Stone. There were others present, but not many.

I picked up the Bible and held it in my left hand. Chief Justice Stone raised his right hand and gave the oath as it is written in the Constitution.

With my right hand raised, I repeated it after him: “I, Harry S. Truman, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

I dropped my hand.

The clock beneath Woodrow Wilson’s portrait marked the time at 7:09.

Less than two hours before, I had come to see the President of the United States, and now, having repeated that simply worded oath, I myself was President.