I wish I could tell you that Bess wrote Harry Truman a marvelous letter in response to that outburst of gloom, telling him that she believed in him if no one else did. But at this point, she probably was more discouraged about his chances than he was. She was in Missouri, reading the slams and smears and digs in the newspapers every day. But that strong will, which kept her turbulent Wallace emotions under control, stood her in good stead during these trying days.

It was a moment in Harry Truman’s career when a panicky wife could have wrecked him. Not long after he wrote that downcast letter, FDR sent him a message, telling him that he did not think he could win renomination next year and offering him a job on the Interstate Commerce Commission.

The most interesting aspect of this offer seems to me is its absence from his letters to Bess. Would a man who was in the habit of telling his wife everything (except news that would upset her, such as a diagnosis of heart trouble) omit such an offer? It was honorable retirement, a safe haven that paid far more than a senator’s job. There are only two explanations: (1) Senator Truman did not trust FDR to keep his word; (2) this was another of those lonely moments when Harry Truman confronted his rendezvous with history. I think both explanations are right.

Senator Truman sent a message back to the White House. He was going to run for a second term as senator from Missouri, if the only vote he got was his own. It is a fascinating political moment: Two totally different men confronted one another. Franklin D. Roosevelt, the supreme manipulator, the man whose word was not his bond, who slivered and sliced the truth until it looked like macramé; Harry Truman, who believed a political promise was a binding contract and preferred to tell the truth, bluntly, totally, whenever possible.

Back in Missouri, there was no doubt about which man Bess Truman preferred. She accepted her husband’s decision and put her shrewd political brain to work on the campaign. Dad was inclined to apologize to Charlie Ross for all the rotten thoughts he had had about him since that 1934 editorial. Bess advised him to wait until the campaign was over. She saw that it would do the Trumans no harm to let Charlie feel like the guilty party for the next nine months. Dad reluctantly agreed. “I guess maybe it would be well to wait until after the campaign to apologize,” he wrote. “Newspapermen have to act as if they have no heart and no friends.”

For the next six months, Bess and Harry and their sixteen-year-old daughter went back and forth to Washington, D.C., so often, those bankrupt railroads Dad had been investigating should have been able to declare a dividend. Bess decided to try the trip by bus when she and I were traveling alone. It was a disaster. We were a couple of dishrags when we reeled into the terminal in Kansas City. No human being should be required to spend two days on a bus. Even two hours is too much in my opinion.

It was confusing. More often than not, Bess was in Washington while the senator was whirling around Missouri, trying to rally his discouraged friends. In mid-March, we went home for a visit that combined Easter and politicking. Bess and I returned to Washington without Dad. “I wired Mother this morning as soon as we got here,” Bess wrote. (The wire to Madge was written into the budget of every trip.) “But I didn’t know where to wire you.” She added that it was going to be “right lonely for the next ten days,” but she hoped “things were working out in St. Louis.”

Building some kind of a base of support in St. Louis was crucial to Dad’s strategy, now that he could not rely on a massive vote from Kansas City. He involved his fellow reserve officer, banker John Snyder, in his political fate by persuading him to come to Washington as head of the Defense Plants Corporation. In Washington, Bess assured him that she would do her best to make Mrs. Snyder, who was not thrilled to leave St. Louis, feel at home.

In another letter, Bess told her traveling man that she did not mind in the least when he called her at 2:00 a.m. to tell her things were starting to look brighter. She also reported that Senator Tom Stewart of Tennessee “thinks he can get things fixed up so he can go tonight [he was coming to Missouri to speak for Dad].” She was “anxious to know about the St. Joe [St. Joseph’s] meeting.” This was another step in the campaign’s strategy, building strong “outstate” support in cities and towns beyond the influence of Kansas City and St. Louis. With a sigh, Bess added that “it sure was lonesome last night.”

With no money to pay for a Missouri campaign staff, Dad drew on his Senate office staff for help. In April, he traveled with his administrative assistant, Vic Messall, Vic’s wife Irene, and his secretary Millie Dryden. Bess worried about this arrangement. By now, the newspapers had more than demonstrated their readiness to spread any smear about Senator Truman they could find. She sent Dad a letter while he was en route to another meeting in St. Louis advising him not to bring the women to any of the conferences he was having with the city’s politicians. “Don’t give any of that St. L. outfit a chance to talk about you and Vic being with the girls down there,” she wrote. “No one is going to miss seeing Mildred!”

Bess wanted the inside story on everything that was happening in Missouri. Her letters sometimes read like a list of questions. Did Maurice Milligan (who was thinking of joining the senatorial race) get the reception the Star said he got at the Young Democrats meeting? Was Dad pleased that Senator Stewart was going to speak in Kirksville? She commiserated with him about more and more bad news from Kansas City. On April 2, in the city elections, the Pendergast organization got trounced, carrying only five of the city’s sixteen wards. “It was rotten luck about the KC election,” she wrote.

For a little while, Bess got deep into the tangled web of the insurance company bribe that had put Tom Pendergast in jail. She reported to Dad that a man who worked for one of the companies thought he had information that Senator Truman might find useful. He was prepared to go to Missouri and speak to him. Dad decided that the less said about that matter, the better, and Bess so informed the informer.

Bess also reported on the political climate at the White House. She noted with glee that Lloyd Stark, in town to solicit FDR’s support, got exactly ten minutes with the president, while Senator Truman had recently spent two hours in the Oval Office discussing legislation and other matters. On the eve of the Missouri State Democratic Convention, she all but whooped at the news that the gathering was in the hands of Harry Truman’s friends. They were going to pick delegates for the National Democratic Convention, and she wondered if they would go so far as to keep Governor Stark off the slate.

Dad decided this would be unwise. It might enable Stark to portray himself as a martyr, persecuted by vengeful Pendergastites. The governor was voted a place on the delegation, but he was the only Stark man in sight. Dad got the Missouri seat on the resolutions committee, one of the most important jobs at the national convention. The word went out that Stark had behaved horribly at the state convention, and he proceeded to confirm this report by his conduct at the national convention.

Already running for the Senate, the governor announced he also was a candidate for the vice presidency. He handed out Stark Delicious apples to people and organized a Stark for vice president parade. Bess laughed when Dad told her how Mary Chinn Chiles, six feet tall, invaded the procession with a big sign that read TRUMAN FOR SENATOR. Mary was the chairman of the Truman campaign’s woman’s division.

Stark’s actions drew Senator Bennett Clark into the race on Harry Truman’s side. Bennett remarked that the governor seemed to be running for everything in sight and wondered if this included the archbishopric of Canterbury and the emirate of Afghanistan. Bennett and Dad teamed up to make sure Stark did not even get the votes of the Missouri delegation when the convention chose Henry Wallace as vice president at FDR’s request.

It took Bennett a while to break his silence and deliver on his promise to back Dad. By the time he spoke, the Truman campaign was well launched, with a big rally on June 15 in Sedalia, shrewdly chosen because it is almost equidistant between St. Louis and Kansas City. Mother and I were on the platform, and Mamma Truman sat in the front row of the audience. The crowd was big and enthusiastic, and I pounded my hands black and blue while Democrats from all parts of the state said nice things about Harry S. Truman. Before and after the rally, I watched Mother and Dad “work the crowd,” shaking hands with at least half the 4,000 people that were on hand. I pitched in wherever I thought someone wanted to shake hands with a sixteen-year-old.

A few days later, the senator wrote an emotional letter from Washington, telling Bess he had been “reaching for you all night long.” He apologized for not letting her “and Miss Margie” know how much he appreciated our help in Sedalia: “Both of you did untold and yeoman service, and the more I think of that day’s work, the more pleased I am.”

In another letter, he had a private laugh with Bess over the latest development in the race. Maurice Milligan, Tom Pendergast’s prosecutor, had decided to run. He did not know it, but Dad’s friends had taunted him into it by inflaming his jealousy of Lloyd Stark. The object was to split the anti-Pendergast vote between them. Dad and Bess enjoyed the confusion this produced in the Kansas City Star’s editorial writers. “That awful paper had an editorial on Stark and Milligan in which you could see much anguish,” Dad wrote.

All this Missouri turmoil took place in the shadow of dreadful news from Europe. Hitler’s legions had launched their blitzkrieg against the French and English, and by the time Dad spoke in Sedalia, the storm troopers were goose-stepping through Paris. The threat of war had a lot to do with FDR winning his nomination for a third term in July. Even with this in his favor, he had to throw himself into the arms of Boss Frank Hague of New Jersey and Boss Ed Kelly of Chicago to carry his divided party. For the Trumans, the ironies of that political move almost were too heavy to think about.

Dad’s letters to Mother during July and the first week in August read like local train schedules: “On Thursday, I’ll be in Keytesville at 2, Brunswick at 4 and Carrollton at 8.” At times, both sets of nerves got a little frayed. Bess lost her temper over the way Dad was barking orders and Dad apologized for offending her. “Guess I’m getting cranky,” he wrote.

Dad zoomed back to Washington and reported every senator and office boy seemed to be rooting for him. He organized a few verbal uppercuts to Governor Stark’s jaw from his fellow solons. Senator Gillette, in charge of investigating campaigns, issued a blast accusing the governor of repeating his dirty trick of forcing state employees to contribute 5 percent of their salaries to his campaign. A half dozen other senators, including Majority Leader Barkley, came to Missouri and endorsed Senator Truman.

Finally, with Mother and I feeling numb and Dad exhausted, we got to August 5, primary day. That night, we crowded around the radio in the living room at 219 North Delaware Street and listened to the returns. It was one of the worst nights of Bess’ life. The early returns gave Stark a 10,000-vote lead, which he held for several hours. Dad astonished her (and me) by announcing that he was sure he was going to win, and in the meantime, would get some badly needed sleep. He went to bed, leaving us and Grandmother Wallace and Fred and Christine up to our chins in gloom.

I can still see the tears streaming down Bess’ face as we went to bed. A lot of salt water was running down my cheeks, too. But I realize now my disappointment did not come close to the anguish Mother was feeling. She had tried so hard to help Dad. She wanted him to win with a fierceness, an intensity that transcended anything else she had ever desired. She had come to love her life in Washington, D.C. She had become a success in her own right as a senator’s wife. To have it all demolished by the collapse of Tom Pendergast and the blindness, the simple-mindedness of a few newspapers.

Bess went to bed, but I am sure there was no sleep for her. She lay in the darkness listening to Harry Truman’s steady breathing next to her. She wanted him to hold her, she wanted to hold him, but she knew how much he needed the sleep he was getting. She lay there, weeping.

About 3:30 a.m., the silence in the old house was shattered by the clang of the telephone. Bess groped for the black noisemaker in the dark bedroom. “This is Dave Berenstein in St. Louis,” said a cheerful voice. “I’d like to congratulate the wife of the senator from Missouri.”

“I don’t think that’s funny!” Bess snapped and slammed down the phone.

Only as she sank back on her pillow did Bess remember that Berenstein was the Truman campaign manager in St. Louis. She charged into my room and shook me awake. “Marg,” she gasped. “I hope I’m not dreaming. I’ve just heard the most incredible news. Do you think it could be true?”

I was too sleepy to make much sense out of Berenstein’s call. But that eager gentleman was soon back on the line, asking why Mrs. Truman had all but punctured his eardrum with that slam of the receiver. He had presumed that everyone would still be awake, rejoicing over the good news. Dad had carried St. Louis by 8,000 votes and was now ahead of Governor Stark.

That meant there was no sleep for Mother or me for the rest of the night. We spent the morning glued to the radio, while Dad’s lead went up and down, sometimes sinking to a nerve-shredding handful of votes. Not until 11:00 a.m. was he declared winner by 7,936 votes.

By that time, he was up, full of glowing, I-told-you-so ebullience. When Dad learned what Mother and I had gone through during the night, he was upset. It troubled him all the way back to Washington, where the Senate was still in session. “I’ll never forget Tuesday night if I live to be a thousand,” he told Bess. “My sweet daughter and my sweetheart were in such misery, it was torture to me.” He found himself wishing “I’d never made the fight.”

Then he reached out to the fighter in Bess, the athlete’s competitive spirit that she never lost. “But it was a good fight.” He listed all the people who had been against him - the newspapers, state and city employees. He told her that Les Biffle, the secretary of the Senate, had said that in all his years in Washington, he had never seen a victory like it. Finally, Dad appealed to what mattered most to Mother, loyalty. “We found out who are our friends and it was worth it for that.”

Then he added a familiar question: “When do you want to come on here?”

Bess decided she had better remain in Missouri, because the Trumans had another election to win in November. It was a good thing she did, because lack of money, a quarrelsome staff, and a formidable Republican opponent soon had everyone anxious. In St. Louis, Dad’s administrative assistant Vic Messall and other Senate staffers got into a brawl with local politicians and called Bess to straighten it out. At another point, Dad had to implore Bess to protect him from Mary Chinn Chiles, head of his woman’s division, who was turning into a female Lloyd Stark in front of his eyes. She was demanding a post on the National Democratic Committee. “Next thing she’ll want to be senator or governor,” the candidate growled. Lloyd Stark did not help matters by sitting out the campaign without a single word or gesture of support.

In Washington, the Senate sat far into the night, quarreling over the military conscription bill, the first ever proposed in peacetime. Prominent Americans such as John L. Lewis, head of the mine workers, and William Green, head of the AFL, denounced it, along with dozens of clergymen, college professors, and isolationist politicians from both houses of Congress. Dad fretted about the Wheeler-Truman Transportation Bill, which was still struggling against the international turmoil. Hitler was bombing London, and FDR was proclaiming the United States the arsenal of democracy. The conscription bill, providing for a one-year draft and requiring all men between twenty-one and thirty-five to register for military service, finally passed. In Missouri, Mary Chinn Chiles was in a sulk. Jim Pendergast, commanding the remnants of the old organization, was in a rage because Dad had decided, in the interest of party unity, to recommend Maurice Milligan for reappointment as federal attorney to serve out his term. He had had to resign to run for the Senate.

“If I can just do something to make the state chairman and McDaniel [Larry McDaniel, the Democratic candidate for governor] angry I’ll be batting 100%,” Dad wrote. Bess, the family baseball fan, knew he meant 1,000 percent. Getting mad himself, Senator Truman made a significant declaration, “I don’t care much of a damn what they do or don’t from here out. I’m going to do as I please and they can like it or not as they choose. I’ve spent my life pleasing people, doing things for ‘em and putting myself in embarrassing positions to save the party and the other fellow. Now I’ve quit. To hell with ‘em all.”

When Bess read this letter in Missouri, she could have had only one comment. “Hurray.” She never had much patience with the egotism and power plays of the politicians who swirled through her life. But she never gave the public a glimpse of this side of her mind. Even more to her credit, she had let Dad deal with them his way.

To make things completely cuckoo, Harriette Shields and her alcoholic husband, Leighton, whom Dad had shipped off to be U.S. attorney in Shanghai, showed up in Independence. Harriette’s health had broken down, either from Shanghai’s climate or from Leighton’s drinking or both. Bess could not resist feeling sorry for them. She sent them on to Washington with her blessing. There, Leighton grandly informed Dad that he wanted an appointment with the president. It is not clear whether he wanted to advise FDR on the situation in the Far East or simply ask him for a transfer. Senator Truman told Leighton that he had trouble getting an appointment for himself.

This episode was not a total loss. It prompted another one of those declarations of independence that Senator Truman began issuing around this time. “I’m not going to see the president any more until February,” he told Bess, “and then he’s going to want to see me. I rather think from here out I’ll make him like it.”

That one definitely got a hurrah from Bess. She never completely forgave FDR for the cynical game he had played with Lloyd Stark in 1939-40. She thought - and I agree with her - that Harry Truman deserved better treatment from the president for the support Dad had given his domestic and international policies.

The topper in this endless series of headaches was the Truman farm. A vindictive county court judge, elected on an anti-Pendergast “reform” ticket, foreclosed the mortgage of $35,000 Mamma Truman had borrowed from the county school fund, and after eighty years of struggle and heartbreak, the land was lost. The only motive was an attempt to embarrass Dad. In hard times, such mortgages were routinely extended and the unpaid interest added to the principal. Dad and Vivian had to move Mamma Truman to a small house in Grandview. Bess did her best to help with the transition, for which Dad was grateful. “I’m glad you went to see Mamma,” he wrote. “No matter how much front she puts on, she hates to leave the farm.”

By the end of September, the combination of campaigning and getting bills through the Senate had the candidate frazzled. “I was never so tired in my life,” he wrote to Bess. “My desk looks like a cyclone had piled up all the unanswered letters in the world. The Senate will not adjourn.” He found himself wishing he had just bundled her up and taken her back to Washington with him. “I need somebody I can tell my troubles to most awful bad - and it looks like you are it.”

In spite of these fits of gloom, the senator was soon home in Missouri, and if he stopped long enough to tell his troubles to Bess, no one except her noticed it. Once more, there was a whirlwind campaign, but this time, election night was a celebration instead of a sob session. Dad coasted to a relatively easy victory over his Republican opponent, winning by more than 40,000 votes. It was a campaign that attracted national attention. Harry Truman won without the support of a single major newspaper or political organization. He had proved he was a political power in his own right.

For Bess, this was a source of pride in itself. But from her woman’s point of view, this 1940 victory also meant something equally important. After almost twenty years of political and economic peril (one writer described Dad as a man who had been doing a high-wire act without a net), the Trumans had achieved safety, permanence, security, and - not unimportant to Mother - just the right amount of prestige. She liked being the wife of the senator from Missouri. She looked forward to playing that pleasant role for the rest of her life.